Bring Your Pillows Back to Life!

12 Aug Bring Your Pillows Back to Life!

This summer has been a mild one overall, compared to some of the scorchers we’ve seen in the past few years. It hasn’t exactly been hot enough to keep the air conditioning running overnight each night, but some evenings have certainly presented enough warmth to cause us to toss and turn a bit.

Nobody likes to be too warm when they sleep! We inevitably sweat and experience those uncomfortable, sticky sheets, yucky smelling comforters, or worst of all, yellowed pillows!

We’ve got solutions for all of the above.

In the meantime, here’s some helpful tips from one of my all-time favourite bloggers and “cleaning experts” (and author of the hilarious and immensely helpful book for millennials, My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag… And Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha) Jolie Kerr. Her blogs are always chock full of cleaning tips for clothes, bathrooms, furniture, you name it (definitely check her out if you have a chance) – but here a few excerpts from Yes, You Can Wash A Pillow:

Poly-Filled Pillows

Poly-filled pillows can be machine-washed on the gentle cycle—go ahead and wash more than one pillow at a time to balance the load. If you only have

one pillow, throwing some towels in the machine will serve to balance things out. Towels are also a good thing to toss into a top-loading machine that has one of those centre agitators, since those things have a tendency to shred pillows and other such bulky items. Use the warm-water setting unless the care tag tells you otherwise, and be sparing with your detergent. A tablespoon of liquid detergent is really all you need and want, otherwise the pillows retain some of the soap even after the rinse cycle.

Poly-filled pillows can be machine-dried on a low-heat setting. Dryer balls or tennis balls should also be tossed into the mix to help fluff the pillows up and redistribute the stuffing evenly.

Feather-Filled Pillows

Oh yes, you can for sure wash a feather pillow in the washing machine. People will try to tell you otherwise, but they’re lying right to your face. Same basic instructions as with poly-filled pillows: Use a small amount of mild detergent, warm water, delicate cycle.

The important thing, when working with feather pillows, is to be sure you get them really, really dry, because otherwise those feathers can mildew up real fast, and yick. The even trickier thing about this is that you’re stuck with using the air-dry setting in the machine, because feathers don’t love the dryer’s heat, so it’s going to be a long process. Just like with poly-filled pillows, dryer or tennis balls are crucial to even redistribution of the stuffing.

Foam-Filled Pillows

Foam-filled pillows are best hand-washed in a large sink or the tub, and then air-dried. Don’t put foam pillows in the dryer, even on the no-heat setting; the foam is likely to crumble apart. If you’ve got a front-loading machine, or a top-loader that doesn’t have a centre agitator, you can probably safely machine-wash pillows—just opt for the gentlest cycle available to you, and either cool or warm water in concert with a small amount of a mild detergent.

This, however, does not apply to solid foam pillows, nor to memory foam, which cannot be washed, basically, like, at all. I mean, there are ways, but they’ll probably either be so labour-intensive or apt to ruin the pillow that I’m not going to go into them here out of a sense of responsibility to you.

While Jolie definitely presents some awesome ideas, we’ve got a guaranteed, hypo allergenic and environmentally-friendly option. Our expert cleaning services! Give us a call any time if you have any questions and we’d be happy to answer them for you.