What's in your dryer sheets?

Since baby's clothes rest directly on their skin, it is important that what you wash their little laundry with is free from perfumes, dyes, and other harsh chemicals. Synthetic ingredients, such as perfumes, often found in commercial detergents, fabric softeners, and dryer sheets, can cause allergic reactions or irritate infant eczema. Some synthetic perfumes and other toxic ingredients have much larger and long term effects on the body, as the skin is the largest organ. Everything you put on the skin finds it's way into the bloodstream, including chemicals sitting on clothes.
A great alternative to synthetically perfumed dryer sheets is filling a 7" square piece of cheescloth or cotton muslin with dried Lavender petals, and a cotton ball saturated with 15-20 drops of Lavender Essential Oil. Fold up the corners and tie tightly with string. Drop into a dryer filled with wet clothes for a naturally aromatic load of fresh laundry. The benefits to using Lavender with baby's clothes is that is has a natural calming and sedative effect! So, wrapping baby up in a Lavender blankie will help them on their way to a restful sleep.
You can also pick up a bundle of 3 Lavender/Rose sachets at the mom-based 'Kiddo Emporium'. Each sachet is useful for aproximately 4 dryer cycles. Bundle of 3 sachets is $6 (12 dryer cycles)