Homemade Fabric Softener

Maybe, like me, you’re trying to green up your home.  Or maybe, also like me, you’re cheap budget-conscious.  Either way, you are going to LOVE this recipe.  Actually, this is more like a non-recipe. 

See, a non-recipe

1.   Get a big jug of white vinegar.
2.   Add some drops of essential oil for fragrance. I used lemongrass, lavender and rosemary so that it would match my Homemade Detergent, but oils are completely optional!
3.   Go do laundry.

That’s it!  See how easy going green can be?  You may be thinking, but won’t my laundry smell like pickles?  No!  That’s the beauty of it.  The vinegar smell dissappears when the vinegar dries.  You don’t actually have to add any fragrance, but it does linger on your clothing slightly, so I do it because I like it.  You don’t have to.  Vinegar helps the detergent rinse complete from your laundry and naturally softens the clothing without the toxic chemicals in traditional fabric softeners.  Plus, it helps clean your washing machine.

But, being green is only one advantage of this softener.  As I mentioned before, this will save you $$! 

I just refill this bottle with my vinegar and a few drops of essential oils.

Now, even when I used toxic fabric softener, I used sheets.  But, one summer my sister and her family stayed with us.  She was kind enough to leave behind this bottle of Downy for me.   If you’ll notice, the price tag says, “$6.79”.  That price is from 2003, so it may be more.  I really have no idea.  If you’d like to weigh in on this matter, please feel free to leave a comment.

Anyway, back to the math.  For $6.79, you can soften 52 loads.  That works out to about 13 cents per load. 

I use the lid from this Downy bottle to measure my vinegar, so I use the same number of ounces per load (0.85 oz.) White vinegar comes in 1 gallon jugs.  I pay $1.69 for a gallon of vinegar (128 oz.)  1 gallon of vinegar is just over 150 loads.  That works out to about 1 cent per load.  Even if you add essential oils, it wouldn’t be more than 2 cents per load if you paid a LOT for your oil.  My oils are in the $3 price range so I don’t even figure them into the price because the 20+ drops I put into the Downy bottle barely cost a nickel.

Even if you only wash 1 load of laundry a week, (and who does that??) you would save over six dollars a year.  Not to mention eliminate gallons of toxic chemicals from the water supply and avoid long-term skin contact with these same chemicals.  If you do five loads a week you’ll save over $31 a year.  Imagine what you could save over a lifetime of doing laundry!

If you like green cleaning products, you’ll probably like my Sink Scrub recipe, too.