Do Dryer Sheets Help With Pet Hair

It’s no secret that pet hair can be a major pain to clean up. While we love our pets, their dander is an inconvenience that owners need to cater to every day.
There are many ways to remove or handle the hair that comes from our pets. One method that people ask about is in using dryer sheets.
Dryer sheets are a piece of fabric with softeners and fragrances placed onto them. They are usually used for cleaning and adding scents to your clothes when drying them. However, their main use is a bit different.
If you’ve gotten a small jolt of electricity when pulling a piece of clothing from the dryer, then you know what a great inconvenience that is. It is this inconvenience that the dryer sheet seeks to solve by neutralizing static.
The question now is, do dryer sheets help with pet hair? Let’s find out together.

What Are Dryer Sheets?

Before we get into the pet hair conundrum, let’s learn a little bit more about dryer sheets.
As mentioned previously, dryer sheets help out by displacing any static electricity. Apart from that though, these sheets have more uses than that.
Dryer sheets can:

• Make your clothes feel softer
• Help reduce wrinkles and creases in your clothes
• Prevent lint from sticking to your clothes
• Keep your clothes smelling great

As you can see, dryer sheets are pretty versatile. However, what ingredients make up dryer sheets that allow them to be so useful?

The Ingredients of Dryer Sheets

The base of the dryer sheet is usually a blend of synthetic fabrics. These can include polyester, acrylic, or nylon.
The chemical composition of the dryer sheets is what gives it its static-reducing properties. Dryer sheets are coated with a mix of positively and negatively charged chemicals.
These chemicals are known as quaternary ammonium salts. When these salts mix with the water on your clothes, they form a barrier. This barrier is what helps to reduce the static cling on your clothes.
In addition to the quaternary ammonium salts, manufacturers also add other ingredients to their dryer sheets.
These can include softeners, fragrances, and even optical brighteners.

Are They Effective With Pet Hair?

All of these ingredients make these sheets very useful. If you hold one in your fingers and rub it with itself, it will feel sort of sticky.
Now the question is, are they effective in clearing the hairs from our pets? The answer is yes.
Let’s take a look at several ways you can put dryer sheets to great use when clearing pet hair.

How to Use Dryer Sheets to Remove Pet Hair

Pre-Wash Wipe Down

One of the best ways to these sheets also lends itself to one of the best practices for removing pet hair. This is the pre-wash wipe down.
Many people simply place their clothes, beddings, and other hair-covered items in the laundry. They hope that the wash will just fully cleanse everything of the hairs.
However, this is wishful thinking. Most of the time, the washing machine doesn’t catch everything. In actuality, the addition of water to the already stuck hairs only makes things worse. The hairs go everywhere and in some cases, they bunch up and clog drains.
That is why it is best to first remove as much hair as possible before putting things in the washing machine.
Simply take your dryer sheet and run it over the fabric and collect hairs.

Wipe Surfaces

The logic of the pre-wash wipe-down also applies to other areas as well. For instance, if you have a floor or a sofa filled with pet hair, you can put the dryer sheets to great effect.
All you have to do is take a sheet and sweep it across a surface you need to clear. It can be on your floors, furniture, appliances, and many other things.

Use As Intended

The final way to utilize these sheets is as intended; in the dryer with the cycles. One note about this method though is that it is most effective when combined with the pre-wash wipe down. Another thing to note is that this will be done before placing the clothes and fabrics in the
Once that is done, you can add your load to the dryer and place a couple of dryer sheets on the top.
Start the dryer for about 10 minutes. The best thing about these sheets is that no heat is needed. The anti-static properties will get to work and loosen all the hairs on your clothes and fabrics.
Once done, take the load and simply shake the loose hairs off.
This is only the first phase though. When this is done, it’s time to head to the washing machine and wash your clothes as you would normally do.
The final phase sees us return to the dryer for one last cycle. This time though, do it as you would typically dry your clothes.
At the end of it all, don’t forget to check your lint trap for any loose hairs that may clog it in the future.

Pet-Specific Dryer Sheets

While any kind of dryer sheet will be effective in scooping those pesky pet hairs, it must be noted that there are other kinds that may be ideal for what we are trying to achieve.
Pet-specific dryer sheets are available in the market today. As the name suggests, these sheets were developed to cater to pet hair even more.
These sheets do everything normal ones do. However, some of them have three times more hair repellant power than normal ones.
In addition, after using them in a dryer, they continue to repel pet hair, ensuring that they do not stick to your clothes or fabrics moving forward.

Put to Good Use

Dryer sheets are a great way to remove pet hair from your clothes and fabrics. As we have seen, they are also useful in other ways like cleaning surfaces and removing hair from the lint trap.
When using them, make sure to go for pet-specific dryer sheets for maximum effect.
With that said, it is time to put those dryer sheets to good use and get rid of all that pet hair!