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those things make me itchy. my favourite washing chemical is washing soda. add more if the dirt on it is greasy. also solves hard water problems. it's not hard to make potassium version of that from wood ash, just build a kiln that completely burns out all of the carbon and low boiling substances, and you get a white powder that is mostly potassium hydroxide. you can make liquid soap from this, and if you just barely dilute it in water, and let it sit a few weeks, it absorbs carbon dioxide and becomes potassium carbonate, that works identically. don't use sodium or potassium hydroxide on clothes tho. no problem for stuff without printing but the hydroxide rips off most kinds of screen printing, at least, after a few times.

You lost me at "just build a kiln" lol.

I'll research healthier drier sheets soon. Been on my todo list. I know they're toxic af cuz we used to use them to mask weed in hotel rooms: pack one into a toilet paper roll and blow smoke through it. Works well, but leaves your lips and throat feeling very wrong, even if you don't breath it in

well, when you are living in an environment where there is no shops to go buy your fabric softener you'll be glad someone knows how to make soap and washing chemicals out of trees and mud.

also, whenever i see fabric softener, i am reminded of a line in a cutscene of the game Vampire: The Masquerades - Bloodlines "Oooh, what do we have here? Another scrumptious young plaything straight out of life and into my club? Mmm... you smell new, little boy/girl, like fabric softener dew on freshly mowed Astroturf. Oh, I'm not frightening you, am I, duckling?" — Jeanette Voerman, to the PC at the nightclub." of course she says boy if you play a boy and girl if you play a girl, but the image stuck in my head, and i've always hated that slippery, cloying stickiness of fabric softener on fabric. feels like 100% artificial. i don't like polyester, rayon, nylon or any of those other materials either, though i have to say that i appreciate the durability of nylon/cotton fabric, commonly used in military clothing. the more common domestic clothing of similar type uses polyester and it's not as strong, and that also reminds me of the icky feeling of microfibre cloths, which also are made out of extremely fine threads of polyester, almost as creepy as nails on a chalkboard. IMO, what makes this so popular these days is the clothing is so much of it coming from china now, it's poorly designed, poorly constructed, stitching is shitty, and especially synthetics, the reason why people want the fabric softener is because of those synthetics. a cotton towel, that has been treated with this shit, feels softer, but i can feel it leaving chemicals on my skin, it's disgusting. give me rough, natural - and naturally more absorbent, actually clean cotton, any day. the first touch is rougher, but the water comes off you faster, and doesn't feel like it's contaminating your skin. and i dread to think what it does to your insides. also if you want to blow smoke through something that reduces the terps smells, what you want is some activated charcoal wrapped in the paper towel or cloth. it will make it dirty but the charcoal will soak up a lot of the oils in the vapor.

Yep, we called it a mute in my dorm 😅 Hadn’t thought about that for years!

Charcoal isn't usually on hand when sneaking weed in a Vegas hotel room, but that would be a good solution otherwise. Maybe the easiest means to get some would be some shoe inserts at local drug store, now that I think about it...might not be that hard afterall. Noted (though I don't see myself sneaking weed anytime soon lol. As for the natural feel, I dunno. Last time I did a load of laundry and had no drier sheets, stuff came out extremely staticy and with clumps of lint sticking everywhere, was really a mess. Could be the particular items I had washed at that time. I tried to get into the all natural clothing thing a few years ago, but it didn't stick. I found myself shopping on more camping site types of sites, paying high prices, and getting less fashionable stuff. Not that I'm high fashion, not at all, but I do like a crisp T and shorts/pants (when not denim I'm often in the sweatpants material, or some lightweight synthetic).