Have You Ever Washed Your Pillows?

Wash my pillows? Weird question right? you are probably thinking that the next thing I'll ask is if you wash your mattress too. Well, washing your pillow sis not as silly as it sounds. Think about it, your pillow does get packed with a lot of dirt and germs: the creams and pomades from your hair, the germs that go into it when you have a cold and you sneeze or blow your nose when your head is on your pillow, sweat on hot nights, lots of dust in the atmosphere, and for the people who drool in their sleep, all that drool also finds it way into your pillow! If your towels, bed sheets, pillow cases get to be changed and cleaned regularly, so should your pillows. You should clean out your pillows every 6 months and air dry them in the sun more regularly.

So how do you clean a pillow? It's not complicated at all. Cotton and down pillows can be cleaned in various ways. You can hand wash, machine wash, or dry clean them. If you choose hand wash, then use a mild detergent instead of a bar soap, as bar soaps may leave residues. Wash gently using warm water. Rinse well in cold water squeezing the pillow constantly to ensure that there is no residue left.

In machine-wash you should make sure that detergent is completely diluted in water before placing the pillows inside. You can do that by letting the machine run for a few minutes with after adding the detergent and before adding the pillows. Then stop it, squeeze the air out of the pillows and put them inside the washing machine. Set your washer on a gentle wash cycle. An extra rinse would be ideal, but if your washing machine does not have that button, then simply put the pillow through the final rinse cycle once or twice to fully rinse out any residue.

In the final rinse, use vinegar to help in the removal of the residue. Very little vinegar, two or three drops is enough. Add a tennis ball to keep the down from bunching up into a corner during the spin cycle. Hit the spin dry feature twice to ensure that most water has been removed. Synthetic fiber pillows can also be hand or machine-washed the same way as before. Lower quality fiber pillows may bunch up after cleaning.

If that happens, pull out the fibers and redistribute them after drying. In synthetic pillows use the spin dry feature only once, so that the fibers bunch up as little as possible. Feather pillows can be washed by hand or dry cleaned. Hand wash them exactly as you would with a down pillow, but using less detergent. Also keep in mind that feather pillows are harder to get wet, because feather tends to repel water.

Foam pillows can only be hand washed very gently with mild detergent. Mix water and detergent first, then gently squeeze the soapy water into the pillow by pressing smoothly on the pillow repeatedly. Do not wring or twist them, because they are very delicate. Rinse well using vinegar during rinse.

Wool pillows should be dry cleaned, because of their material, which makes it very difficult and unsafe for them to be cleaned in any other way. It is important that before attempting to wash your pillows you should read the care instructions on the package. Use some of these tricks to keep your pillows clean longer. Use two pillowcases on your pillows to resist the accumulation of dust and bacteria, sweat, and other body fluids. Change your pillowcases often as dirt penetrates the fabric and will end up on your pillow.

Cover image via mfirsthome.com