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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Adventures With Pillows

I've heard over and over about dust mites in pillows and that they need to be regularly washed, so I found some video instructions, ordered tennis balls (for the dryer), and set forth to clean my pillows.

The instructions said in a front loader, it's possible to do just one pillow, but I decided to do two because of the balance issue. I wasn't wrong about an uneven load being an issue, but I didn't realize just how right I was about it. Even with two pillows, I got an error message. I cleared the error and tried to get through the remaining 3 minutes of the spin cycle.

Another error.

And another, and another, and another.

Maybe if I took out one of the pillows and just put one through spin? I decided to try that. Nope. Now it started throwing the error at the 9 minute mark.

Hmm. Okay. The pillow that I'd taken out earlier doesn't feel too wet. I'm going to throw that in the dryer while I figure out what to do about the pillow that's sodden. I'd put it in there with the cover on and that seemed to be holding water in, what if I unzipped it?

Nope. Still erring.

I started checking for answers online. A woman said she washed her pillow with a blanket to help balance the load. I decided to try that. For a while, I was hopeful that it was working, but that little error chime sounded yet again. I'm growing to hate that noise.

My next thought was to try hand squeezing the pillow out, but it's so filled with water, that I'm not sure it will be enough. I don't want to put it in the dryer dripping wet.

Just when I was about to give up hope, a miracle happened! The thump of the tennis balls in the dryer is a welcome sound.