Something eStatic

I'm still here! I still haven't bought the cute cardigans or lip gloss! I did do some thrifting today, and I found a Bob Dylan album for my husband that cost me a mere $3. And I discovered a lot of vintage buttons for $9 that I plan to use for gifts come the holidays and birthdays.

It's been super busy lately at school and in the evenings, so the house is a mess. And today is laundry day. The most charming thing to do for the Earth in this category is probably to air dry my clothes--and I do air dry some, and I usually use the low heat setting. But it's February, so a clothesline is out of the question. I've also been using concentrated detergent, but I wonder if powder detergent would be an even better choice when that runs out. But there's one thing that's for sure: I don't need to keep buying dryer sheets. I do hear that you can use used dryer sheets for sewing projects, but I don't have sewing projects that would need it.

Now. There are many options out there on how to reduce the waste and cost of dryer sheets. And I found a cool website awhile back for DIY options. I chose the one I had materials for at home, and I LOVE it. When we registered for our wedding, I discovered that there were some things we just didn't need, but we registered for--we didn't need 24 drinking glasses, we didn't need 12 dinner plates, we didn't need sateen dinner napkins. I don't mind having these items, and I find good alternative uses for them like using drinking glasses as vases and dinner plates as platters, but we didn't need them. Another item we didn't need in surplus is wash clothes. We registered for 10 if I remember correctly. And I rarely use them in the shower (I'm stuck on using my bar soap in my hands or one of those un-recyclable loofahs), but with this project I may need to bring back the washcloth.

But until then, I'm using them as dryer sheets. I simply soaked four washcloths in fabric softener--literally soaked them for a good 3 minutes each. Then I wrung them out (I did all of this in an empty Tide container). Next, I hung them to dry overnight and into the next day on our drying rack. I was skeptical at first, but they are amazing! My source said they'd last 12 washes, but I think they last longer. You just throw the rag into the dryer like you would a dryer sheet--no static, no rough clothes, no waste! And I marked mine with sharpies so that I have designated dryer sheets. Before reusing them, run them through a regular load of wash. So simple, so charmed Earth.