Essential Oils for Dryer Balls

Dryer balls have become a regular feature of our laundry sessions, and their importance cannot be overstated. Dryer balls help shorten the time it takes for our fabrics to get dry, they keep our clothes from clustering during the cycle.

They are also a great alternative to dryer sheets, in that, they contain far fewer chemicals. Their popularity is further strengthened with the fact that they serve as a natural fabric softener with their 100% wool material, which makes them environmental friendly and suitable for even baby’s clothes.

Although dryer balls work well on their own in your laundry, they can work even better when a few drops of essential oil is added to them. Other than making your laundry experience more fun, dryer balls provides your clothes with an uplifting scent that you won’t be able to resist. Basically, adding essential oils to your dryer balls enhances the aroma of your laundry.

You stand to benefit a few things from adding essential oils to your dryer balls but it is important to note that essential oils cannot be added directly to your wet laundry before putting it in the washer because your laundry could get damaged.

What are Essential Oils?

Essential oils are compounds extracted from plants that are obtained through distillation - via steam and/or water - or mechanical methods, such as cold pressing. Basically, Essential oils are concentrated plant extracts that retain the natural smell and flavor, or "essence," of their source.

It is imperative to know that the process of obtaining essential oils is very important. In other words, essential oils obtained through chemical processes are not original essential oils.

The benefits of essential oils cannot be overestimated. They help relieve stress, anxiety, headaches, migraine, insomnia, and other health issues.

Essential oils are also used in aromatherapy, as mosquito repellents, and for industrial cosmetics. The household uses of essential oils include cleaning wipes, toilet cleaner, hand sanitizer, car freshener, fabric spray, hand soap, home filter, carpet freshener, floor cleaner, and laundry detergent. It is the last household use that this article is centered upon.  

Essential oils help eliminate odors from your dryer balls in a natural safe way, and even provide you with an aroma that could bring joy, happiness, peace, relaxation, motivation, and a clear mind.  This article highlights some of the best essential oils for your dryer balls, as well as how to use essential oils with wool dryer balls.

Best Essential Oils for Dryer Balls

There is a wide variety of essential oils which may be used for aromatherapy. However, not all of them are suitable for laundry. Below are eleven of our favorite essential oils to use on your dryer balls and to spruce up your laundry.

Lavender Essential Oil

Lemongrass Essential Oil

Lemongrass essential oil is known for its effectiveness at relieving stress, anxiety, and headaches. Apart from these, lemongrass essential oil is perfect for stiff fabrics, in that it helps to soften the fabrics, retain the integrity of the fabrics and reducing their itchiness.

The effectiveness of lemongrass essential oil might be due to its anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antimicrobial, antiviral, antioxidant, antidepressant, and sedative qualities.

Adding two to three drops of lemongrass essential oil to a load of laundry can produce amazing results. Not only will it help remove odors by killing odor-causing bacteria, but it would also help loosen stubborn stains.

Lemon Essential Oil

It would be difficult to separate clothing and grease, as it seems that they go together perfectly, especially when you have young children in the house or you work in the food service.

Lemon oil can help to remove smelly grease, and can be applied to even older stains. It is an amazing and effective essential oil to add to the washing machine due to its energizing and disinfecting qualities. The invigorating and uplifting scent of lemon essential oil helps drives away sluggishness and enhances clear thinking.

Adding lemon essential oil to your dryer balls provides you with a better and non-toxic way to treat your clothes – more suitable for you and even the environment.

Tea Tree Essential Oil

Tea tree essential oil is another impressive essential oil that has been known for many centuries because of its unique fragrance.

It has anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, antifungal, and anti bacterial properties that help freshen and remove lurking mold or mildew. Another noteworthy feature of tea tree essential oil is that it serves as a powerful disinfectant that kills germs and controls bad odors.

As a result, adding tea tree essential oil to your dryer balls is a highly effective way to kill any bad odors coming out of your washing machine.

