It's worth noting that cat owners(at least, never had anything buts cats) should avoid certain essential oils, As our furry pals' little organs aren't equipped to process them, and they can easily be deadly!
@pseudo@jlai.lu, saw you mention essential oils too, just a PSA.
I'm not convinced about the cost. A kilogram of borax seems to run about $10CAD. 2 cups, at 1.7g/CC, would be about 850g, so $7 just for the Borax. Unless there's a much cheaper place to get it...
A ~5L jug of Tide costs $31, or about $6/L. If they have approximately equivalent cleaning power per volume, Tide wins.
Most of that tide jug is water.
Yeah, which is why I added the note about cleaning power per unit volume. But it'd have to be a fair bit more powerful to make the effort worth it, I think.
We use maybe 50ml of Tide (so that'd be probably 100 loads) when doing our laundry, so if that's equivalent to like one tablespoon of the Borax mix, I could see it saving me $20 or so overall, if it's three times stronger.
So it'd come down to how much time I spend shopping and combining the mixture vs just buying it.
Mind, that's just the borax. Bar soap and baking soda are cheap but not free.
(edit: and before someone jumps on me about "baking soda", I was thinking of it in terms of decomposing it into carbonate in the oven. I haven't priced out washing soda)
Fabric softener is great. Mix a bit with water and use it to clean your shower glass doors/walls. It removes limescale like a charm thanks to the anionic surfactants that are in there. And the Aldi store brand costs hardly anything.
Fabric softener is sometime useful for very hard water. You don't have to buy it, though. You can use white vinegar to soften the water to actually soften the fabric mix in a big container one part white vinegar to one part sodium bicarbonate. Wait for it to stop foaming. Add four drops of essential oils per liter of mixture. Stir. Allow to rest a few hour before using. You can make big quantity ahead of time as long as your container is big enough for the big foam of the big batch.
Speaking of hard water, I recently installed a water conditioner/descaler instead of replacing my dead water softener. It's an electronic device that mounts on the water supply pipe, and uses a couple of wire coils to create an electric field that makes the calcium ions in the hard water stick to each other instead of pipes and fixtures. I was skeptical, because the description of how it works sounds a lot like many woo-woo devices that use "magnetic fields" to do... something. But I read up on water descalers, and all of the information that I found was very straightforward, listing the pro's and con's of descalers versus softeners.
And it works! I checked the water utility reports for the wells which serve my area, and found that they're all "very hard," but quite low on manganese. Therefore, I don't mind that the minerals stay in the water; they just go down the drain instead of building up on things. It's actually starting to dissolve the scale buildup on my faucets, slowly. No need for vinegar to have soft fabric out of the laundry, either. I like that it descales all of the water in the house, so I don't have to bother about which is softened and which is not. It was also cheaper than a water softener, and I don't have to buy salt regularly. Also, it's an older house with galvanized pipes, which soft water will corrode.
Anyway, random aside on hard water.
Gen X here, I only use unscented dryer sheets because if I don't I will get shocked a lot. My apartment is great because the humidity is super low in the winter, but clothing hurts. Humidifier doesn't work because if I don't use distilled water everything gets a rust color on it. Also I'd be going through a gallon of distilled water a day. I can't afford that, but I sure as heck can afford a big box of unscented dryer sheets that solves my problem.
It's worth wondering how much fabric softener would cost someone over their adult lifetime as an exercise. Let's say 50 years of adulthood, and 12 bottles a year costing $10 each. That's six grand. For something that serves no functional purpose, makes towels less effective and has an environmental impact.
So yes it's a scam. If someone really needs to use fabric softener, at least buy a cheaper supermarket brand and use it sparingly.
12 bottles a year??? Lmfao exactly how much laundry you got? Assume a family of 4 does 3 loads a week (12 a month). A bottle of Snuggle fabric softener ($8) has roughly 112 rinse loads.
That's 112 rinse loads /12 wash loads a month = 9.3 months
2 bottles max a year at a whopping $16.
$16 x 50 years= $800
Nobody's mentioend laundry detergent sheets yet? Super cheap. I buy the Poesie brand. 160 sheets in a box for $9.49. That's just under 6¢ per load. For my two loads of laundry per week, a box lasts me a year and a half.
Bonus: the box takes up almost no space, 6" x 5" x 3".
Also, white vinegar is an awesome replacement for fabric softener!
"Detergent sheets", "dryer sheets", it's like you're in a different world with these fantastically strange single-use products :D
They look like a tissue made of rough fiber, do they dissolve or do you have to throw them away after usage? Either way it seems less practical than just adding a bit of powder, but what do I know :)
Another replacement for fabric softener is hair conditioner (diluted with water so it runs better). I only use it when washing polyester fleece, since that gets fiercely static, so it's nice to be able to use a product we already have at home.
Detergent sheets completely dissolve in the wash.
Single-use? I mean ... sure? I guess? The same way a scoop of detergent powder is single-use.
Wool balls do not work with synthetics.
Synthetics are terrible anyway
Cotton fibers from repeated washes and clothing waste are also terrible though. In my case, one pair of synthetic outdoor or workout pants lasts over a decade while a pair of cotton jeans or khakis has the crotch chewed out within months. As far as I understand the math on the environmental impact, it's more about using the same items for as long as possible than what material those items are.
Cheap ones, yep.
Baked baking soda is used to make ramen
But it can also irritate your skin
Washing Soda
No. Just no. Sodium carbonate, you americans!
Also called soda ash.
Also calling Na "sodium" is so god damn dumb. It should be called Natrium
This is unachievable for them. Hard mode mission.
Washing soda is sodium carbonate, baking soda is sodium bicarbonate
Washing Soda
No. Just no. Sodium carbonate, you americans!
Washing soda is sodium carbonate, baking soda is sodium bicarbonate
So exactly what they said?
Been using a set of wool dryer balls from Trader Joe's for years. Haven't had to use fabric softener at all.
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