By Heather Steiner
Looking for a way to both add essential oils to your laundry and soften your clothes? Make your own dryer balls! Dryer balls both soften clothes and speed drying by further fluffing and tossing your clothes in the dryer. Best of all, you can add a drop or two of your favorite essential oil to the dryer balls and lightly scent your laundry.
Wool Dryer Ball Materials:
- 1 or 2 skeins of 100% wool yarn (any color, but it MUST be 100% wool – each skein will make 3 baseball sized dryer balls)
- 1 pair of tights (I used a pair my daughter had outgrown, but you could pick up cheap pair at the dollar store)
- Young Living Essential Oil of choice
Find the end of one of the skeins of yarn. Begin wrapping the yarn around the palm of your hand until you’ve wrapped about 100 times around. Carefully slide the yarn off your hand and fold the yarn into a ball shaped mass. Continue wrapping the yarn around the ball until it’s reached the size of a baseball. Cut the yarn, tuck the end under a couple of strands on the ball and tie a simple knot. Repeat with remaining yarn until all the dryer balls are formed.
Once all the dryer balls are formed, slide one all the way into the toe of the tights. Holding the tights taut around the ball, twist and form a knot above the ball, completely encasing the ball in the tights. Add another ball above the knot, and holding the tights taut, twist and form a knot above the second ball. Continue until all the balls are encased in the tights and will not come out without removing the knots.
Place tights in the washer and run the rinse cycle with hot water. When the cycle has finished, put the tights in the dryer on the hottest setting and run the dryer until complete. Repeat this process with the washer and dryer once more. Caution: it will be a very noisy process to run the dryer with nothing in it but these tights, so keep this in mind when deciding on the best time to complete this process.
After the tights have been washed and dried a second time, they are ready to be used. Using scissors, carefully cut through each knot to free the dryer balls. Since they are made of wool, they have felted together, and will not unravel. To use, simply toss all your dryer balls into the dryer after adding a drop or two of your favorite Young Living essential oil to one ball, and run the dryer to speed drying, soften and lightly scent your clothes.
For more information or to order the Young Living products mentioned in this recipe please contact the Scentsible Oiler who referred you to this page or contact our team using the form below:
Scentsible Oilers 