Tennis balls are what I use.
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The wool balls are a more muffled “whump whump” than the rubber-cored balls.
I do not wash my down sleeping bags, always use a bag liner, when out in the mountains I wash myself with a towel before getting in, has not lost any noticeable loft after doing that for about 20 years, Western Mountaineer bag.
Wool retains some insulating quality when wet. Witness the early WW folks in boats they made from molds in their garages - they all wore wool.
Down and synthetic fluff like primaloft only retain warmth if they stays dry. Note the improvement in those jackets the last several years, where they finally added waterproofing to the outer shell.
In that case ( even though it doesn’t break the dryer) , wife rules.
I have three of those but they are not enough mass. Sometimes I lose one and the dog finds it and buries it way under the bed.
I just go to the laundromat. The one by me has front load washers and they can take a big heavy load and nobody complains about the sneakers in the dryer. Weekdays, its a nice place to read too.
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We are talking about wet environments, not washing machines, hand washing and commercial dryers. In the bush when a down bag gets wet you are screwed.
The only remedy I found was a cabin with a wood stove in it. I hung the bag up in the rafters and it was much better after about 8 hours.
not necessarily. I won’t go into the errors of my ways but Lake Superior entered my down bag. I wrung it out and banged on it to fluff as best I could during the last two hours of daylight over but not directly over a fire. I lived albeit not comfortably. I suspect the air mattress ( dry) underneath had a lot to do with that.
The “hydrophobic down” bags and comforters, filled with feathers treated with Nikwax or other agents that tend to repel moisture, do seem to do better in moist environments.