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?
Yes. As I understand it, fabric softener softens the fabrics. Obviously. Which makes them more prone to ripping, tearing, and just deteriorating faster. In addition to being another cost, both financial & possibly environmental, it’s plain unnecessary.
I buy some really nice clothing & I want my clothes to last as long as possible. Most of my clothing takes a long time to wear out. My recipe for success for the last 10 years is precisely as follows:
I have a frontloading washing machine, which uses far less water & it doesn’t have an agitator screw thing in the middle that grabs your wet clothes (clothing is weakest when it’s wet). I button & zip my pants, and anything else with a zipper like a jacket, so the zippers aren’t attacking clothes during the wash cycle. Nice clothing, I turn inside-out to preserve designs or outward-facing fabric. I use the ECOS greywater friendly laundry detergent from Costco, and I just use more of it like I dump a full cap or 1.5 caps per load. In case it’s not as effective as conventional, just use more. Plus 1 scoop OxiClean (idk the greywater/waste impact of OxiClean; I’m convinced it’s a powerful multipurpose cleaning agent that is gentle on clothing).
All clothing is treated the same, whites & brights & colors & blacks, all get washed together, I couldn’t care less. Run washer on Tap Cold, Extra High Spin, Heavy Soil level every time. No matter the load. So my washer works extra hard to gently wash my clothing & then wring nearly all the water out of it. The harder you run the washer, the less work is done by the dryer, which save you electric/gas & is gentler on your clothes.
Then my athletic gear, wool socks, and denims never go into the dryer, I let those air dry. The rest is gently run through the dryer & “it is what it is”, it’s mostly stuff that doesn’t really matter.
It takes longer to write out than to do, you can see, it’s quite expedient. I don’t separate. I dump a lot of simple, gentle detergents in. Wash when dirty, wring out water, dryer if necessary. I’m telling you: my clothes last a very long time. Less is more.
It was created so that when you dried clothes outside (especially cotton) they didn’t get crunchy. The fibers tend to freeze an interlock microscopically when they dry. It coats the fibers and makes them not stick together.
When mechanical dryers became the norm, they needed a new reason, so the called out static. And in some climates, dryer static can be a bit of a pain. Dryer balls supposedly help with this, but I can’t find any reasonable data to back that up, and that’s just the kind of thing we’re confirmation bias over.
Softener can/will build up on the fabric. It can discolor bright whites.
I think the worst of it is:
if you use it on towels or anything meant to absorb water, it seriously dampens that ability
it builds up in the nooks and crannies of the washer and it’s hard to clean off,
it’s expensive
for mechanical drying in moderate climates, it does little more than add smell.
From what I’ve heard, dryer balls help the drying process by warming up faster than the wet clothes and drying from inside the pile. And even if that turns out to have been misinformation, I’m not too annoyed by it because it’s a single low-cost expense whereas dryer sheets are consumables
So I live in a super dry climate. I’ve gotten static shocks that leave my hand numb (not from the laundry, taking off layers while wearing rubber boots) because it’s just that dry here.
Dryer balls don’t work for static in my experience. Put a couple pins in it? That didn’t work. Dryer sheets are pretty much the only thing that actually cuts it as far as I can tell.
I worked in appliances for about ten years, and not a single washer manufacturer would actually recommend using fabric softener. It horribly gums up the workings of the machine, even when you use the tiny amount you are actually supposed to (which most people use way too much). They are (or were originally) basically just animal fats and emulsifiers with some fragrance thrown in. They smell awful when they are left stuck somewhere for a long time (like the outer walls of the inner tub of your washing machine - seriously, it probably looks furry if you opened it up to see).
I can’t speak to what it does to your clothes specifically, but I can imagine several downsides to essentially coating fabric in lavender scented industrial mayonnaise.
Interesting take, it’s the first that I’m hearing about them gumming up the machine’s innards, but I can definitely see that being a serious issue over time.
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?
