Man — I can’t believe how boring it is to have a house up for sale. I have all my projects either completed or put on the back burner so everything can be put away and the house look perfect all the time. I don’t have anything to do.
Hence the experiment to see if you really can whiten yellowed pillows without bleach. My pillows are in good shape so no need to replace them, but they were due for a bath (pillows should be washed a couple of times a year) and they were definitely yellowed. I didn’t just want them clean, I wanted them white again. And I really wanted to do it without resorting to bleach. Below is the recipe I used.
I poured the peroxide and vinegar into my top loading washer and started to fill it with hot water while I brought 1 liter of water to boil in my kettle. When the washer was half full I added the detergent and borax and agitated it until I felt the borax was well dissolved and everything was mixed.
Before the washer was full for a large load, I poured in the boiling water and finished filling. I put one pillow on each side and squished them down into the water as well as I could. I have fiberfill pillows and it was like they filled with air. I let my pillows go all the way through the normal wash cycle, I left the door open so it stopped before emptying. I turned them over so top side could get the same cleaning and ran it through another was cycle, this time closing the door so it would empty and rinse. I rinsed them a second time to make really sure the soap was out.
Into the dryer with dryer balls to dry, and dry, and dry. I had read you should dry fiberfill at a low setting. After an hour plus on low and they were still wet, I turned it back to the warmest setting for another 40 minutes and they felt really dry. I didn’t want to put my head down on a pillow that night and find it was still soggy.
That’s it. They turned out beautifully and I was glad to not sleep with residue of chlorine beach every night. And no, I did NOT take before pictures. There are some things I’m just not gonna share…
