Hawaii Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
My coworkers must think I'm insane
I l-o-v-e the smell of clean laundry, it's one of my favorite things. Today I'm wearing a cardigan that was just washed, and I keep smelling my own sleeves (the forearms, not the armpits!).
Mmmm... Tide and Downy... Mmmmm.
Re: My coworkers must think I'm insane
I hate dryer sheets, so I use liquid Downy for clothes, but for towels (bath and kitchen) I use vinegar instead. If you add ~1/2 cup of vinegar to the wash cycle and let it rinse normally, it doesn't make the towels smell like vinegar but it WILL get any musty smell out of them and work as a fabric softener. They're not uber-fluffy like Downy would get them, but they're way more absorbent without that coating of softener. Plus, it's like $2.00 a gallon!
This is too funny!
I love it too!
Especially since we started using vinegar instead of fabric softener - OMG it smells good... A friend helped me carry a basket of clean sheets upstairs one day when I was still pregnant, and she kept sniffing them - finally I asked her what was up and she said, "It's your laundry - it just smells so GOOD!"
I posted before I read comments and I'm sooo with you on the vinegar! But we use it for all our clothes, not just the sheets and towels - I love it and I'm never going back to softener - it works so well (and I swear it keeps our whites brighter too), smells so good and is ridiculously cheap!
Ever since we got our front loading washer, our clothes have smelled so much fresher and cleaner. I find myself smelling them too!
How much vinegar are you supposed to use in the laundry? Do you put it in the softener dispenser or do you mix it in the detergent dispenser?
I don't actually measure it - I just pour it in straight from the bottle. When I was reading up on how to use it, some people said 1/4c and others said a full 1c! I think I end up using about 1/2c per load. I use more or less depending on the size of the load and what I'm washing.
I've been adding mine to the wash cycle, like I would with bleach, because I want it to cycle with the soap to really get into the towels. But for clothes, I think most people add it during the rinse cycle (so you could use the fabric softener dispenser).
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a "right" amount - maybe because the capacity of people's washers are different?
Anyway, I kept one of our liquid softener bottles, the kind with the cap you measure into, and I washed that out really well and use it to store and measure the vinegar. I just use one cap full (which I think is probably around 1/2 cup?) per load. I add it to the softener dispenser, and it's the max amount the dispenser will hold so I can't use more than that, but it must be enough because it gets the job done.
i too, LOVE the smell of fresh laundry. i am totally one of those ppl who will surriptiously try to lean in (to the clothes basket, to a person, to a vent by the side of a building, whatever) and get an extra sniff whenever i smell laundry. we also stopped using dryer sheets a while back, but after our move and unpacking, we were using a hand towel that had been untouched for a while - and i noticed one of them still smelled really good! i kept sniffing extra hard when using that towel
and lamenting (silently, in my head) the free and clear detergent and the lack of dryer sheets now. our laundry doesn't smell like anything anymore 
...but i will totally try the vinegar thing!!!
The vinegar doesn't smell the same that softener or dryer sheets make it smell, but it does smell...clean. I don't know how to describe it, exactly. You know how sheets smell when you hang them out on a clothesline - so fresh and crisp, even though it's not really a particular scent? Vinegar is more like that, although when you very first take it out of the dryer, some things (especially towels, for some reason) can smell fairly vinegary, but it fades in a few minutes and you're just left with that unidentifiable but super fresh and clean scent.
Can you tell I'm a fan?
LOL I normally end up hating these kind of things (like baking soda and vinegar to clean my shower? no thanks, I'll use bleach - I don't know if Ben sweats tar or something, but baking soda and vinegar do NOTHING), but I really do love it for our laundry!