New Towels!

If you think I'm a geek about my existing towels, I shouldn't admit that I get giddy about new ones. Only because I don't buy them often, I splurge and buy good ones and I love colour.

If you want those new towels to be beautiful for longer, treat them right! Always launder towels before using them for the first time. Here are a few great things I have learned with new towels:

• For new, coloured towels, soak and then wash them in a vinegar/ water solution to help 'set' the colours. Salt (regular table salt) also helps set colours, so if you wanted to do a second 'soak' you could do this as well with about 1/3 cup of salt. With bold, saturated or deep colours, this is particularly important;
• Deep colours may bleed for a few washes even when treated, so be careful what you wash them with for the first 10 washes!
• Fabric softeners reduce the absorption of your towels. They also reduce the 'loft' of your towels. This is because they coat the cotton. If you are starting with new towels, never use softeners on them. If you have used softeners on them in the past, wash them with a 1/2 cup of baking soda to help minimize the silicone build-up. If you use dryer sheets, these too add build-up. Use a 1/2 sheet or old sheets (ones used already) if you must use them at all;
• Always wash sets of towels together to keep them the same colour and 'fading' at the same pace;
• Use less detergent than a normal laundry load to avoid build-up... about 1/2 to 3/4 is sufficient;
• Only use bleach on white towels. A colour-safe bleach might be used on coloured towels but it won't have the same disinfecting effect. Either sunlight or regular vinegar washes will help disinfect your coloured towels;
• Wash coloured towels in warm water. Cool water keeps colours fresh but hot water gets rid of body oils, dirt or staleness;
• Using lower heat to dry towels will increase softness/ reduce shrinking. A gas dryer is more gentle on all fabrics, if you have a choice; 
• Towels do create more lint at first and it might continue for a few washes.This is normal for good towels - just clean out the lint traps and don't stress it;
• Lint from cotton towels is perfect nesting material for birds... plush and natural and biodegradable. Won't hurt baby birds. I put some out in a suet cage and let the birds take it from there. Oh - and won't they have pretty coloured nests??
• Avoid using towels on sink areas or directly on toothpastes etc; some face creams, toothpastes, and cleaner residues have lightening agents which will discolour your towels permanently. Watch for terms like 'whitening', 'brightening' or 'peroxide'.

What kind of towels do you like? Did my tips help you? 

Is Fall the New Spring?

Is fall the new spring? Do you actually clean your whole house in spring?

Spring cleaning has always been a challenge for me. I try to do it but when the weather is still cool in March and April, I can't air out the house and really get to that cleaning. As soon as the weather is nice in late April and May, I certainly don't want to be cleaning. I get 'some' of my house done by my May 1 deadline.

Photo Pixabay

From the days of being in school and starting a new school year at this time, fall has felt like a new start to me. Summer is winding down, the days are getting shorter, and the air has a bit of crisp cool to it. To me, this is a perfect time to get to those things I am too lazy to get to in spring.

Honestly here are a few things that are smarter to do in fall:

• Steam clean the carpets.Before the house is closed up for the winter months and after the open doors and dirty feet run through the house. 
• Paint. Spring can be cool and damp and who wants to be painting when the nice weather finally arrives? The over-hot and humid days of summer are not the best time to paint and neither is any day under 12C. Fall is fresh and those low-humidity days are perfect painting weather - inside, so you can take advantage of a drying breeze and outside because you are so weather-dependent
• Wash the baseboards. This is not a fun task; it's not hard it's just dreary. I will put on my headphones and listen to a book on audio and get to it. It's a perfect fall task because you are cleaning off all the summer dust from the open windows and blowing breezes before the house gets 'sealed' against the weather. 
• Wash curtains. For the same reason, the drapes collect dust all summer long. I like to wash my drapes and hang them wet in early November. Why? Because the house has less windows open to let dust in and because I usually  have the heat on so the drapes dry easily. 
• Wash blinds... yep same reasons. Then they are clean through the winter and just need the regular cleaning to keep them in great shape. 
• Attack paper clutter. When there are cool or rainy evenings or afternoons, that is the perfect time to get rid of the build-up of magazines (consider donating them to an emergency room or doctor's office), piles of flyers or junk mail, and the other assorted piles of papers.

Besides, if you are a gardener, this is the perfect time of year to put in trees and shrubs! They have a couple of temperate months to settle into the ground before the winter comes, the earth is warm, and there is none of the full burning sun of June/July.

My version of LAZY means being smart about when I do my big cleaning jobs. My goal is to have the easiest time of it, have it stay clean for the most number of months, and get it right the first time. There is nothing I hate more than having to do something twice or having something half-done!

How about you? Do you clean in fall? How do you get your 'spring cleaning' done? 

Housekeeping Chuckle (3)

@The Lazy Housekeeper