I gotta be honest. When I first heard about “Dryer Balls” I was a total skeptic. I’m not quite sure why, but for some reason they really intrigued me. I was wondering if and how they actually worked. Supposedly, they cut down on dryer time and saved money by doing so. They also were supposed to make clothes soft and wrinkle free….Little Wool balls of miracles, I thought! I can make my own, I thought….and I tried, and failed. 🙁 They unraveled in the wash and just became wool strips of fabric. Not exactly what I was looking for. That was about 2 years ago.
I was still interested, but figured I needed to just bite the bullet and purchase some! But…every time I saw them, they were so stinking expensive! It took me about a year to finally break down on splurge on some that I saw at Marshall’s. They were $16.99 for 4! That seemed a little more doable, but still I had sticker shock! I would much rather be spending $17 on a new tank or sandals.
When I got home and started using them, I realized….these are pretty much little balls of wonder. Was it actually possible that they had dried my clothes in 25 MINUTES LESS TIME??????????? Every time I checked my dryer, with about 25 minutes left on the timer, they were all DRY! This was about the first time I’ve EVER been excited about doing laundry (if you have some motivation for me to love doing laundry…please let me know!! ). Now it takes a bunch less time to do a load of laundry…which is great in most ways…but now the laundry tends to pile up faster! At least we all have clean clothes to choose from, right?
Are you convinced? Here is how you do it!
What you need:
Old Wool Sweater- Free: Make sure this sweater is not all ready shrunk! I found this out the last time when I realized that the wool will not felt…if its all ready felted! (duh!)
Old Nylons- Free: You can see in the images that I used some old fish net stockings that I had in my drawer! These worked great and I can re-use them for my next batch of dryer balls!
Needle & Thread- Free: whatever you have laying around will be fine!
What you do:
The process is pretty simple, all though time consuming…I would do make these while watching a marathon of Cutthroat Kitchen or a sappy movie! They are totally worth the effort and if you have a wool sweater lying around the house…you can save yourself some serious time and money! 