The main culprits here are laundry detergents, fabric softeners, and dryer sheets.
Ever walk through the laundry aisle at the store and get overwhelmed by the extreme smells coming from there? Fragrance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Whatever we wash our clothes in stays on the fabric and works its way into our bodies through our skin and nose (it turns out inhaling those scents isn’t us smelling something “pretty;” those fragrances negatively affect our bodies). And the havoc they reek isn’t limited to just their time in the washing machine—fabric holds the scent and we are then continually exposed to fragrance. Think your sheets just “smell nice?” You’re inhaling those chemicals all night long while you sleep. You’re inhaling them all day long while you wear your clothes washed in those chemicals. What are we trying to mask anyway? If our laundry was truly clean, we wouldn’t need to cover up the cleanliness.
“Clean” is not a scent. Clean means free from dirt or pollution.
Read your laundry labels today and do your research. Get to know the chemicals and what effects they have on our bodies, not just our clothes.
You don’t really need fabric softener or dryer sheets. In my opinion, it is one of the most wasteful up-sells ever. I haven’t used them in years with zero negative effects after stopping. They are an unnecessary expense & contain chemicals, endocrine disruptors, and air pollutants. Do you have allergies or asthma in your family? Get rid of fragrances immediately. Don’t suffer from those? Ditch them anyway; they can still disrupt the body. On top of that, pollutants found in dryer sheets enter our environment through our dryer vents. There are ripple effects to everything we do, products we use, and choices we make.
Do some research today. Know what goes into your laundry products and how those products then effect your body and the world around you. Write down what you use now, what you find our in your research, and ideas for how you can (ironically) clean up your laundry room.
Choose something from the following list that you can implement as part of your laundry room detox:
- Stop buying and using dryer sheets
- Switch to wool dryer balls (if you feel you need an alternative to dryer sheets)
- Try wool dryer balls with a safety pin through them to solve static issues
- Go fragrance-free on every product
- Make your own non-toxic laundry soap
- Start using waste free, non-toxic laundry soap (like Dropps)
- Commit to clean laundry—use “clean” products (you shouldn’t have to mask laundry with fragrance if it is truly clean)
- Look into removing mold or mildew from your washing machine (if present)
- Or come up with your own!