DIY: Dryer Balls

Long time, no blog! I've been slacking, I know. But I wanted to finally write about how I got rid of dryer sheets with our nifty DIYed dryer balls.

I shared in this post about how and why I got rid of all my cleaning products and made my own. I knew then that I wanted to stop using dryer sheets, I just needed to find the right tutorial and get the supplies. Here's the tutorial I found on Pinterest, and even though my post will pretty much be a carbon copy from hers because we followed it exactly, I figured I should give credit where credit is due.

Materials needed:
-100%, non-washable wool yarn
-panty hose
-essential oil (optional)
-an incredible amount of patience

So here's the total and honest truth: I couldn't make these stupid dryer balls to save my life. Maybe if my life was literally on the line I would have been able to pull it off, but every time I tried I ended up making some grunting noises, sighing heavily, and throwing it down within about seven minutes. The tutorial I followed made it seem so easy...and maybe it is for everyone other than me, but it was no fun at all for this girl. So once again I called on my wonderful and ever-patient hubs to help me make them entirely for me. You'll notice that it's my fingers in all the demo pictures, which is really misleading because I've already confessed that the hubs did it all for me. Those were taken during a brief stint in which I thought I could make them myself.

Step 1:
Wrap the wool around your fingers (about as much as what's in the picture).

Step 2: 
Wrap the wool around in the other direction. 

(This is where I would start to lose it. I still have no idea what my issue was.)

Step 3:
Bring the ends together to form the small spherical center of the ball.

Step 4: 
Keep wrapping the wool, alternating directions as you go to eventually build up a tennis ball-sized ball. 

You will notice that this picture doesn't show much, and certainly doesn't show a tennis ball-sized ball. That's definitely my fault. Between my frustration and the hubs actually making this entire project for me, I failed big time in the photo opportunities. Womp womp.

Step 5: 
When you finish each ball and it's the size you want, tie a knot in the end of the wool and tuck it under some other wool. This is a pretty important step, which you'll see later in the post. 

Step 6:
Put the balls into the panty hose, tying a knot in between each one. We made four balls because that's how much our 400 yards of wool got us.

We did make four, but as you can see one was a little bit teenier than the others.

Step 7:
Wash and dry the balls, in the panty hose, at the highest temperature. According to the tutorial I followed, this helps fuse the wool together so it won't unravel. Also key to the prevention of unraveling, as it turns out, is that knot and tuck I mentioned in Step 5.

We lost one - the smallest baby one, thankfully, in the first run through, but the rest are still kicking, and they're working well! Once you put them through both the washer and dryer one time in the panty hose, you can cut them out and they're good to go. I just keep mine in the dryer.

Here they are! (except for that baby one which is no longer with us. No way I was going to rewind it again.)


The essential oils I mentioned as optional in the materials needed is just if you want the fresh scent of a dryer sheet. You would probably need to apply the oil to the dryer balls every four loads or so; I have opted to not use any at this point and I haven't really missed the scent.

They were a pain to make - and it's possible I'm exaggerating...I don't want to scare you away from making them because I have such a short fuse - but they've been pretty awesome little additions to our home in the weeks since. And the best part is not having our clothes, sheets, and towels covered in the chemicals of a dryer sheets.

One last thing: I have heard that the more dryer balls you have, the faster the clothes dry. I'm using three and I think everything is getting dry at the same rate as before, so maybe someday when I'm feeling extra patient I'll make a couple more just to see if it makes a difference. Until then, though, this is working well.