One of my favourite things is the smell of clean, soft laundry straight off the line or out of the dryer. The only problem is; I have sensitive skin. So does my son. In fact, he has very sensitive skin and suffers from frequent outbreaks of eczema. When he was a baby, we tried many, many different brands of laundry detergent and fabric softener before we found something that wouldn’t cause him to break out in rashes all over his body.
We even tried several recipes for making our own laundry soap and fabric softener. While the recipes saved us money, and the laundry soap was certainly milder than commerically-made detergents, I did find that it didn’t clean our clothes well enough (especially food stains on the kids’ clothing). So I wound up going back to a mild commercially-made laundry detergent in order to get our clothes really clean. But then I needed to ensure that I got all the detergent residue out of our clothes, to prevent rashes. to do that, I found the best option was a homemade fabric softener.
Not only did it soften our clothes and help prevent static build-up in the dryer, this recipe completely removed the irritating soapy residue and left the clothes smelling fresh and clean. Not perfume-y, like with store-bought fabric softeners, but just fresh…and clean!
Even if you don’t have sensitive skin, you can save a fair bit of money over the course of a year by making your own fabric softener. Here’s the recipe that I’ve found works best over the years:
1 cup baking soda
1 cup vinegar
2 cups water
Mix it all up in a plastic jug (great way to recycle your old liquid fabric softener jug!) and use about 1/4 cup per load. Your clothes, your skin and your wallet will thank you!
Wonderful, thank you very much.
This will be great for our sepric tank and laundry 🙂
I love soft laundry =)
Wow, I never thought to make my own fabric softener. I didn’t even know that it was possible. My daughter also has eczema. I am very cautious of the products I use to wash her clothes. Now I have an alternate to store bought. Thank you so much!