SC Flood and DIY Dryer Balls with Essential Oils

Our great state of South Carolina experienced a thousand year flood in October. Of course meteorologists predicted that there would be a lot of rain. But who really ever puts much stock in that?!......Welllll, let's just say their predictions were correct this time.

We live about 30 minutes outside of Columbia, and we never thought we would be affected by flooding.

My husband woke me up around 8:15 on that Sunday morning saying, "Babe you won't believe this rain. Come look!" This guy was sooo excited! We had never seen anything like this before!

 These pictures of our backyard were taken at 8:30 am. Like a child on Christmas Day!

This was a one-hour difference. These were taken at 9:30 am:

And that's when it started to get real. It continued to pour and pour and pour some more. Needless to say, his excitement was no more. I kept asking him, "What's our plan? What are we going to do?"   

We thought we could do something to prevent it from coming in the house. HA!! Yeah...right!

These were the last pictures we took before grabbing some things and leaving to go stay at my parents' house. We threw out every towel we had in the entire house. I know. Good one. Like that would really help. 

These are our rugs and towels floating around. 

 

We had everything back in place, and our home was back to normal right before Christmas. With the mold and mildew, and dust from sanding the new walls, we knew we would have to wash every piece of laundry in the house. I had been wanting to make dryer balls with Essential Oils for a little bit at that point and had even already purchased the yarn to do so. Knowing how much laundry we would have to do, I decided it was the perfect time to make the dryer balls. I followed the instruction here to make them. She has lots of great ideas on using Essential Oils!

I threw out my dryer sheets and have forever replaced them with dryer balls! These dryer balls have significantly decreased our drying time which is what I really love about them! Less drying time = lower energy bill! These balls will also last years. So, there's one less thing I have to buy at the grocery store. #win #ihategroceryshopping

Here's more on the benefits of using dryer balls! 

 I made a ball with the yarn, stuffed them and tied them off in old panty hose, and washed and dried them a few times to ensure felting. Then they were ready to go! Make sure you use 100% wool. Go to the Overthrow Martha blog link above to see pictures of the process. I followed those pictures step-by-step. I use Geranium, Lavender, and Joy on mine. I have also used Citrus Fresh a few times. I put about 3 drops on each ball. After drying a few loads, you will want to reapply some oils if you want a light scent. What's neat is that you can change things up each time. Use Lavender on a few loads, then Joy on a few, or none if you don't want a scent (like when washing your husbands' hunting clothes...smh). I use all 5 balls in my dryer, but you don't have to. Some people only use two or three. Our dryer takes forrreevveerr, so that's why I use all of mine each time. 

Click here if you want to purchase your own Premium Starter Kit which includes 11 oils, a Diffuser, and samples of other goodies. This is the best deal if you are wanting to get started with Young Living Essential Oils (only the best oils in the history of ever...duh!).