I Tried the Viral “Vodka Hack” and Got Hotel-Worthy Wrinkle-Free Sheets

Making the bed — especially after washing and drying my sheets — is my least favorite part of housework. I put it off as long as possible, then often let my bedding sit in the dryer for hours, sometimes days, after the cycle has completed. As a surprise to no one, it’s a wrinkled mess when I take them out of the machine. 

After hours of labor, I make the bed, and it still lacks allure. The sheets are clean, but they don’t look smooth or call my name in a way that hotel beds seem to. I’m not the type to break out an iron, so I accepted that I’d never have the perfect, wrinkle-free bed I enjoy on vacation. That is until I came across a video on Instagram showing me that it’s possible.

In this video, Annalora Vanderbeek (@annivanderbeek) shares her hack for achieving wrinkle-free sheets without touching an iron or steamer. She mixes a recipe of vodka, water, vinegar, and fabric conditioner, and sprays her sheets with it before smoothing it out and letting it dry. I already had all the ingredients at home and couldn’t wait to give it a try.

The measurements were unclear, but after watching her video several times, I eyeballed it and came up with this: In a spray bottle, combine one cup of distilled water, a half cup of vinegar, and a quarter cup of vodka. Vanderbeek shares that the vinegar will help “relax the fibers in your bedding” while the vodka will keep linens fresh. 

“A lot of theaters use vodka to deodorize the costumes — it’s a natural deodorizer, and it dries down without a smell,” she says in the video. Even the Denver Center for the Performing Arts swears by a vodka refresh for its costume department when they can’t perform a proper machine wash.

As an optional step, Vanderbeek says you can add a tablespoon of conditioner (or, in my case, three pumps) to help “pack a punch in the de-wrinkling.” Vanderbeek used The Laundress Fabric Conditioner but says any type of conditioner (hair or fabric) can work — just be sure that whatever you use is colorless to avoid staining your sheets.

I shook my old Dollar Store spray bottle to mix the contents, and it took a while for the conditioner to break down. I got to work with a cloudy, slightly sudsy mixture with still a few conditioner lumps floating at the top. 

I tried the spray on the expensive linen sheet set by The Citizenry I invested in, which is meant to look lived-in, but as I’ve experienced, there’s a difference between “lived-in” and messy. I worked one section at a time, spraying the sheets until the surface was damp but not soaked. I stretched the fabric with one hand while I spritzed with the other, then smoothed out the surface with the palm of my hand. 

In less than five minutes, all the wrinkles and fold marks had been released from half of my bed. I proceeded to de-wrinkle the other side, and voilá, my bed-making skills have leveled up to Hilton status — all because of this liquid wonder. I can’t believe how this homemade recipe made my luxury sheets feel infinitely more luxurious.

The spray smelled nothing like vodka, though I initially got a whiff of vinegar. Once it dried, though, there wasn’t any kind of lingering scent, not even from my conditioner. I’ll definitely be keeping a bottle of this on my nightstand and have even ordered a cuter option from Amazon. 

I may consider adding a few drops of essential oils or scented linen spray to make my sheets smell better, but the concoction (even with some simple eyeballing) was easy and quick to make, didn’t require a trip to the store, and worked surprisingly well.