Rosemary Essential Oil

Rosemary essential oil is a superb choice for deodorizing your laundry, and it is even more effective when mixed with lemon essential oil. It has anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, antifungal, and anti bacterial properties that help soften the fabrics, retain the integrity of the fabrics, and reduce their itchiness.

With its woody fragrance and energizing aroma, rosemary essential oil will refresh you and your laundry. Rosemary oil is an excellent disinfectant that deodorizes your laundry and your laundry room, as well as killing the lingering bacteria in your clothes.

Adding Rosemary essential oil to your dryer balls gives you an extra uplifting scent around the house.

Thyme Essential Oil

Thyme essential oil possesses unique properties that prevent the growth of disease-causing organisms, treat viruses, eliminates mold, prevent the growth of fungus and the aflatoxins they produce, and attacks bacteria.  

High in anti-fungal and antibacterial properties, it works as a natural disinfectant for any fabric. In fact, Studies have shown undiluted thyme essential oil can eliminate the strongest bacteria.

Since it blends well with lavender, oregano grapefruit, and rosemary essential oils, thyme essential oil can also be effective at killing germs and controlling bad odors, thereby giving your laundry a gorgeous fragrance.

Cinnamon Essential Oil

Cinnamon essential oil contains a high concentration of cinnamaldehyde, a popular ingredient in natural healing and cleaning methods. It has beautiful sweet and spicy aroma that can be used for deodorizing and purifying air at home, making it one of the best essential oils to add to your dryer balls.

Not only is Cinnamon essential oil known for its pleasant fragrance, it is also known for its powerful antibacterial properties that make it a natural disinfectant for any type of fabric.

Add 2 to 4 drops of cinnamon essential oil directly onto the dryer balls and then throw them in the dryer with your clothes, and the scent is transferred.

Oregano Essential Oil

Historically known, oregano essential oil has been used to disinfect, support the immune system etc. This essential oil is loaded with bactericidal phenols that can help you improve your laundry experience.

Oregano essential oil’s potent antibacterial properties are effective against five strains of common bacteria, including those responsible for giardia, listeria, salmonella, and other common infections.

Add oregano essential oil to your dryer balls to kill bacteria, provide a fresh smell to your clothes, and give you’re a pleasant laundry experience.

Geranium Essential Oil

Geranium essential oil is distilled from the flowers and leaves of the Pelargonium graveolens plant. It is a sweet floral oil that releases negativity and boosts feelings of tranquility and happiness. Geranium essential oil is also known for its powerful antibacterial properties that make it a natural disinfectant for any type of fabric.

Not only will this essential oil help kill germs, it would also help remove odors by killing odor-causing bacteria and help loosen stubborn stains. 

Geranium essential oil pairs well with all other essential oils, and combining them to add to your dryer balls would provide your laundry with an uplifting scent.

Peppermint Essential Oil

Peppermint essential oil is quite popular for its therapeutic and refreshing effects, tension relief, and insect repellent properties. It has antiseptic and anti bacterial properties that help soften the fabrics, retain the integrity of the fabrics, and reduce their itchiness.

Peppermint is naturally cool, minty and it helps to stimulate the mind. It enhances to clear thinking, making it the perfect essential oil to add to your dryer balls when you are trying to get your laundry to have an energizing scent.

Chamomile Essential Oil

Chamomile essential oil has soothing anti-inflammatory, antiseptic and antifungal, and antibacterial properties that are efficient for preventing the growth of disease-causing organisms, treating viruses, eliminating mold, preventing the growth of fungus and the aflatoxins they produce, and attacking bacteria.

Chamomile essential oil is also very calming, and it can be combined with bergamot or another citrus oil for an uplifting, balanced scent.  

Add chamomile essential oil to your dryer balls to deodorize your laundry in the most perfect manner and calm feelings of anger, worry and nervousness.

How Should You Scent Your Dryer Balls?

