Last year, I started collecting my used dryer sheets after doing laundry. Each time, I dropped them into a semi-transparent white basket since Nov 2023. I see they began to gather, folding softly into each other, stacking up—at one point reaching about halfway up the basket. I hadn’t planned to make anything, as I just liked holding onto them. But one day, looking at the quiet pile, I thought—maybe I could do something together with these dryer sheets.
Then I picked up one sheet. Then another. Holding them up to the light, faintly seeing through—to the other side, to the room. There was something in the way they caught the light—the way they quietly held things: dust, hair, shadow, that had lived with me. Over time, I had left traces of my days on them.
Before the wash, the sheets were thick and heavily scented. After tumbling with my clothes, they came out softened and wrinkled, and the smell faded. They also carried fibers, cat hair, and small debris. As the sheets wore in, our connection quietly deepened.
So I began sewing into them with various threads I had, leaving traces on each. One sheet, then another. By chance, I reached one hundred. Around that time, I learned I would need to relocate, far from here. The desire to work with the sheets became stronger. They lived where I lived in this room, touched what I wore, and carried the dust and breath of this space. They felt like they were intertwined with me, my room, and my memories.
I always thought about what home means to me. I used to think home was the place where I was born. But after moving from country to country, place to place, things changed, sometimes becoming a mental state where I feel cozy and safe. Only when I realized I had to leave my current place did I start to feel that this place, plain as it is, had become a real home. The dryer sheets contained pieces of it. As I stayed here, we made this together. A soft accumulation. A quiet fold.
29501
May 2025
