Cleaning Your Pillows in a Top Loader

Who ever thinks about cleaning your pillows? But let's think about the abuse pillows get. You sleep on them every night. This means spit, sweat, oils from hair and face, and any face products you apply can seep in there. Plus, you fluff, kids battle, and they just get thrown around a lot. They deserve to be fluffed and cleaned every now and then!

This may be TMI about my family but...here's the before: YUCK!

Front loading washing machines are more ideal for this project but I don't have one of those so I just made do. They keep the pillow's shape better. First, I looked at the pillows' tags. They have washing instructions on them!

Then I shoved them, I mean I placed them in my machine standing upright. I think it would've been better to have them horizontal instead of vertical but I guess I can just call this part wayward.  I filled up the washer and then added detergent (I just used regular liquid laundry soap, a mixture of baking soda and vinegar can also be a great detergent). I followed the care instructions on the tags I found (one pillow's tag had been ripped off). The first symbol (left to right) means warm wash. The next means non-chlorine bleach when necessary. The third means tumble dry, normal, low heat. And the last symbol means do not iron (as if you'd iron a pillow). I have a key on my washing machine that tells me what the symbols mean. This can also easily be looked up online.

After the pillows were washed, They were a little misshapen so I beat them. No, really, I beat them over my knee until the insides looked a little more normal. Then into the dryer they went. I also threw in some tennis balls with socks over them for fluffing. The tennis balls help break up the fibers that might be unwilling to separate inside the pillow. This traps moisture and makes the pillow misshapen. I dried them for about 2 hours to make sure there was no left over moisture. Then they were ready for a pillow case.

And here's the after: SO much better!

What Works for Me: 5 Cleaning Tips

So since I've become a Stay At Home Mom, I've had to figure out my cleaning schedule. Here are some things that have helped me

1. Figuring out why I clean. I actually wrote it out:

When my home is neat and orderly, I feel more at ease and happier. It is easier to enjoy others. It is a welcoming place. It is safer. My husband is happier. I have a sense of accomplishment. A clean home is like salt, it enhances everything. I am the HOME maker. I make our house a home. I create the atmosphere 


2. Creating a cleaning schedule. I figured mine out through trial and error. 

Monday/Wednesday/Friday: Downstairs (bathroom, kitchen, tidy and vacuum living room)
Tuesday/Thursday: Upstairs (bathroom, tidy and vacuum bedrooms)

Laundry on Tuesdays

If you need a little encouragement, make a pretty chart for yourself! Here are three I liked:

One, Two, Three

3. Cleaning doesn't take that long. Seriously, I timed myself and saw just how long it takes. I was surprised. I kept putting off chores thinking I didn't have time, but I was surprised what I achieved in just 15 minutes!

4. Cleaning, happily, teaches my daughter that house work (or work in general) isn't a bad thing. I clean throughout the day and I try to sing while I do it. It entertains my baby and makes us both happier. And I make up songs about what I'm doing--it's something I got from my dad, an excellent singer and avid song-writer-on-the-fly. Cleaning doesn't have to be doom and gloom!

5. I clean for me. This is my mantra. I got it from Gretchen Rubin in the Happiness Project. She explains that she wanted "gold stars" for her hard work, like teachers used to give. If she didn't receive recognition from her husband and family about what she had done to clean then she felt disappointed. So she resolved to clean for herself. I did too and now I don't worry about praise for a job well done, because I can find happiness in my accomplishment for me. I deserve it!


What are your best tips for cleaning? Share below!

Cleaning a Top-Loader Washer

As we were washing clothes the other day, we noticed a rather nasty odor coming from the washer. Yuck-o, right? So I looked up some ways to clean our top-loader washing machine. Most recipes called for bleach and vinegar. Well, I only had vinegar on hand and beside, bleach is stinky! After trying out what I found I think next time I would tweak it a bit.

Supplies:
2-4 cups White Vinegar
1/2-1 cup Baking Soda
Toothbrush that no one's using or will use ever again

That's it!

Step 1: Fill up your washer with the hottest setting temperature on the largest load. (My washer says HOT COLD on EX SUPER. I don't know why it says hot and cold but it was indeed super hot while filling it up.) After it fills and before it agitates stop the cycle.

Step 2: Now pour in the vinegar and the baking soda. Turn back on the cycle for about 3 minutes and let it agitate. Turn off the cycle again. Now we're going to let it soak for 1 hour with the lid open.

While this soaks, pop off the liquid bleach spout thingy and clean that out. WARNING: this may be really dirty and disgusting. I also cleaned the lid, the hinge behind the lid, and the softener component. Fun fact: liquid softner is bad for you clothes and machine. It can create build up on both. I pulled off the softener dispenser and got to work. There was so much grime on it I still couldn't get it all the way clean after scrubbing and scrubbing. I popped it back on and poured some vinegar down there and let it all soak. I also scrubbed the agitator a little bit which helped since I don't think our machine had ever been washed and probably needed more care than usual.

