I love my wool dryer balls, but, I had to learn how to recharge them so that they can keep working at their best. Helping me to get those loads dried faster while using less energy.
How to Recharge Wool Dryer Balls? To recharge (or refresh) wool dryer balls wash them on the gentle cycle with hot water. Then dry them on high heat in your clothes dryer.
Keep reading for a more detailed explanation on recharging wool dryer balls as well as some direction on why and when to recharge them!
Related:
How to Use Wool Dryer Balls and Do They Work?
Best Wool Dryer Balls
How to Recharge Dryer Balls
Once you’ve been using your wool dryer balls for a while it’s time to give them a little love and attention. After many uses wool dryer balls will become less effective at helping to absorb moisture in the dryer and will need to be recharged.
1. Wash the wool dryer balls
Take your wool dryer balls and run them through your clothes washer on the gentle cycle with hot water.
Not only will this clean your dryer balls somewhat by removing some of the lint and fiber build up they may have accumulated it will also rehydrate them. This will make them better at absorbing moisture during drying by rejuvenating over-dried wool fibers.
You can wash them alone or with a full load, either way works. Just make sure that the washer settings are appropriate for the entire load.
2. Dry the wool dryer balls
Next, run the dryer balls through your clothes dryer on high heat. Again, you can run them through alone or with a full load.
Keep in mind though that since they are wet they won’t help the load dry faster. In fact, since they are so water logged they might make the entire load dry slower.
You will want to make sure they have been fully dried before you use them in a load you want them to help dry more quickly.
3. Use them again
Your dryer balls are now recharged and ready to go! Throw them in with your next load of laundry and keep on drying!
Why wool dryer balls need to be recharged
The reason you’ll want to recharge your wool dryer balls from time to time is that the wool can become overstressed and loose too much moister making it too brittle and less absorbent that it was previously.
Strangely, what we are doing when we recharge wool dryer balls is adding more moisture back into them which ultimately helps them to be more absorbent (from the Friendsheep dryer ball faq page).
When to recharge wool dryer balls
You’ll know it’s time to recharge your wool dryer balls when they are either starting to look a little rough like mine in the image below or when you notice that they are not helping you achieve the same drying results as you had been previously.
How often should you recharge wool dryer balls?
Alternatively, don’t wait for your dryer balls to start to wear down just wash and refresh them every once in awhile.
I’d recommend recharging them once every 100 loads or so. Most wool dryer ball manufacturers say their dryer balls will last at least 1000 loads. This means you’ll only need to refresh your dryer balls 10 over their lifetime.
No need to count loads as you go. I like to just estimate and then set myself a reminder on my phone.
For example, I wash on average 4 loads of laundry per week. So, 100 loads / 4 per week = 25 weeks
And since there are 52 weeks in a year I just set myself a reminder to recharge them every 6 months which is close enough for me!
How do you know when your wool dryer balls are done?
The short answer is that your dryer balls are done once they start falling apart. Things to look out for are a scraggly appearance or shedding. You might begin to see wool showing up on your dried clothes when you pull them out of the dryer.
According to most manufacturers of wool dryer balls they say that dryer balls will last about 1000 loads. Here is a quick table that will give you a rough idea for how long your dryer balls might last depending on how many loads you wash each week.
| Loads per week | How many years |
| 2 | 9.6 |
| 4 | 4.8 |
| 8 | 2.4 |
However, if you ever notice your dryer balls becoming less effective then it’s a good time to give them a quick recharge!
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