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FOSS Android Recs per u/m_f@discuss.online: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
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.)
Baked baking soda is used to make ramen
But it can also irritate your skin
I'm not convinced about the cost. A kilogram of borax seems to run about $10CAD. 2 cups, at 1.7g/CC, would be about 850g, so $7 just for the Borax. Unless there's a much cheaper place to get it...
A ~5L jug of Tide costs $31, or about $6/L. If they have approximately equivalent cleaning power per volume, Tide wins.
Most of that tide jug is water.
Yeah, which is why I added the note about cleaning power per unit volume. But it'd have to be a fair bit more powerful to make the effort worth it, I think.
We use maybe 50ml of Tide (so that'd be probably 100 loads) when doing our laundry, so if that's equivalent to like one tablespoon of the Borax mix, I could see it saving me $20 or so overall, if it's three times stronger.
So it'd come down to how much time I spend shopping and combining the mixture vs just buying it.
Mind, that's just the borax. Bar soap and baking soda are cheap but not free.
(edit: and before someone jumps on me about "baking soda", I was thinking of it in terms of decomposing it into carbonate in the oven. I haven't priced out washing soda)
Washing Soda
No. Just no. Sodium carbonate, you americans!
Also calling Na "sodium" is so god damn dumb. It should be called Natrium
Washing soda is sodium carbonate, baking soda is sodium bicarbonate
It's worth wondering how much fabric softener would cost someone over their adult lifetime as an exercise. Let's say 50 years of adulthood, and 12 bottles a year costing $10 each. That's six grand. For something that serves no functional purpose, makes towels less effective and has an environmental impact.
So yes it's a scam. If someone really needs to use fabric softener, at least buy a cheaper supermarket brand and use it sparingly.
12 bottles a year??? Lmfao exactly how much laundry you got? Assume a family of 4 does 3 loads a week (12 a month). A bottle of Snuggle fabric softener ($8) has roughly 112 rinse loads.
That's 112 rinse loads /12 wash loads a month = 9.3 months
2 bottles max a year at a whopping $16.
$16 x 50 years= $800
Fabric softener is sometime useful for very hard water. You don't have to buy it, though. You can use white vinegar to soften the water to actually soften the fabric mix in a big container one part white vinegar to one part sodium bicarbonate. Wait for it to stop foaming. Add four drops of essential oils per liter of mixture. Stir. Allow to rest a few hour before using. You can make big quantity ahead of time as long as your container is big enough for the big foam of the big batch.
Been using a set of wool dryer balls from Trader Joe's for years. Haven't had to use fabric softener at all.
It's worse. Fabric softener is composed of an anti static oil. When you run it in the laundry, it coats all of your clothes with a very thin layer of oil.
Which is why towels dried with fabric softener and dryer sheets don't absorb water anywhere near as well as plain towels dried without it!!
My mom complained to me for years that I wasn't "doing it right" by not using fabric softener. But her towels are useless compared to mine! She continues to spends $100/ year on fabric softener while on social security. Over the year she has spent thousands and thousands of $$$. 🤦♀️
Not only that, some people (including myself) are sensitive to the oils used. Having underwear that actively makes you itchy sucks. I switched to wool dryer balls and never looks back
If there was a Lemmy community for fighting or complaining the use of useless fragrance, I would join it right now.
Let's make !nofragrance real !
I did an allergy patch test a few years back. Besides the allergies, I came back as sensitive to fragrance. I try to stick to products on that safe list. But it's very difficult.
It was the primary cause of milia on my arms/legs. It took me years to figure out why my arms always had things that looked like whiteheads but couldn’t be as there was no infected area around them.
That homemade laundry soap made with bar soap would be a nightmare in hard water. I don't even want to think about soap scum in the drains and in my clothes.
I just use the smallest amount of detergent I can get out of the bottle, that works well. And don't wash a garment after wearing it once if it's not underwear. Invested in a lot of Merino stuff which manages to be comfortable even here in Florida and doesn't stink ever. I can wear those shirts and just hang them back up.
I'm happy buying detergent honestly - it last a LONG time when you actually use the correct amount per load. I think the real crime is the "measuring caps" on liquid detergent basically tricking everyone into using WAY too much detergent. Most washers will recommend 1-2 tablespoons of detergent maximum for heavily soiled loads.. Most measuring caps are over that even at the first of several marks, and people rarely think they need the minimum (moar soap moar clean, right?) - so people tend to add 5-10 times the detergent they need.
and they we have pods. Which are the hugest ripoff per load, but for the first time people are actually using the right amount of detergent and they're all amazed that the machines don't get gummed up.
Just measure the real stuff right?
The numbers on the cap are just numbers and lines on the cap. You assign meaning to them as the maker never tells you what they are for.
probably most everything is a scam if you look close enough.