Sterile sheets?

I think I have a dim memory that we washed sheets about once a week as I was growing up...I think I recall that my mother would ask us to take the sheets off our beds periodically and bring them to the laundry room.  These days, a visit to my parents' house on a Saturday often finds the sheets washing and my mother making beds before nap time.  In our house, though, sheets get washed when they are visibly dirty or when I can't recall the last time they were washed.  I think I can justify this to an extent; I literally wash at least one load of clothes every day, and more like five on the weekends.  For the first few months of Baby Boy's life we used cloth diapers, and I'm shocked that anyone ever had clean clothes to wear!  But, again, that season of life has passed, and I am adding "frequent and consistent sheet-washing" to my cleaning list.

Washing sheets is pretty simple, but I very seldom do anything with pillows or the mattress.  On a tip from my mother, I sprayed Lysol disinfectant spray on the pillows and bare mattresses while the sheets were washing.  That created a nice, fresh smell that hope also contributed to their cleanliness.  I found this page a few weeks ago that suggests cleaning the mattress with baking soda and lavender essential oil.  I never made it that far today, but it's on the to-do list.

We use a down comforter on the master bed all year long, and we keep it covered with a duvet cover.  (The comforter itself is purple -- I think it was on sale! -- but looks beautiful inside our blue and brown cover.)  We've had it since we got married, which is six years this month, and it's never been washed.  I did a little research on washing a down comforter, and found a lot of sources, all of which pretty much say the same thing:  wash it infrequently, in a front-loading washing machine, in cold water.  Then dry it with tennis balls/tennis shoes (clean) to fluff it, which will take several hours.  I don't have a front-loading washing machine, so our comforter has been sitting on the cedar chest waiting for a trip to my parents' house to take advantage of theirs.

My sources also say that I can wash my down pillows the same way, which is great news...I was pretty shocked at how dirty the pillows themselves looked once I removed the covers!  (And I'm religious about removing my makeup every night, so that means the yellowish stains on the pillows are just body residue...yuck!)

Even though cleaning the pillows, comforter, and mattress is still on my to-do list (which I will probably post later so that I don't forget it) I was really pleased with the way the clean sheets looked, smelled, and felt.  I'm going to try -- really, really try -- to do this once a week!

On that note, as soon as I get the rest of the house at least touched (all that's left is the kids' rooms!), I think I may go back to some sort of schedule.  I have a few ideas, and I may try them out and let you know which one(s) work most effectively for my busy-yet-hyper-organized personality.