live from sublurbia

[Think Of A Something Thursday - why not? :)]

Laundry scents make me sneeze. They make a lot of my family sneeze, so I’ve gotten used to scent-free detergents; I don’t like anything that is even lightly scented. But I couldn’t break my addiction to dryer sheets once the scent-free ones came on the market. Fluffy, static-free clothes were what I wanted - even if the chemicals in them wrecked my towels’ absorbency and trapped stains and body odor in the clothes.

As an infomercial and catalog shopping junky, I’d seen laundry balls over the years, which claimed to eliminate the need for laundry soap. The “science” of those I disbelieved, so I took a pass. More recently I saw dryer balls, which reminded me of using tennis balls in the dryer when drying shoes. I bought a couple pair and they worked (and still work) great.

By combining them in the dry cycle with a bit of vinegar in the rinse cycle, I hardly have any static problems. My clothes are soft, the absorbency of my towels is unmarred. [Gosh, do I sound like an infomercial yet?] Absorbency is more important than ever now; I’m washing cloth diapers a couple times a week. Nothing like chemical build up to minimize the usefulness of a good diaper. And irritate tushies.

Too bad dryer balls are made of intensely sucky material: PVC. In use they are non-toxic, or so the claim goes, but what about the manufacture? Pretty toxic. Disposal, too. Guess I shouldn’t have thrown my broken ones away, or even bought these in the first place? Whoops.

I didn’t know these were a PVC product until I started following up on the manufacturer and warranty of my busted balls. Is there such a thing as a environmentally-friendly PVC? How about community-based recycling? I suppose if your standard is “not consistently worse than alternative materials” … you might need to look at your standards. Or chalk it up as the cost of fluffy clothes.

So, I’m going to use up what I’ve got and try to find something to replace my dryer balls. I threw the first few that broke (wore out) out, but this broken one is going back to the maker. We’ll see how that works out; if I don’t have the means to recycle it, maybe they do.

While poking around for alternatives, I found that the ones available from Gaiam are a different color. But further investigation proved that they are made of PVC as well. The phone representative who helped me was surprised to see they were made of PVC, but she kindly forwarded a suggestion up the chain to try and source some that aren’t PVC-based.

Meantime, I can look into using discarded tennis balls again. Those might not be as bad.

And we’ll stick to the usual washing routine until we do find that alternative. Vinegar alone might be enough to keep our clothes comfortably soft, and the static level down. It helps that we don’t use a lot of fully-synthetic fabrics and live in a humid environment, but a load of dress socks or more than one little kid;s fleece blanket can have you zapping yourself for days.

Our washing routine has been changed up a lot in the last couple of years. Part of this grew from the problem of my washing machine/biosphere. I had a serious mildew problem in the washer: in a previous life it had been kept in the garage of a rental home near the ocean and the machine was poorly designed. I cleaned the heck out of it but it never really got clean, even with a bit of liquid evil chlorine bleach.

And despite my small success with vinegar and dryer balls, the dryer (attached) seemed to have two settings: on and off. Three if you count “spin all night and don’t dry the clothes or turn off”.

I’ve got a newer set of each now, again front-loading fun, but I am taking care to clean the units more often and more thoroughly to prevent any build up again.

I’ve changed from detergent to soap, too. Though the general “scent free” and “dye free” detergents worked well enough for me before we started diapering our latest child, they were bad news for diapers and the rest of the environment.

I shopped around, and finally settled on one that is phosphate-free, petroleum-free, cloth diaper friendly, and works well with our “soft” (but not softened) water: Charlie’s Soap. I haven’t tried the powder yet, but I may keep some on hand as back up. Each gallon bottle is rated to 128 loads, and from my experience that seems accurate.

For most clothes, I keep it simple. Normal setting, warm or cold, one squirt of soap, one glug of vinegar. 1/4 cup baking soda if I want a little extra freshness.

For diapers, I shake the solid waste into the toilet (which you have to do for disposables, too), then run a cold rinse on all of the diapers. Next, a hot or sterile wash, with the same soap/vinegar/baking soda routine as well. I alternate between the sterile mode and simply running the load with biokleen once a week or so, more if there are yuckys in the house. A good day-long stint hanging in the sun when I have a spare weekend helps, too.

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