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Washing Soda
No. Just no. Sodium carbonate, you americans!
What… ? Bar soap? Which coats your skin in wax and makes you feel like a walking crayon when you wash yourself with it?
No thanks, I’ll stick to my detergent and dryer sheets.
(which do work btw, I grew up poor without them and HATED the feeling of my clothes, and the static. Pissed me off all the time. Grew up, started making money, and bought dryer sheets, boom problem solved.)
Haven’t used it for years
Baked baking soda is used to make ramen
But it can also irritate your skin
I use soap nuts for washing and vinegar as the softener. It comes out perfectly clean but has a neutral smell (which might smell weird when you first start doing this). I sometimes add a tiny bit of store bought softener to the vinegar for stuff like more expensive hoodies and tshirts.
Totally in with the ‘make your own soap’ mentality. I’ve been making my own laundry soap and liquid hand soap for ~6mo, and I’m still working through the first set of supplies I got for both. Only downside to making it yourself is the time commitment, but I’ve got it to a point where once I have the batter made, I just throw it and some distilled water into a covered mason jar, put in a covered stock pot with enough water to get around the inner water level and just let it simmer for a few hours.
It’s actually super simple to make my laundry soap, it’s just a 6:6:2:1 ratio:
Baking soda:Epson salt:washing soda:sea saltWorks great and take the smell out of my potty training son’s laundry.
Well I guess I’m the chump buying all three things… But my clothes do smell good as hell.
Awfullydull and I are now best friends, I’ve been saying the same about dryer sheets for YEARS now
FUCK DRYER SHEETS pointless ass waste of money
What’s a dryer sheet? I don’t think I’ve heard of it before.
A microplastic rag dipped in PFAS.
I’m talking out of my ass bc I don’t use them either, but I’d wager a buck my description isn’t that far off.
You put them in your clothes dryer to make everything smell like chemical clean and make them a little softer. And reduce static? I think? They give me a rash, personally.
Literally just a thin disposable sheet of fabric impregnated with fabric softener that you throw in the dryer with your clothes. The idea is that it’s supposed to make your clothes feel softer, smell better, and reduce static electricity. Waste of money and material, just throw a damn tennis ball in there
My MIL swears that dryer sheets are good for cleaning baseboards. You take one and rub it on a baseboard and some how dust just… avoids those annoying little nooks and crannies. I haven’t had to clean them again in literal years, but thats the only good use I’ve heard for dryer sheets. It’s a hack on a tiny task I never take time to care about really, not sure if that in anyway justifies the existence of dryer sheets, but there you go.
‘Most millennials aren’t buying enough of our shit and that’s a HUGE PROBLEM that all of you definitely care about!’
That’s some pretty useful advice in the comments tho. But also I’m 52 years old and have literally never used fabric softener in my life and have no idea what it’s supposed to be for other than making companies like Proctor & Gamble even more money.
Also, another handy tip: ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ is bullshit, unless you have really thick or really oily hair and don’t wash regularly, you don’t need to wash it twice, the shampoo company just wants you to buy more. Same with fill marks in a washing machine, unless you’re doing a huge load there’s no reason to fill it all the way up.
I’ve had a box of fabric sheets for a decade or so cause my mom got them for me when she house sat, and I didn’t have any. I sometimes use em if there are sparks when I pull something out of the dryer, and i don’t forget i have them.
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I use dryer sheets for static. shrug
Dryer sheets will ruin your towels too, just toss some wool balls in the dryer.
How so?
It coats your towels with a light film that makes them less absorbent.
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Cotton and mostly-cotton blends don’t get that much static but nylon, polyester, and bamboo/rayon/microfiber make sparks. If you’re trying to wash pet hair out of something, the softener can help it let go. Although, before you wash, try using a squeegee or a silicone bowl-scraper to remove most of the hair.
Was “lather, rinse, repeat” an advertising jingle or something for you guys, or do you just all get taught to wash your hair twice?
It was on the instructions on the bottles and IIRC in the ads for the major brands too.
and don’t wash regularly
Even washing hair regularly is a scam. If you wash once a week your hair will be fine. It’ll look like shit for a few weeks until your scalp gets the message that you aren’t stripping away all the natural oils still and that it can cut back on oil production but afterwards your hair will be healthier.