Yes. As I understand it, fabric softener softens the fabrics. Obviously. Which makes them more prone to ripping, tearing, and just deteriorating faster. In addition to being another cost, both financial & possibly environmental, it’s plain unnecessary.
I buy some really nice clothing & I want my clothes to last as long as possible. Most of my clothing takes a long time to wear out. My recipe for success for the last 10 years is precisely as follows:
I have a frontloading washing machine, which uses far less water & it doesn’t have an agitator screw thing in the middle that grabs your wet clothes (clothing is weakest when it’s wet). I button & zip my pants, and anything else with a zipper like a jacket, so the zippers aren’t attacking clothes during the wash cycle. Nice clothing, I turn inside-out to preserve designs or outward-facing fabric. I use the ECOS greywater friendly laundry detergent from Costco, and I just use more of it like I dump a full cap or 1.5 caps per load. In case it’s not as effective as conventional, just use more. Plus 1 scoop OxiClean (idk the greywater/waste impact of OxiClean; I’m convinced it’s a powerful multipurpose cleaning agent that is gentle on clothing).
All clothing is treated the same, whites & brights & colors & blacks, all get washed together, I couldn’t care less. Run washer on Tap Cold, Extra High Spin, Heavy Soil level every time. No matter the load. So my washer works extra hard to gently wash my clothing & then wring nearly all the water out of it. The harder you run the washer, the less work is done by the dryer, which save you electric/gas & is gentler on your clothes.
Then my athletic gear, wool socks, and denims never go into the dryer, I let those air dry. The rest is gently run through the dryer & “it is what it is”, it’s mostly stuff that doesn’t really matter.
It takes longer to write out than to do, you can see, it’s quite expedient. I don’t separate. I dump a lot of simple, gentle detergents in. Wash when dirty, wring out water, dryer if necessary. I’m telling you: my clothes last a very long time. Less is more.
https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/how-do-fabric-softeners-work.html
It was created so that when you dried clothes outside (especially cotton) they didn’t get crunchy. The fibers tend to freeze an interlock microscopically when they dry. It coats the fibers and makes them not stick together.
When mechanical dryers became the norm, they needed a new reason, so the called out static. And in some climates, dryer static can be a bit of a pain. Dryer balls supposedly help with this, but I can’t find any reasonable data to back that up, and that’s just the kind of thing we’re confirmation bias over.
Softener can/will build up on the fabric. It can discolor bright whites.
I think the worst of it is:
From what I’ve heard, dryer balls help the drying process by warming up faster than the wet clothes and drying from inside the pile. And even if that turns out to have been misinformation, I’m not too annoyed by it because it’s a single low-cost expense whereas dryer sheets are consumables
not sure how true this is, but they do help dry clothes faster because they’re knocking everything around more which distributes the air/heat better
So I live in a super dry climate. I’ve gotten static shocks that leave my hand numb (not from the laundry, taking off layers while wearing rubber boots) because it’s just that dry here.
Dryer balls don’t work for static in my experience. Put a couple pins in it? That didn’t work. Dryer sheets are pretty much the only thing that actually cuts it as far as I can tell.
Yup, I saw a reasonably well-conducted study that verified they decrease dryer time.
Just the sort of information that I was after, thank you.
I worked in appliances for about ten years, and not a single washer manufacturer would actually recommend using fabric softener. It horribly gums up the workings of the machine, even when you use the tiny amount you are actually supposed to (which most people use way too much). They are (or were originally) basically just animal fats and emulsifiers with some fragrance thrown in. They smell awful when they are left stuck somewhere for a long time (like the outer walls of the inner tub of your washing machine - seriously, it probably looks furry if you opened it up to see).
I can’t speak to what it does to your clothes specifically, but I can imagine several downsides to essentially coating fabric in lavender scented industrial mayonnaise.
Interesting take, it’s the first that I’m hearing about them gumming up the machine’s innards, but I can definitely see that being a serious issue over time.