doing the unstuck

Wintertime always leaves me a static-y disaster. Everything is so dry, my malnourished hair sticks out in a thousand directions and my clothes hug all the parts of me I've added extra padding to for the winter. It's not a flattering look. Up until recently, the only thing that gave me some semblance of control over the madness were dryer sheets. I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around using these. They seem innately wasteful since they are intended for one-time-only use (I can stretch them out successfully a few times, but with diminished results). I can't fully convey my excitement and bliss when I found in a cool little zine-like book called "make your place" a recipe for a DIY fabric softener pouch you can use over and over again, opening it up to refill it when the scent wears out! Brilliant! In case you want to buy less all around and not buy a bunch of polluting crap (and my guess is that's partly why you're here) here's the gist of it:

DIY Fabric Softener!
~Cut yourself several squares or rectangles of tightly woven fabric, fold each of them in half and sew almost all the way around, leaving yourself enough room to turn them inside out to hide the seams.
~Mix together 1/2 c of baking soda, 1 T arrowroot powder, 1 T cornstarch and 1-3 drops of the essential oil of your choosing. (The "recipe" called for lavender, but my husband detests smelling flowery~ he says it clashes with his manliness~, so we went with orange.) You can smell like whatever suits your fancy, even changing it with the seasons. Bonus!
~Spoon some of your mixture into each of the pouches and sew up the little hole. (If you want to hide the seam, be my guest. I made the seam right where I can find it easily, for ripping out later to refill them.)
~This easily makes three pouches, maybe more depending on how much you fill them. Just pop one in the dryer and you are good to go. When the scent fades, simply rip the seam out, refill it and re-sew.

No more paying upwards of $2.99 a box for those wasteful sheets and throwing them and the package straight in the trash soon after. (I'll spend my hard-earned money on some nice locally raised meat instead, thank you very much!)

Hope you enjoy being able to smell like whatever you want and not "mountain rain" or "blue sparkle". (What the hell are blue sparkles supposed to smell like anyway, huh, Snuggle Bear? Explain to me exactly how you know....)