launder them linens.

Q: Is there anything lovelier than freshly laundered bed linens?

A: No.

The arsenal.

But there's lots of things lovelier than laundering them yourself-- unless you are one of those lucky kings of the world who have an in-unit washer and dryer, in which case I bow down to you, Your Majesty. 

Because of my health stuff, I take three medications daily, which is about three too many for me. As a result, I've spent the last few years cutting out unnatural ingredients in cleaning products, toiletries, and makeup to try to compensate.  No Tide, no Windex, no Pantene, and so on. Once I discovered vinegar, I decided that vinegar could clean anything and everything (with very few exceptions).

Back to laundry. All of our sheets are white, or at least they were when I bought them. (It's hard keeping them that way because someone seems to sweat so much during the night that someone's side of the bed always ends up off-colored. This someone is not me. The off-coloring on my side is from spilled tea and tears, thank you.)

So instead of bleach and strong detergents, I've taken to soaking the sheets in a white vinegar/water/lemon juice concoction before washing in hopes of whitening them up. This past week I had all three sets of sheets to do at once, so I soaked 'em all in the (clean) bathtub for a few hours. I wrung them out but didn't rinse them, and then I packed up the old Ikea bag and hauled them down to the laundry room. The hauling is why I hate laundry. That, and the need for quarters. I need to collect quarters?! What am I, an early 20th century orphan who lives on the streets and eats porridge? (I don't know what that means.)

Anyways.

We've been using Biokleen laundry detergent for about a year, and I recently got some Seventh Generation Natural Oxy Stain Remover at Target. (Target!) All you have to do is pop in a scoopful or two as the washer's filling up. I recommend both products, as well as experimenting with vinegar and some lemon juice. Today's Friday which means your laundry day is probably around the corner, so you can read up on additional natural ways to enhance your laundry experience here and here.

Last laundry note: down. I've been waiting for months to wash our queen size down comforter, because I kept thinking I needed to take it to a laundromat that has an industrial size washer and dryer. Well, I got pretty fed up and decided that if I was doing the sheets, the comforter would go in, too. Guys, it totally worked. A queen size down comforter in a conventional top-loading machine. I just made sure to do it as its own load, and used a bit of the Biokleen detergent and the Oxy Stain remover. I ran it through two cycles just in case, and then popped it into our regular dryer.

The internet advises you use tennis balls in the dryer to fluff up the down, but I used two regular old dryer balls that we had and it worked just swell. After 70 minutes of drying on low, some of the edges were still a bit damp, so we hung it over our shower curtain rod, opened up the window all the way, and let the rest dry naturally. (I hear you can do the same process with feather beds, so that's my next project!)

Verdict: totally delicious, fresh, clean bed. Nothing finer. Do you anything special to keep your bed healthy and awesome?