Fabric softener - do you really need it?

It is always easy to do something in a particular way because that is the way you have always seen it done. You don't want to feel left out or not part of the crowd. If that is the way others do it then that is the way it should be done.

As a child, whenever I saw my mother washing clothes, she always added fabric softener. When I left home to study at university, I had to wash my own clothes. I used softener because that is the way I had seen it done so why should I wash my clothes in any other way?

On moving to Spain my supermarket bills are 10% higher than they were. Admittedly I don't spend much in supermarkets. I never enter a supermarket without a list that I do not deviate from. I never wander around a supermarket allowing the pretty labels and fake offers to suggest I should buy what I really don't need.

To cut costs I decided not to buy fabric softener and to accept that I would be wearing rough pieces of cardboard like cloth from now on.

Well, I have washed my clothes and now I am wearing them. They don't smell like fabric softened clothes do but then why should clothes smell? They never smell of anything when you buy them so why should you add a smell when you wash them. My clothes have a neutral smell, which is just fine.

Are my clothes rough and uncomfortable to wear? No. They are not as soft as they were after being washed with fabric softener but they are not uncomfortable.

It would appear that I have peeled off another marketing fallacy from my being. The marketers want sheeple, who follow the crowd, rather than people who think for themselves. Herd the sheeple together and flog them rubbish they really don't need is the marketing mantra.