Thursday, May 30, 2013

The Pintester Experiment: Wool Dryer Balls


Stepping away from my educational blog for a moment (by moment, I mean year...), I decided to join The Pintester Movement and post my entry here. When I read that Sonja was going to host the first ever The Pintester Movement, I knew I had to join in the fun and immediately knew which pin I was going to test: Balls. For the dryer.

I found these posted on One Good Thing By Jillee. They were advertised to "Save Time, Money and Energy!" I love saving time, I'm a teacher so obviously I need to save money and who doesn't want to save energy?! The premise is that you use these balls instead of dryer sheets to dry your clothes more quickly, help reduce static cling and keep your clothes smelling fresh. I recently bought new dryer sheets at Sam's (and I got like 5,000 of them or some other ridiculous number) but they stink so I don't like using them...

This pin seemed easy enough and only called for three items: 100% Wool Yarn, Essential Oil and old pantyhose. I found the yarn and essential oil (I choose fresh linen scent so my clothes would smell like clean clothes) at Michel's for around $12 and already had some old pantyhose in a drawer somewhere.
You start by making big balls out of the yarn... 
With the help of this handsome fellow and two or three episodes of Bates Motel on DVR later, I had five balls. You are supposed to tuck the ends in so they don’t unravel in the washer so I used tweezers to lace the ends back into the balls.
Once they are made and secured you are supposed to wash them and dry them on really high heat to "felt" them. I'm not really sure what this means but I followed the directions and this happened...
Oops… In Pintester fashion, I forgot the pantyhose. Believe me it wasn't on purpose. I've been looking at this pin for months so I really didn't think I could mess it up. After cutting all the messy strings off of them, I tied the balls in the hose and decided to chase the dogs around the house.
It was hilarious! They were totally freaked out. Once they started trying to eat the pantyhose-ball snake, I gave up and put them back in the washer on high heat with some towels. After drying them on high I declared them ready to speed up drying time and de-static my dryer. I put a few drops of the fresh linen essential oil on them and tested them out on my dark clothes load.
The verdict? Speed: I’m not sure if the balls reduced drying time. I shortened the drying time by ten minutes and my clothes were dry but I’m not sure if this is due to the balls or due to my over drying in the past. Static Cling: They were still static-y but they are static-y with dryer sheets so I don’t feel like I lost anything here. Scent: My clothes smell just like fresh linen… whatever that should smell like. Obviously, I didn’t complete the scientific method with this pin-xperiment but I’ll keep using the balls till they completely unravel or the dogs get a hold of them.

Be sure to check out all the other entries in The Pintester Movement as well: http://pintester.com/2013/05/the-pintester-movement-craft-all-the-things