Thursday, March 1, 2012

Product Review: Downy Wrinkle Releaser

I know, I know. I'm late to the party on this one. My friends have been talking about Downy Wrinkle Releaser for a couple of years and I have been reluctant to try their magic wrinkle fighting liquid because I thought it would be a waste of money. I love shortcuts, though, so I have been curious about it.

Well guess what? I was right. It IS a waste of money!

Last week when I was grocery shopping, I walked down the aisle of 'travel sized' items in search of another product & stumbled onto a teeny bottle of Downy Wrinkle Releaser. One of my issues about buying this product before was with the price. However, for about $1.69, I figured I would finally give it a shot. I really had high hopes that all my girlfriends who have raved about this stuff would be right. (After all, what girl wouldn't like to find a bottle of magic water that will keep her from ever having to iron again? One can dream!)

But here's the thing. I iron every single day. I know what I want my IRONED clothes to look like. I have standards for my clothes and when one of the kids or my husband leave the house without letting me iron a very wrinkled shirt or pair of pants, it drives me crazy. I want to tie a sign around their neck that says "My mother/wife tried to iron my clothes but I wouldn't let her. Don't blame her! It's all my fault." My ironing board stays set up in my bedroom half the time because I use it so often. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to skip ironing altogether, but I don't necessarily hate it. It's just a tad time consuming if I'm running late & need to hurry and get my clothes ready.

In the past week, I have used the Downy Wrinkle Releaser on several different shirts, each time hoping that I'd see different results.

I will admit that when I used the product on a Tshirt which was only slightly wrinkled looking, it did reduce the look of wrinkles, but it didn't completely flatten them. The other shirts I have used it on produced less than stellar results. With each one, I sprayed the shirt & followed the bottle directions to stretch, smooth & straighten out areas that looked most troublesome. After allowing the shirts to hang for 10-15 minutes, I would return to find that they didn't look any better. With each one, I thought that perhaps I had not used enough of the product, so I tried re-spraying them with more of the product. Ultimately each time, I ended up having to toss the shirt in the dryer to dry the dampness from the product & still had a semi-wrinkled shirt. I determined on Sunday morning that I spent roughly the same length of time hanging, spraying, stretching & smoothing the shirt as I would have spent if I'd just ironed it.

Bottom line:
If you iron things regularly, just keep ironing & save your money. You'll get much better results. If you only wear stretchy cotton-knit type fabrics (like Tshirts), you might benefit from using Downy Wrinkle Releaser. Trust me folks, this stuff will never replace an iron at my house. (And I bet I spent less on my iron than you will spend on bottles & bottles of Wrinkle Releaser over time!)

4 comments:

JennahRose said...

Or that whole throw a wet wash rag in the dryer with whatever article of clothing you need. It works in a pinch if you have other things you need to do instead of ironing. :).

The Lowry Place said...

Good to know. I wondered also.

Anonymous said...

I have a couple of questions. I often get by with hanging up a kind of wrinkly item on a coat hanger on the shower curtain rod and praying it with plain water. (Yes, some need the help of tugging and smoothing the fabric while it's dampened, with other garments, just the weight of the garment/gravity helps smooth them out.) So, now the question: In a side by side test, how much better is spraying/smoothing/tugging after spraying with the Wrinkle Release vs. spraying with Plain Water?!

Second question: what is in this stuff? Do I want to have it on my clothes? I don't actually use any fabric softener because I don't it really rinses all out, same problem with Dryer Sheets. I can't find the (secret) ingredients anywhere on the web.

There are many recipes for home-made Wrinkle Release that call for a cap or two of regular laundry fabric softener in a spray bottle of water. Okay, so maybe that works as well but that may not the the way Downy makes its Wrinkle Release. It may contain a different special ingredient altogether. I wish I knew!

Liz said...

Dear anonymous, I'd love to answer your question but don't know where to email your reply since I don't know who you are, so I'm posting here & hope that you will find it.

For me, it's just not worth buying a bottle of magic liquid & spraying, stretching, smoothing, etc and waiting for the magic stuff to dry. I can iron the garment in less time & get results that I prefer. The magic stuff really didn't do any good to me.