There are a couple ways you can scent your dryer balls. You can directly dab a few drops of oils onto your wool dryer balls and let them dry for an hour, or add essential oils to a meat injector or a syringe and inject the oils into the center of the wool dryer balls. For best results, you can follow the step by step process highlighted below.

1. At first, your dryer balls may have a plastic smell to them as a result of sitting inside of plastic shipping for such a long amount of time. You can simply toss them into the dryer for 20 minutes to release that smell, or you can add the essential oils and dry them for a few minutes.
2. When you’re ready to dry a load of laundry, simple place 6-8 drops of the essential oil of your choice on one dryer ball. Make sure you space them out all over. Do this for each dryer ball that you choose to put into the dryer. The more dryer balls you use, the more scent you’ll have, and the quicker your clothes will dry. You could up to 4 dryer balls
3. Set aside.
4. As you place your wet laundry into the dryer, layer your dryer balls, with the last ball being placed on top of the last article of clothing. This layer helps the dryer balls float throughout the entire load, rather than just around the outer edges.
5. Once your laundry is dry, pull out the laundry slowly, and collect the dryer balls as you see them. You can place them in a little basket in my laundry room until they are ready to be used again.

How Often Should I Re-Scent My Dryer Balls?

The frequency at which you re-scent your laundry all depends on your personal preference. For people who prefer a stronger scent, they can inject their dryer balls more often.

On average, it is recommended that you re-scent your dryer balls every 4-5 loads. In addition, it is important to note that the strength of the essential oil you use also plays into how frequently you should re-scent your dryer balls.

For instance, thyme essential oil is very strong, so you will need to make sure that you don’t put to much of it on your dryer balls so that it doesn’t affect the fabric.

Can dryer balls hurt My clothes?

Dryer balls pose little or no risk at all to your materials and they are a wonderful way to eliminate the use of toxic and harshly fragranced dryer sheets.

Essential Oil Recipes for Wool Dryer Balls

Here are four excellent essential oil recipes you can use for your dryer balls.

Everyday Basic

• 2 drops of lavender oil
• 2 drops of lemon oil
• 2 drops of grapefruit oil

This basic recipe is a good one for your basic laundry: T-shirts, jeans, and work-out wears. As stated earlier on in this write-up, lavender essential oil is, quite frankly, the most versatile of all the essential oils.

It effectively calms and soothes the skin, maintaining a fresh and clean sense. Lemon and grapefruit essential oils are quite popular for their cleansing and purifying properties. Their strong citrus fragrance tends to get rid of unpleasant odors and leave a strong, clean aroma.

The combination of these three will not only disinfect your clothes, but also give them an uplifting aroma.

Citrus Clean

• 2 drops of orange oil
• 2 drops of lemon oil
• 2 drops of lime oil

Citrus oils stimulate the immune system and help the body fight off infection, making this recipe the perfect one for bath towels, kitchen towels, and other laundry used on your face and hands and close to cooking.

Citrus also has a natural grease fighting element, and this gives this recipe its effectiveness at getting tough stains out of your fabric.

Rest and Relaxation

• 3 drops of Eucalyptus oil
• 2 drops of tea tree oil

Eucalyptus’ minty smell combined with tea tree oil makes this a perfect recipe perfect for your night wears. Throw on your soft robe and sleepwear and enjoy the healing and soothing benefits from eucalyptus oils as you sleep.

Eucalyptus is often used to help treat allergies and asthma and can help clear up your sinuses. Tea tree oils can also be used to treat coughs and bronchial congestion.

Mountain Escape

• 3 drops of pine oil
• 3 drops of cedarwood oil

Pine oil is often used to relax muscles and joint while cedarwood oil has a natural sedative component, making it a great oil to use for your sheets and bedding. The combination of both will keep you relaxed and asleep in no time.

Are there any essential oils for dryer balls not mentioned in the blog post that your really love? Share them in the comments below.

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