Dryer Balls Revisited

A few months ago I was all excited about felted wool dryer balls.  My mom got me a few for Christmas and then I read online how to make them and I made a small army of my own.  Now that I've been using them for awhile, I thought I'd revisit the topic and let you know how I think they're going.  Yes, this is actually the blog post today--laundry.

So, I LOVED making them!  They were really easy to make and I felt super crafty. (Why I felt crafty for rolling a skein of yarn in a ball, I don't know. I don't get to craft a lot, I guess.)  Now, this is shocking, but the dryer balls I made
didn't hold up as well as the ones my mom bought.  In my defense, I think a lot of it had to do with the quality of wool I used but there was also some help from dogs (of course) in the destruction of one of them and some cosmetic injury to others.  As a side note, the website where my mom bought them suggested you could use them as dog toys.  DO NOT DO THIS!  After the drama with Stella and her dental floss, giving dogs a ball made of yards and yards of linear material is a really bad idea.

OK, so the dogs got them, some pilled up a lot but mostly they're still all in tact.  I have about 12 in there almost every load.  I tried adding essential oils to make the laundry fragrant, but it didn't really work.  Maybe I needed to add more oil to each ball, I'm not really sure, but I just tried it that once, wasn't impressed and didn't mess with it again.  As for decreasing static--not really.  As winter begins to leave us and the static cling of heater-weather does as well, I think I can say that the dryer balls didn't really help with that at all.  I bought some dryer sheets from Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day and those seem to help.  They're paper-interesting.   The drying time--still don't really know about that.  I will continue to use them because I think they do help move things around in there to help distribute the cloths and dry them more evenly, but I wouldn't say they're saving me $$ on my electric bill.  What DID save me on my electric bill was air drying the clothes.  THAT I've been feeling guilty about for awhile.  I really should get back to doing that more.  Even if it's just one load a cycle. (I do laundry in two day cycles, one day wash and dry, the next is fold and put away.) Warmer weather is coming and with my laundry room RIGHT off the lower patio-to-be this might be a nice way to save some energy and some money.  Well, now I blogged it so I HAVE to do it. I promised to follow though this year!