Apple cider vinegar and tea tree oil baby. (I am not a gross hippy, shampoo dries the f out of my hair and Ive gone no shampoo for ~10 years)
Your hair isn’t left smelling of the vinegar after?
It rinses out really well, and the tea tree oil is used to negate any residual smell
Main reason I do vinegar is because it strips out maybe 60-70% of the oils vs shampoo
This is true, but greasy hair looks greasy and makes your pillow smell bad which impacts your ability to fall asleep.
Like sure, it’s not natural to wash your hair every 2/3 days, but imo it’s worth it
No, your hair stops becoming greasy. That’s the point. It gets that way because you’re stripping the oils, so it produces more to replinish it. If you stop then your scalp eventually adjusts and stops producing much oil.
People think greasy hair is just what happens, but no. It’s what happens when you’ve been stripping your hair dry for years and your scalp is trying it’s best to fix the problems you’re causing. Stop causing problems and it’ll normalize.
I wash with water frequently, but when I really need a good clean I wash with conditioner. The oils bind and are removed but your hair will be refreshed. I rarely wash with shampoo, for years at this point, and my hair isn’t greasy. It just feels healthy.
It’s what happens when you’ve been stripping your hair dry for years and your scalp is trying it’s best to fix the problems you’re causing. Stop causing problems and it’ll normalize.
Please do explain how an exocrine gland on the scalp is supposed to know how much oil is on a strand of dead hair cells, located inches away from the skin?
I think that it’s because the scalp itself gets dried out from too much washing, so the glands respond to that.
When the scalp skin “normalizes” the hair slowly normalizes as well, since the oil travels down the strands.
That’s my guess. I went from shampooing daily to every other day and at first I would get an itchy, gummy scalp. But eventually that gummyness worked it’s way out. Every time I shampooed I would get that dry, gummy scalp the next day.
So eventually I shampooed less and less. Now I don’t shampoo at all. I just rinse daily with water and massage my scalp.
I can assure you my gf and I both nvalidated this assumption during the covid19 lockdown. I have a friend who has thick grey hairs and he never washes his hair. I guess we are all different on that matter because I can’t even skip a single day (it gets scratchy and my skin starts to fall appart), as others testified in the comments.
100%.
Use a shampoo that has aloe as the primary ingredient as well. Can comfortably make it a week and half before it looks gnarly.
Routinely get complimented on it so I know its not nasty.
Huh, I didn’t know that. But I mean I gotta shower every couple of days at most anyway or I feel gross, so might as well.
Hair training is a myth, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
Duly noted, thanks.
Oh, I shower every day with soap. I just don’t wash my hair every day. I also feel gross without a shower.
Soap is also not great for your skin; you don’t need to soap up more than your armpits and underwear area.
I’m a head-sweater so when I work out my hair gets as wet as it would in the shower. I’m not gonna leave it like that, it’ll be stinky.
Yes, not all advice/recommendations apply to everyone. Specifically: our bodies vary quite a bit and they also change over time.
I’m sorry to have to say, but the idea of “hair training” is a myth.
The oil glands (which are known as sebaceous glands, and produce an oil called “sebum”) are controlled by genetics, hormones, and stress. Sebaceous glands don’t have any sort of “sensor” to tell them when to produce more/less oil, so washing or not washing won’t make a difference.
Thank you. I have extra oily hair so if I skip washing it even a single day it starts to look like I’m using pomade, and whenever I tell people this they always insist I should just wash it once a week and my head will “adjust.”
I am the exact same, friend. My hair becomes a big oil slick after only a day without washing and it’s really obvious. Which is part of why this particular myth bothers me so much.
First, as teens, we had uninformed randos without oily skin telling us to heal our acne problems by putting nonsense like toothpaste and silly putty on our faces. Now, those same uninformed, non-oily randos tell us that our greasy hair can be solved by not washing it.
But my dermatologist was right about the acne care they recommended, I’m inclined to trust them about my scalp care too.
Yep, I had really bad acne when I was younger and the only thing that worked was isotretinoin, which is rough. My lips cracked and bled while I was taking that but when I was finished the acne was gone.
They made me pledge not to get pregnant while taking it despite the fact that I don’t have a uterus, lol.
