I have a few reasons for making my own fabric softener these days. First, The Tinker has psoriasis and eczema – both. His dermatoligist says he’s of like 2% of the population that has the double whammy – lucky guy. Anyway, his skin can react to all kinds of things, so eliminating as many variables and possible irritants as we can is an ongoing quest. Commercially-available fabric softeners are loaded with “interesting” ingredients – check out the ingredient list for Downy. 
Some of these ingredients are known irritants and allergans. Awesome. But I like me some April Fresh clothes. What to do, what to do.
Second, we live on a ranch with a septic system. Our washer dumps its water on the ground. This wash water is then available to our cats, our stock pond, our cattle, our aquifer. It would be nice to not dump toxins as a result of cleaning clothes.
Finally, we ain’t the richest folks in the world, so saving a few bucks is a good thing, as Martha would say. I can make 2 gallons of fabric softener using the recipe below for about $5, compared to about $12 for 170oz (about 1.2 gallons) of the Big D at my local Sam’s club. We do a lot of laundry, so while not going to pay back the national debt, it helps.
Here’s the recipe, originally found on
2 c. white vinegar
2 c water (I use tap water)
1/8 c vegetable glycerin (I buy this on Amazon)
10-20 drops essential oil (optional – but I use lemon)
Dump it together. Shake or mix it. You’re done. See? Easy peasy.
I’ve been using this for a couple of months now, and honestly can’t tell the difference between it and the commercial stuff. No miracle cure for The Tinker’s psoriasis, but we tried.
By the way, you can soak small rags in this stuff and toss them in the dryer as fabric sheets (you don’t even want to read the ingredients in those things) – or my recommendation is to by Woolies, the all-wool dryer balls. I put a few drops of essential oils on them to freshen the load, but again that’s optional.
What about detergent, you ask? Well, that’s another blog…
