10 New Uses for Dryer Sheets. This humble laundry room staple can have many additional lives in your home and automobile. To minimize chemical exposure, we like to use eco-friendly laundry sheet brands such as Seventh Generation, Method, and Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day. Although these might be slightly more expensive than bargain-brand laundry sheets, we cut each sheet in half before we use it, to spend 50% less per sheet.  Here are our favorite alternate uses for dryer sheets:

1. Dust television and computer screens. This works brilliantly every time, and much better than a cloth or regular dusting sheet for dusting electronics screens.
2. Home deodorizer. Save some money on plug-ins and sprays and the like, and just use laundry sheets. Some examples of places where you could put them include: under the couch cushions, in clothes drawers, and inside the toilet paper roll in the bathroom.
3. Bug & Pest Repellent. Bugs don’t like the scent of dryer sheets. So, run one over the outside of your picnic basket or over your camping equipment before your next outdoor adventure. It even works on your skin in a pinch. Dryer sheets also work to repel mice. If you have a hole or crack in your home where you think mice may be coming in, stuff it with a dryer sheet. They won’t like chewing through the scented cloth.
4. Laundry Room Cleaner.  One day when guests were coming, I realized that my laundry room was untidy-looking.  I didn’t have any cleaners on hand, so I just grabbed a used dryer sheet from the clean clothes bin, and wiped down the outside of the washer and dryer with it.  While I was at it, I figured I might as well wipe down the lint trap and the inside of the dryer as well.  Presto, it worked brilliantly, and my laundry room was clean!
5. Pick Up Sawdust. Stash a few dryer sheets in your garage or workshop to make clean-up after woodworking projects a breeze!  You can wipe down any surface with the dryer sheet, and the sawdust will just stick to it.  I also find that this method works very well for picking up spilled flour from the kitchen floor after a baking project. 
6. Clean Chrome Faucets.  Just barely moisten the dryer sheet, and rub chrome faucets and fixtures with it.  Water spots and smears will magically disappear.
7. Workout Gear Deodorizer.  Gotta smelly gym bag and stinky sneakers?  Store a 1/2 dryer sheet in each sneaker, and throw one into your workout bag as well to freshen things up.
8. Swiffer Replacement.  I discovered this trick entirely by accident one day, when I was out of Swiffer sheets and needed to dust cobwebs out of the corners in the ceiling.  Just for the heck of it, I tried dryer sheets, and they worked just as well!  It’s a good trick in a pinch, but keep in mind  that you’ll need to use 2 or 3 of them to fit on the Swiffer mophead.
9.  Automobile Deodorizer. Stash a few dryer sheets under car seats to give your car a fresher, nearly-new car smell.  Keep a couple on hand in your glove compartment to wipe dust off the dashboard from time to time.
10. Clean Difficult-to-Dust Items. The fabric softener in dryer sheets actually repels dust, so it works as kind of a “dust protectant” for household items such as venetian blinds and fan blades, which aren’t fun to dust. 

by Karen DeVenaro, See Jane Drill

Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved