Here's a handy laundry tip for cutting static in laundry coming out of the dryer without using fabric softener. Fabric softener tends to make towels less absorbent and coats laundry. It also tends to be heavily fragranced (unless you buy fragrance-free). In winter I like to dry laundry on a rack indoors like in this post. But some things won't fit, like sheets.
So that's where I use aluminum foil. Pull off a large-ish piece of aluminum foil - a little larger than a letter-size sheet of paper. Crumple it up - try to crumple the edges on the inside to make the ball last longer and avoid sharp edges. Make 2 or 3 of these and toss them in the dryer with your laundry. You won't get shocked when you handle the laundry, it won't crackle and pop. And you won't walk around with a sock or a dryer sheet wriggling out of your pant-leg over the course of the day.
These will last for weeks. In some municipalities, you can recycle aluminum foil when you're done. But others will not accept foil for recycling, so be sure to check before you try to recycle it.
It works like this - in your laundry, the clothes build up electric charges from the hot, dry air and tumbling around, colliding with each other. Aluminum foil is a metal and it will conduct electricity - so the charges in the laundry flow through the foil, essentially neutralizing the charge on the laundry.
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