Step 3:  After the 1 hour of soaking turn back on the cycle and let the machine do the work. An extra rinse may be a good idea. I just wiped everything down after the cycle was over. Keep the lid open.

So pretty! I didn't even know the letters on the bleach and fabric softener dispensers weren't black...Gross huh?

A handy trick in making sure you don't have a stinky washing machine as quickly is to leave the lid open after you are done washing clothes. This allows the machine to dry out before mildew can start to grow. Also, clean your machine regularly. A cleaning trick is to use vinegar as a fabric softener instead of actual fabric softener.

Clean House= Time for Crafting!

I have to admit it: my house is never perfect. I get grossed out easily when I clean. I have a toddler that loves to draw on things, dump things out, undo what I just did, and create all forms of chaos. This week my husband and I are trying to get back on a schedule like we were on before we moved last September. Here are some other tips that I have found useful in keeping a clean(er) home.

• Identify what makes you not want to clean. For me I'm easily grossed out so wearing gloves helps me dive into the work. I have a pair for dishes and a pair for bathrooms that are labeled.
• Clean when you have energy. If I leave a task to be done after my daughter goes to bed it has about a 50% chance of getting done. If I try and get it done at nap time it has a much higher success rate.
• Have your cleaning supplies that need to move around, stored together in a toteable container. I have my bathroom supplies in a container with a handle that has a space for a sponge to dry and a spot for small things. You could also have one of each cleaner stored in each room. 
• (As I mentioned above) Have a schedule! For me it is best for me to know that on a certain day I get  certain things gets done. Sometimes when my house is a mess and I'm cleaning an area I get discouraged because there is so much more to do but if I can reassure myself that "yeah, the laundry basket is overflowing but that's okay because tomorrow is laundry day," it makes me feel a lot better. I have a friend that does all of her cleaning on Fridays. Find something that fits in your schedule so it is feasible for you. Here is what the schedule for our house looks like. We have a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom, two-story house, with a bonus room. This is laminated and put on our fridge.
  

  

  I love having fresh bathrooms starting out the week so Monday is my bathroom day. For the most part I clean rooms that are near each other on the same day. Laundry day for the rest of my life with be Wednesday. I know that I always have clean sheets on the beds and underwear in the drawers :)

• Get everyone involved. Yesterday as my husband and I were cleaning up some leftover chores, I found little ways that PB could help us. She fetched a laundry basket for me and helped to put some clothes on the floor in the hamper. 
• Celebrate getting your work done! When we worked as a family to get some chores done we gave PB tons of praise and went out for shaved ice. Yum!

 Do you have any tips for making cleaning less of a chore?

Pintesting: alcohol for a microfiber couch

Right before we found out I was pregnant with my first baby, we bought a house. To furnish said house, we bought a microfiber couch and loveseat.

In off-white.

Yeeeeah.

Allegedly the couches were treated with some sort of protectant that meant you could only use water on the seats. But using water to clean your cushions leads to watermarks, which look even worse than the stains themselves:

The spot-cleaning with water solution is pretty much worse than the problem here.

Naturally, even though I'm not much of a deep cleaner, I had to repin this cleaning idea.

Source: chrisandrobinsnest.blogspot.com viaJordan on Pinterest

The basic idea: use rubbing alcohol instead of water.

Alcohol dries faster than water (the technical term for this chemical property is "volatility." Now you know), so the alcohol won't leave those big watermarks. Once it's dry, you take a scrub brush to the fabric to lift the fibers again.

Results!

A lot better, but obviously not perfect. I might have been able to get better results with more alcohol and more scrubbing, but it's very hard to tell how much scrubbing you still need to do when the entire cushion is wet! And if you're getting the entire cushion wet . . . hm.

Verdict:

My other solution to this problem was to liberally wet the entire couch top of the cushion: no edges, no watermarks, right?

Frankly, my solution was a bit easier. Both methods require considerable elbow grease, but my hands got tired from working the sprayer (a very wet rag is sufficient to clean the couches with water). Plus alcohol fumes are NOT fun. Alcohol does dry a lot faster (the above pictures were taken about an hour after the before shots, and the couch was dry enough that we put the cushions back on).

Also, neither method is effective on stains like pen, candy or permanent marker, and neither really helped with the very dirty arms of the couch.

And of course, a year later, the couch is just as bad—worse in places where my youngest has decided to express her artistic side. :\

Pintesting success:

I don't want to be all bad news. I tried this pin this weekend, and as you'd probably expect, the results were perfect:

Source: Laura on Pinterest

Line a bowl with foil before draining meat for easy cleanup! My husband thought this was so clever, he had to tell me twice!