Hey Steem friends! Your resident mad scientist Quantum Anomaly here with another how-to that will save you a little cash and keep your laundry fresh and static-free. Today I'll show you how to make some fun fuzzy friends that can reduce your dry-time, save on energy costs, and give you a much wider variety of scents for your closet to enjoy!

Dryer Balls from Mars!

What makes them "from Mars"? well, the secret ingredient of course, a lost sock from the sixth dimension! You see, I really, REALLY like the feeling of brand new socks. Straight from the package, never been washed, factory fresh socks. The cottony pillows are so clean and pure, or maybe it's just that I can get a little closer to my robot overlords by wearing them fresh off the factory floor with minimal handling from humans. Either way, there's nothing like the freshest sock. But alas, every now and again dryer gremlins, lesser demons, rogue golems, or failed experiments find their way into the laundry process and take out one of my prized possessions, leaving a remnant sock in the mix. Though the pair may be broken, the remnant sock can live a new life, being embodied in a greater form to better serve the needs of its master. This process can also be completed with socks that have outlived their prime, if you let let them get to that point.

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What you'll need:

• A sock whose life has been crippled by the loss of its twin, or a sock past its prime, begging for the release of death.
  Price: Basically free. If you wear socks, this is an inevitable reality.

• A pair of cheap hosiery, like the kind you can find in those easter eggs in the lady's undergarments aisle
  Price: 50 cents or so.

• A skein of yarn with as much wool content as you can get.
  Price: A couple bucks if you don't have any, makes a crapton.

• A length of floss, fishing line, or other high tensile strength string.
  Price: Free if you've visited the dentist in the last 6 months and have one of those travel handouts they toss at you.

• Some essential oils.
  Price: 15 bucks can get you 5-6 of these on amazon, each one should last several months or more if you're just using it on drying clothes.

• A spray bottle with a 50/50 vinegar water solution in it.
  Price: A buck or two for the bottle from the travel aisle, and a few cents worth of vinegar.

Total Cost: 15-20 bucks if you start with nothing. Compared to 4-10 dollars per pack of chemical sheets, investments can return in 3-6 months of use or less depending on what you already have on hand.

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How to Make a Monster

Start by bunching up your sock into a tight ball. I've found that rolling it on to itself works pretty well, but you could just scrunch it up any 'ol way that works. If you have a pair of socks that are ready to live a new life as something better, you can invert one sock so it's inside-out, then stuff the other sock-ball inside.

Pick a point and wrap a loop of your wool yarn around your sock ball. Tie a couple of knots and get the loop nice and tight.

Now, begin wrapping your sock ball entirely in yarn. Alternate patterns to help ensure it doesn't just completely unwind. It should look like a rubber-band ball. No sock bits should remain visible! A couple of layers of built-up yarn should suffice.

Before tying off the end of the yarn, weave it through a few of the prior layers to help secure it. Once secure, tie it off with a good knot. This will ensure that if there IS a catastrophic failure, that the ball doesn't unravel in to wool spaghetti in your dryer. No one deserves that mess.

Get the hose out! I used thigh-highs because they were stupid cheap and perform the same purpose.

Now, stuff that yarn ball all the way down into the toe of your pantyhose. Stretch the hose good and tight around it, then tie off the top.

With a bit of floss or fishing line, tie a knot underneath the one in the hose, this is your backup knot. This knot is the most important, so make sure it's secure. Reach out to google if you feel like you may not have the skills. A square knot or two should hold against the tumbling just fine. I haven't used fishing line yet, because I set my dryer to the "infernal 9th circle of hell" temperature setting, but have found that dental floss seems to hold up just fine.

Once set, go ahead and snip off the top of the hosiery. Construction of the dryer ball is complete, but there's a couple final steps. First, we want to wash this beastie. This can help "felt" the ball (or at least some claim, I've not had the best of luck with that, likely because I use cheap yarn), which means some of the wool strands poke out through the hose. The more important thing is to make sure that the ball is clean, in case you used some foul sock that will never be spoken of again.

Once washed, the secret step is at hand. Add 6 drops of the essential oil of your choice to random spots on the ball. If you have multiple balls (which I suggest at LEAST 2 per load, and work your way up to 6) then you can split your drops evenly, but it won't really matter unless you're just OCD and want to spread your love fairly amongst them. I personally prefer that all the other dryer balls become jealous of one that I single out in hopes that they'll work harder to achieve the best drying results.

The final step (not to be confused with the secret step) is to gently spritz one ball with a few squirts of vinegar spray. Don't worry, the smell will evaporate, the goal here is to add an ingredient to the drying cycle that will cut down on static cling. The vinegar will serve this purpose just fine. Again, you don't need to soak it, and you don't need to spray every ball. This just works to cut down on static since we aren't using a chemical anti-cling agent.

Then, just run your dryer like normal, refreshing the essential oil and vinegar spritz with each load. Once you work your way up to 6 or 8 dryer balls, you should be able to reduce your dry time on medium loads by 10-20 minutes! This is because the balls bounce around in the dryer, absorbing humidity and they help pull clothes off of the sidewalls, increasing the surface area that's dried at any one time.

And there you have it! For a few minutes of work you can save money for years to come on not buying sheets, and you've also picked up a pack of essential oils for future projects!

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Protips from a Madman

• The oils last a long time if you're careful with them. Six drops is for a "full" load, so half that amount for small or regular loads.
• You can use more than just the footie part of the hose, but you'll have to tie extra knots. For the cost, it's easier just to use another pair, but if you REALLY want to get thrifty you should be able to make 6 from a single pair.
• My oldest dryer balls are 3 years old now and barely have any issues. If they develop runs, spend the 50 cents to get new hose, and just stuff the whole thing into a new skin. No sense in taking it all apart just to put it back together.
• If you miss consumer scents like "Ginger Mango", "Spring Rain", or "Unicorn Breath", try combining two or more oils. A couple drops lavender, a couple drops orange, and a single drop of tea tree can make a dandy combination that your significant other will fawn over, making you the Lord of Laundry.

WARNING: Becoming the "Lord of Laundry" could increase the expectations of exertion of physical labor on your part in relation to doing household chores. This can work for or against you, depending on your own personal plan of world domination.

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