Wad-Free for Bed Sheets

As the editor of Bluedot’s Marketplace, I receive emails pitching all kinds of items. Last year, one message in particular captured my attention. The item in question was the Wad-Free, a laundry helper that promised to solve one of my biggest pet peeves: having my wet sheets twist themselves into tightly wadded balls while I’m washing and drying them, and then needing to unwind the whole affair, and probably run the dryer again. This process frustrates me endlessly. It inflames my carpal tunnel. It wastes time. It makes the sheets wrinkly. And, because dryers are such energy hogs, it harms the Earth.

The Wad-Free, a four-inch square gadget, stops this problem before it starts. Its inventor, Coloradoan Cyndi Bray, holds several patents for the device and received funding for it on Shark Tank. To use the Wad-Free, you slide one edge from each corner of your sheet into the Wad-Free. Snap each corner closed, “fluff each sheet out like a parachute” as you load it into the machine, and that’s it. Voilà! It does take a minute to set up each sheet, but the Wad-Free saves time and energy — for both me and my dryer. The item is made and assembled in Denver. While we generally recommend avoiding plastics, the trade-off here for reduced energy usage makes the Wad-Free worthwhile.