Homemade Wrinkle Releaser August 21 2015

I've made all kinds of homemade stuff over the years: wine, enchilada sauce, carpet cleaner, distilled alcohol (for fuel, of course) and homemade wrinkle releaser.

The aim today to address the fact that you CAN make your own wrinkle releaser, but like anything else, in the end, it's usually easier and better quality, if you just buy it. You get a much better product, with none of the headache.

For example: enchilada sauce. Why on earth would someone go to all that trouble to create a sub-par sauce when Rick Bayless will sell you his to-die-for sauce for under $2.00? My advice is to go with Rick's and save yourself the hassle. Spend that time instead on making hand-made margaritas and leave the sauce production to the 5-star chefs.

The same logic is true for homemade wrinkle releaser. My suggestion is to save yourself the hassle and leave it to the pros at Cold Iron, whom have put a lot of thought into this product and the science behind it.

Homemade Wrinkle Releaser

If you want to smell like a side salad...

I have seen lots of recipes touting the benefits of a vinegar-based fabric softening solution for the active ingredient in a homemade wrinkle releaser. Vinegar, which has an active ingredient of acetic acid, does not soften fabric the way you might think. People use vinegar in the laundry because what it does is neutralize away any residual detergent. It also kills microbes, which leaves your clothes smelling nice. But the reason your clothes may seem softer is because you don't have residual film of a detergent lingering on your clothes. What you're left with is simple: clean fabric.

More about the neutralizing residual detergent...

You may have also seen articles about mixing vinegar with castile soap for a powerful floor cleaning solution. This guidance is wrong. Vinegar neutralizes soap. What you're doing is reversing the saponification of the the vegetable oils that were used in making the castile soap. You might as well dump Italian salad dressing on your floor and mop it with that because essentially what you've done is create a cleaning solution of oil and vinegar.

In summary, if you make a vinegar-based homemade wrinkle releaser, all you're doing is making yourself smell like a side salad...for no reason. You'd be better off just spraying your clothes with plain water and leaving the vinegar out of the recipe.

Homemade Wrinkle Releaser & Bacteria

Go ahead and spray some bacteria on yourself...

A lot of the recipes I've seen fail to include guidance on preserving the homemade wrinkle releaser. Any time you're mixing water in a solution, you're creating a breeding ground for microbial activity, if not properly treated.

I found this article, which I really like, because this person rightly pointed out that many of the recipes we see out there either forego preservatives all together, or fail to use the proper preservative.

So Why Buy Wrinkle Releaser vs. DIY Wrinkle Releaser?

Cold Iron Wrinkle Releasers are formulated with plant-based fabric softeners and surfactants, and we also add professional grade preservatives to extend the shelf life of, and protect, the formulation from microbial contamination. In the end, it's just like Rick Bayless' enchilada sauce: you could make your own, but it's probably not going to be as good as Rick's, and it's definitely not going to be as convenient.

Old Ron's Tip of the Day: buy Rick's sauce and use your time saved to make a margarita. The same holds true with wrinkle releaser.