At the end of the day, there’s nothing more relaxing that can be compared to lying down and sinking your face in a soft, warm, fluffy pillow. But, the moment that you realized that there’s more than just fluff and feathers there such as hair, dust mites and other unpleasant stuff that’s in your pillows, you might think twice and would not look at your pillow the same way ever again.
With that being said, how do we avoid lying down on a pile of filth?
How Many Times Should You Wash Your Pillows?
You should wash your pillows at least twice a year, given that you haven’t gotten ill, or haven’t soiled anything into it. For those living in warmer and humid areas, pillows need to be washed at least three times yearly, or every 4 months.
Washing Instructions For Your Pillows
The good news is, you don’t have to wash these pillows by hand. The majority of pillows these days is that they’re machine washable. Before you throw your pillow into the washing machine, make sure that you check care instructions or tag, if any. If there isn’t any, the method you’ll need to do to wash your pillows greatly depends on the materials your pillows are made of.
Instructions For Washing Your PIllows In A Washer
Here are the things that you need:
Liquid laundry detergent – about one to two teaspoons. Best to choose those that are low in suds.
Wool dryer balls or tennis balls
To get started, your washing cycle should be set to gentle, with cold water then add your detergent to your washer. Then load one pillow at a time – try and put pillows on all corners or sides to ensure that the load is balanced. Proceed and turn on with the washer just like how you would wash clothes. Just make sure that you add another rinse cycle to ensure that no suds are left. Suds can potentially damage your pillows. When you take them out of the washer, make sure that you fluff the pillows.
To dry them out, use low heat and use dryer ball or tennis balls. Stop the drying process every ten to fifteen minutes, take out the pillows to fluff them out and repeat until the pillows are dried out.
If you have synthetic pillows and you’re about to put them in the dryer, follow the instructions above except:
You can wash your pillows with warm water instead of cold.
Certain synthetic materials can’t be placed in a dryer, an example is foam pillow.
When Should You Replace Your Pillows?
Unfortunately for us, there are no “best before” dates when it comes to pillows, and the frequency on how often you need to replace them generally depends on the environment they are kept. Other than that, there are also different factors to take into consideration in helping you determine how often your pillows need replacing.
Fluffy: Is your pillow still fluffy, or has it started to feel lumpy? Do you need to form the pillow for you to become comfortable? If it starts to feel lumpy and extra effort is needed from your end to feel comfortable using the pillow, then it’s time that you need to get a new one.
Springy: A good way to test the springiness of your pillow is by folding it in half. If your pillow jumped back to its original form, then it’s still good to use. If it remains folded, it’s a sign it needs to be replaced.
Age: Ideally, pillows need to be changed once every 18 months. The longer you use them, the more skin cells and dust mites may sit in there.
Can you wash pillows? Absolutely and you should wash them. Contact a Think Maids in your town to care of your pillow cleaning for you.