21. things that smell good

the twentieth thing i am thankful for: things that smell good.

anyone who knows me at all knows that i am a freak about the way things smell. i love to pull apart what goes into something to make it smell the way it does. the obvious way that this plays out is in my overwhelming love-addiction to perfume. however, there are too many ways to count that involve smell in my day.

i thought i would celebrate this point of thanks by sharing something with you all that thoroughly enhances my life: my homemade fabric softener!


i have always hated fabric softener, at least in the form of bounce sheets, because of the sort of grimy smoothness that they led my clothes to take on. plus, they always smell super chemically to me--even the unscented type. not to mention how much that perfumed gunk stuck to my hands, interfering with any food i ate afterwards. so for a few years i went without fabric softener at all, content to think my clothes were very clean, even if they retained a bit of static.

my current laundry room, however, is a very industrial outfit--think big, searingly hot dryers with lots of extreme tumbling. my winter wear was giving me an electric shock. i did a bit of googling and came up with the general recipe for homemade fabric softeners, modified it to fit my preferences, and my life is BETTER! my clothes smell AMAZING and they are baby soft.

my recipe:
1/4 jar full of water
small squirt of hair conditioner (i used frederic fekkai protein RX... chichi, I know)
tsp or so of white vinegar
3 vigorous sprays of my perfume of choice
extreme-spraying-a-length-until-satisfied of my preferred linen spray--Commonwealth Gardens' Egyptian Cotton. in actuality, i am just thankful for this spray. i use it in my hair, on my bed, on my clothes, as body spray, on my notepaper, on my knitting, as air freshener, in my closet, in my shoes... i would drink it if i could. more on this later. i digress.

once i have all of that in the jar, i throw in the sponges. i just cut up a regular kitchen sponge (a new one obviously--gross!) into three parts and then shoved them in the jar to soak everything up. i leave said jar in the closet with my detergent, and when i do my laundry i just squeeze the sponges out a bit until they are damp-not-drippy, and throw them in with the load to bounce around and magically transform my clothes into an olfactory artwork. then i shove them back in the jar til next time!

as a side note, the liquid turns a delightful light blue, which worried me at first, thinking as i did that my clothes would stain blue. however, now i really enjoy this, because they don't turn blue, and the color is lovely!

enjoy your day--sniff the air---

--papermoon