I knew /r/nopoo was a lie!
I learned that from Lizzie McGuire. Ethan Craft, the character frequently noted to have amazing hair, calls the “lather, rinse, repeat” thing a marketting trick.
I gotta wash mine twice(when i do wash it), but that’s because of the extra oils I put in my hair. The first wash absorbs so much of the oil it won’t really even lather.
Obvious solution seems to be to put less oil in your hair? shrug
Then it doesn’t look right. Obvious solution is to just wash my hair twice. So obvious it’s what I do and it works great.
I’ve literally never put oil in my hair in my life (tho now I say that I dunno if shampoo/conditioner has oil in it. Probably.) It’s looked fine this whole time.
I’ve probably had pretty long hair for longer than you’ve been alive. If you have long hair and wanting it to look not crazy without tying it up, you’re putting something in it. Whether it’s leave in conditioner, or fiber or pomade or gel or hairspray or some type of oil or you manage to skip all that by straightening it all the time; you’re putting something in it or doing something to it. Very few people have an exception to this. Namely people who have very straight, limp hair.
I’m in my 50s so color me skeptical on that count, but fair enough. ;) But yeah, I’ve never been able to grow my hair out and keep it that way even though I do have very straight, limp hair just because it was always a pain to wash and care for and I just didn’t care enough.
I’ve used the same three tennis balls in my dryer for about 20 years now. My clothes seem to last well, and towels remain absorbant (fabric sheets can leave a waxy residue making towels less absorbent). After reading those comments maybe I’ll try adding a few drops of a scented oil to one of the tennis balls.
I have a friend that would make his own clothes soap. It looked like semen, but worked.
I hate to be the guy to tell you this, but I think your friend might have washed his clothes with cum.
Could his jeans kinda, stand upright all by themselves?
It helps you stand for long periods of time, you just relax against your clothes which support you.
Yeah I’m not putting all that effort and potentially ruining my washing machine to save me a few cents per wash. That seems ridiculous.
You don’t even have to buy the fancy, expensive, in a pod detergent or anything, considering they always contain the same stuff that comes in a box/bottle. Just buy whatever’s cheap.
Yea, making your own laundry detergent from grated soap and borax is something people with money do to convince themselves theyre frugal. When in reality there is no way in hell youre making a commodity cheaper than GreatValue ™
Yeah, the cheap standard powder detergent would probably be less expensive. The volume you’d need to make to beat it is huge. Like, maybe five years’ worth.
I am also laughing at making washing powder in the oven to save money. The amount you’d spend on electricity would put you in the red, unless you live in a petrostate with free electricity or something.
Lol yeah I didn’t even consider that. At this point it almost feels like some of that has to be trolling. Either that or there is a large detergent hobbyist community out there that I have just not been aware of.
The amount of free time you’d have to have, as well, to even consider baking the powder for an hour per round to make it usable… After a certain point my time is valuable to me and I’d rather just pay a dollar or two extra to not have to worry about all this mess.
Indeed. Or working for prison slave wages.
Not just the effort, but by the time you buy all those ingredients, you’re probably paying more than you would for normal laundry detergent.
And if you use Dr. Bronner’s bar soap as recommended, you’ll be paying out the ass.
Not to mention the gas to go to the three separate stores you probably need to buy that shit from.
Eh, all of that stores really well, so buy in bulk.
Fabric softener / dryer sheets make clothing feel disgustingly slimy.
Honestly at a loss here. The title references fabric softener, but the content relates more specifically to DIY laundry detergent while only mentioning that softener makes clothes more vulnerable to wear & tear. What’s the nitty-gritty on the fabric softener? Does it actually damage clothing in some way?
As geek analogy, is it like the subatomic bacteria that starts destroying the Klingon ship in Star Trek: the Next Generation S2E8’s “A Matter Of Honor”, or does it just make the material more susceptible to tearing?
Isn’t detergent incredibly cheap though? I always buy the cheapest per weight Aldi stock. I think we may have spent less than £5 on it in the past year. Never bought fabric conditioner, wtf would I want that for, deliberately make my towels less absorbent and more flammable?
Are all your clothes towels? Just don’t use it when you wash your towels lol
I often wash towels with other things though. It would be rather wasteful to run a second load just for towels.
