How NOT to Clean Your Pillows!

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THE IDEA:

• Lovely fresh clean pillows

THE CLAIM:

• A couple spins through the washing machine will clean your pillows of accumulated allergens, dust, bacteria, mold, and dead skin cells

THE RESULT:

• FAIL!

 

For anyone who was like me and really wanted this to be as simple as it sounded, I'm afraid you're going to be sorely disappointed! This pin experiment was a disaster and a half! The details given about why it's so necessary to wash our pillows gets you pumped up to do it. When you actually stop to think about all the dead skin cells and dust that accumulate in/on your pillows month after month after month, it's almost nauseating. It's like when you read those articles about how your laptop keys and cell phone screens are actually some of the nastiest, most bacteria ridden things we use on a regular basis. Gross! The beginning of the post for this pin read much the same way, leaving you ready to jump up and wash your pillows right then and there!

 

The process sounded simple enough. Basically, you're supposed to squish out as much air as possible from your pillows before sticking them in the wash, making sure to use 2 pillows for balance. Run a full cycle then run a secondary spin cycle to get rid of the excess moisture....... The excess moisture... I'll say that again... The "excess" moisture. (We'll get back to that.) After the wash, you put 2 tennis balls into 2 socks and toss the pillows into the dryer. The instructions allow for the possibility of  a "few cycles" for the pillows to be thoroughly dry. A few was the understatement of the century!

2 tennis balls to help beat out moisture. 2 white socks to prevent color transfer from the yellow tennis balls.

This is what the floor looked like after pulling out one of my pillows after the full cycle and before the follow up spin cycle.

This is what that same pillow looked like after the follow-up spin cycle. Water logged!

Now... before I go off sounding like I'm bashing the originator of this pin, I will say that the post expressly talks about what type of pillows are best for the machine washing method and which aren't. Unfortunately, however, I DO in fact have polyester pillows which was on the "OK" list to toss in the washing machine. Even more than that, you'll see in the pic below, the instructions on the manufacturer's tag are pretty much the exact instructions given in the post! SO, while the instructions were in fact correct for the pillows I used, they just flat out didn't work!

I washed 3 pillows. The 2 with the gray chevron stripes on them did dry a bit quicker at about 4 cycles in the dryer. However, those are my crap pillows. I bought them on sale at Target and they are the worst, most pointless pillows I've ever purchased. They lost their fluff within a week. So, in my opinion they should not have taken 4 cycles to dry. The other plain, water logged white one, took 5 dryer cycles and even after the 5th still felt damp so I left it to dry for 2 days! I suppose the part of the manufacturer's instructions that say "Allow pillow to dry thoroughly" doesn't say how long that should be, right? WHATEVER!

Unconvinced, that the follow-up spin cycle would remove enough moisture, I had the Hubs help me squeeze out some water before tossing the pillow into the dryer... I was right.

If you wanna get technical, the pin was in fact successful in that any visible stains (aka drool spots!) were removed and the pillows did smell fresh and clean. BUT, the process of getting these pillows completely dry in the end is not something I would feel confident wasn't going to result in mold growth days later!

IF, I was to try this again, I think for thicker pillows it would be smart to do 2 spin cycles after the full cycle, as opposed to the 1 spin cycle that was recommended. And I'd want to leave the pillows outside to air dry after 2-3 spins in the dryer. It was recommended that you wash your pillows 3 times a year. PASS! After the hassle of trying to wash them this time, I think I'll just take my butt down to Big Lots or Target and buy new ones instead! My time is worth the $9.99 each pillow costs!