DIY fabric softener

Ugh doll hair. It's always a mess!! My daughter always wants me to do her doll's (and pony's) hair. The problem is, to braid the hair, it has to be nice and untangled first. Therein lies the problem. My daughter can make a huge mess of their hair in less than a day (I'm not really sure how she does it, but she does).

The best way I have found to fix doll/pony hair is with fabric softener. Now, I don't usually buy fabric softener because I don't really use it much. Because of that, I tried other hair fixing tutorials I found on pinterest, but none seemed to work as well as the fabric softener did.

The other day I made my own laundry soap, so I figured there had to be a way to make my own fabric softener, and apparently there is. If you want to make a large batch (I did not since I don't use it on clothes and I was only making it for fixing doll hair), you need 6 cups hot water, 2 cups vinegar, and 1 bottle of hair conditioner (doesn't matter the brand). I cut that in half since my sole purpose was detangling messes of doll hair. So the original recipe I found said to just use hot tap water and mix the conditioner in until dissolved, but that didn't work well at all. I ended up pouring the hot water and conditioner mix into a saucepan and heating it on medium for about 10-15 minutes to get it well mixed. Once the conditioner has dissolved into the water, add your vinegar, mix and you are ready to go (store in air tight container). 

This did not work perfectly, and not quite as well as when I used store bought fabric softener, but it worked better than all the other things I had tried. I also decided to try it in the laundry, since my laundry soap is unscented, and apparently my husband prefers scented. I used an herbal essence conditioner that I didn't really care for, it got the clothes soft, but didn't give the scent like I was expecting. Maybe it would be better with a different brand? May experiment more with it in the future and see if we can find a scent we like.

To use this to fix doll hair, comb doll hair out first, then soak in softener. Gently work out tangles, then rinse really well. This didn't make them perfect, but it did help a great deal.

You can see the after picture above. It takes time and patience to work them out, but it is possible.