The title of this blog post were the words I used for a Google search yesterday, as a question, and the answer from over 10 bloggers was resoundingly “yes.”
I had to find this out for myself.
So, I went to my yarn basket and found a few balls of 100% wool yarn that we hadn’t used for years and wound a few contrasting colors of yarn around them. If you’re not sure if your yarn is wool or acrylic, check out this article that’ll help you determine what’s what.
I also took some old knitting projects the kids had done (half-finished scarves and finger knitting garlands), balled them up, wound more wool yarn around them to make them into tennis ball and soft ball size.
I then grabbed a few oddball socks out of my single socks box (yes, we have hundreds) and placed one wool ball inside one sock and tied off the end.
I did this for each of the balls, until I had 6 balls-in-socks, ready for the washing machine.
I put the cycle on high and threw in a few towels and T-shirts. I did the cycle twice, just to be sure that the wool balls were felting up. The wet wash then went into the dryer for a high heat cycle.
The outer tied-off socks were easy to untie and I rescued the now-felted-wool balls from their sock prisons. Each one felted up pretty nicely!
Experts at this have suggested putting a few drops of your favorite essential oil on the wool balls about every 4th load you dry, so I found some rosemary (so my son won’t feel that he smells too flowery and to also keep buggies off of us (they don’t like rosemary.))
Now, the true test was upon me: If I ran a load of laundry with wet towels through the dryer, would 6 wool dryer balls reduce the dry time? The answer is resoundingly yes. Typically, we have to run our towels through our high heat normal dryer cycle twice. This time, with 6 dryer balls, I only had to run them once! So, that’s a win. I figure this will save our family on dryer time (i.e lower our electricity bill) during the winter months when we can’t put our laundry out to dry in the sun.
Oh, and the wool dryer balls also are a replacement for fabric softener (we’ve never used it anyway) and dryer sheets (ditto) as they remove static cling, soften your fabrics and add a lovely scent via your essential oil!
Brilliant! And it makes me super excited for it getting warmer so that we can finally start putting clothes back on the clothesline instead of using the dryer at all 🙂
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I couldn’t agree more! As soon as the rain stops, we’ll be hanging our skivvies out on the line.
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Have you ever considered making a Sock Quilt? I made one by sewing socks onto an old sheet, then backing it with a blue batik. I tied the quilt with blue and purple embroidery floss and it’s the quilt I sleep under every night this time of year. It’s SUPER heavy. When I’ve showed it to anyone, the response is almost always positive. I loaned it to my aunt for a quilt show once along with a half dozen others (which were admittedly more traditional) and she didn’t submit it. But I was wondering what “real quilters” would think of it so I took it in on the day I visited the show and the ladies just thrilled over it. My aunt was amazed at all the attention it got. Not bad for a bunch of old holey socks!
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JamiG4, I’d love to see a photo of it! Can you send one to me somehow? My email address is clark liesl at mac dot com.
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The dryer balls are genius! Thanks for the tutorial- am definitely going to try them 🙂
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Hi KathrynH, so glad you’re going to give them a try!
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I love these just for the balls themselves, they would make great juggling balls for the kids! How do they work in reducing dryer time? Fascinating. 😊👏🏻
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The wool balls look so pretty. I love them ! Such a nice way to upcycle leftovers.
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