That fabric softener sheet you tossed in the trash after you dried your laundry may have one more job left in it. Home cooks across the US have embraced a new trick. Instead of throwing a used dryer sheet into the garbage, toss it in your dirtiest pots and pans, let it sit in warm water overnight, then rinse away the grease.
A 2015 study, ‘Molecular mechanisms for surfactant-aided oil removal from a solid surface,’ in Applied Surface Science found that the conditioning agents that coat dryer sheets are part of a class of surfactants that have long been studied for their ability to pull oil away from solid surfaces on a molecular scale. The trick sounds almost too easy, but the science behind it holds up.
What actually happens when you soak a dryer sheet
If you’ve ever stood at the sink, scraping a pan with a fork and wondering if there’s an easier way to do it, you’ll understand why this hack caught on. Dryer sheets contain fabric softening agents, and most of those agents belong to a family of compounds called quaternary ammonium compounds. They are a type of cationic surfactant, which means that one end of the molecule carries a positive charge. A used sheet releases compounds into warm water.
The compounds diffuse into the water. Once floating free in the pan, surfactants, which are meant to connect oily and watery substances, can work on the layer of burnt grease and food residue that has adhered to the metal.
