‘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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Oh, I shower every day with soap. I just don’t wash my hair every day. I also feel gross without a shower.
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)
It reduces static and leaves behind a film that makes things feel softer. It ruins towels because of this.
Dryer sheets will ruin your towels too, just toss some wool balls in the dryer.
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.
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.
Was “lather, rinse, repeat” an advertising jingle or something for you guys, or do you just all get taught to wash your hair twice?
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.
You can just use white vinegar instead of fabric softener. It’s significantly cheaper, can be used for other non-laundry things, eliminates odors, and doesn’t gum up your washing machine with residue.
Is there anything vinegar can’t do?!? Between white and apple cider vinegar, I feel like they cover so many areas of cleaning and household stuff.
Further advice, don’t use a lot of it. You’ll see videos on youtube of people pouring like three cups of vinegar in their washing machine, don’t do that. You only need a splash of it. If you use too much, the acid will eat away at the rubber gaskets and shit
You definitely don’t need that much vinigar. That said most new washing machine are using a chemical resistant silicone or TPE instead of more traditional rubber compound. This eliminated the already miniscule risk of acid damaging the seals.
If you add 3 cups(about 700 mL) of standard 5% acetic acid bleach to 4 gallons of water(~ 15000 mL) you end up with a 0.2% acetic acid you will end up with a pH of something like 5.5 or about the pH of healthy skin. A lot of HE washers will use a 5 gallon initial wash so it’s likely to be even gentler than what I came up with in my rough napkin math guesstamate.
While I agree with the general sentiment, the vinegar won’t be released and diluted until later in the load, so it sits in its full 5% acetic acid glory for quite a while.
Yeah if you can use just a splash you might have water soft enough to not require anything.
1/2 cup to 1 cup is the sweet spot for my water, 1/4 cup on a very small load.
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 seems like something people with money do to convince themselves they’re frugal. When in reality, there is no way in hell you’re 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.
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.
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.
I’m not sold on that homemade detergent. Soap tends to leave insoluble residue, especially when you have hard water. There is a reason why almost everything uses synthetic detergents (though it might also be because those are cheap).
Yeah, I’ve never understood the point in using a different soap as the base of a different soap. I make my own laundry soap out of basic shit I get from Walmart, and it works great.
Good question, but I’ll admit I’ve not actually run the exact figures. I’m actually doing this for health reasons rather than monetary, since one of my partners is allergic tio life.
But to your question,I might have spent the cost of 1.5 large boxes of laundry detergent ($30) for the 4 items that go into it (Baking soda,Epson salt,washing soda,sea salt), but given the fact I can buy in bulk, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being cheaper. In the last 6mo I’ve made the laundry soap twice and haven’t put a huge dent in my ingredient stock. I wouldn’t be surprised to find I get more than 200 washes out of the base ingredients, which would definitely be more economical than the premade stuff.
I’ve read that the homemade laundry soap is actually soap, not detergent, and that it will over time ruin your machine.
So, I’ve just continued buying laundry detergent and have just used a fraction of what the instructions advise. It’s worked for me. I don’t buy softener or sheets. Couldn’t afford it if I wanted to. But I do have oxyclean on hand only for when I’ve forgotten a load in the washer until it’s stinky or when I wash the dog bed covers or whatever.
Yeah… Especially if you have a high efficiency machine. Washing machines use a lot less water than back when these “recipes” were actually practical. So if you utilize shaved bar soap and borax, you’re not only going to be leaving residue to build up in your machine, you’re going to have it build up in your clothes as well.
Also, a lot of people are sensitive to borax. The reason they don’t use it in regular detergent as an agitator is because it can cause rashes for a large percentage of the population.
Edited: spelling corrections
Regular laundry detergent leaves residue as well, that’s why a lot of washers have self clean cycles.
Vinegar will cut most residues from a washer. It’s one of the reasons it works as a softener, it removes detergent residue and minerals from hard water to make your clothes soft. As a side note a lot fabric softeners does the same thing by coating this fibres of the clothes in refined beef fat.
If you want a really clean machine (specific to most HE washers) put half a teaspoon of TSP(trisodium phosphate) in the empty drum of the machine and another half teaspoon where you put your detergent, fill the bleach cup and the fabric softener cup with vinegar. Set the machine to run a pre wash cycle then a heavy duty cycle on the hottest water temp(if there is a hot tap that is after your clothes washer in the pipeline, you can run that tap until it gets hot before starting the washer. HE washers use a lot less water so most of the time they are filling with cold water before the hot water rescues the machine) and as many extra rinses as your machine will allow.
After the TSP removes most of the residue, it’s rinsed away and then the bleach cup of vinigar is released with the next rinse cycle. Since TSP is basic and the vinegar is acidic they react and the TSP is neutralized, this may lead to some deposits of various salts(depending on the exact reaction ratio, if there is an excess of vinigar then the acidic solution will help prevent the salts from depositing.
When the fabric softener cup of vinigar is released in the next rinse we ensure that all acidic solution is flushed through the machine. This again will help with any salt deposits and help clean any of the remaining residue that reacts better to the acidic solution.
Any extra rinses after that help make sure that anything that can be washed away will be. Your washer will be very clean inside.
TSP can be purchased at the hardware store for cleaning surfaces before you paint them, just make sure it’s actually TSP and not a TSP replacement. Half a teaspoon of TSP in with your dish soap will make you love your dishwasher again. A little goes a long way, and using less TSP is more likely to give you a good result than using more.
That enormous rant aside, I have used homemade laundry soap recipes in several HE machines including two combination washer dryers(where the washing drum is the same as the drying drum, looks like a single HE machine, not a stacked washer and dryer) and in general those machines have more residue problems. I haven’t really had any issues. That might be related to the fact that I do not put an excess of soap or detergent into the machine, again often less is more, and if you need better cleaning it’s better to do a prewash cycle than add more detergent into the main cycle. More detergent =/= better cleaning, just more residue. Try washing a dish by hand with only liquid dish soap, no water, no damp sponge, just soap and a dry brush or dishcloth. While this is an extreme example, it does help illustrate that detergents or soaps allow grease and grime to be dissolved into water, and that’s what allows it to clean effectively, the soap or detergent is just there to get stuff into the water.
Borax sensitivity is a legit concern.
I grew up watching my Mother make “laundry soap” from scratch as a kid. She would make a batch every fall from basically the tallow from the cow we home butchered for the winter and lye. I still remember that brown colored hard lump of soap and the wringer/washer she had. She would carve thin pieces off into the tub while it was agitating wait for a few minutes, then toss the clothes in to wash tub. There was no fancy detergent metering devices or small amounts of water. Even her first modern “spin dry” washer didn’t have detergent dispensers. You simply poured the detergent directly on top of the clothes in the tub.
Modern washers are designed specifically to use liquid soaps or the pods. Though when using powders by pouring them directly into the tub won’t cause anymore harm to the machine than any liquid will. Though you should probably use a longer wash cycle to make sure the powder dissolves completely. Back in the day, wash cycles were noticeably longer.
