For the past few weeks, I had the time to clean more than normal. Although I always make time to clean and try to keep things around my house clean, with a serious virus going around, I wanted to make more efforts to be more thorough in cleaning. This included washing my bed sheets to make sure they are clean.
Many people I know today use bleach to clean and disinfect their sheets, but when I was a child, I was raised with a different way to disinfect sheets: Hang them outside for the sun to shine on them. This way of disinfecting sheets is not something that can be used during cloudy days, but in sunny areas, such as Arizona, where I was born and raised, it was an important part of cleaning clothes, towels, bed sheets, and anything that required washing.
The process I used to disinfect my sheets has changed since I was a child. I always had very bad allergies, but as an adult I began to work on ways to disinfect my sheets and other washables without aggravating my allergies. Now that I’m at home, I had the time to figure out how to disinfect my bed sheets without exposing my sheets to allergens from outside. And here is how I do it…
- Take the sheets off the bed and hang the sheets outside
- Let the sheets hang outside for a half hour to a few hours, depending on how dirty they are and how long you don’t mind them spending outside.
- Take the sheets Inside and wash them in the washing machine like normal
- Once washed, Put the sheets into the dryer to dry
- Once sheets are done drying, iron them.
The problem with the way my sheets would be washed as a child was my mother would wash my sheets then let them dry outside. This caused the dirt and allergens to get onto the fabric and stay there. By hanging the sheets outside in the sun first, the allergens would get washed off in the wash.
As for ironing, ironing would also add an additional way to kill germs. If ironing is not an option, steaming would work as a way to disinfect the sheets as well. I have found that ironing is not always needed, but if I want to be extra thorough in my cleaning and disinfecting, it is a step I will always add to ensure everything is as clean as I can get it.
I have used this method on my clothes, towels, blankets, and even my pillows with various degrees of success. The biggest problem I face when washing other items this way is the size of my washer and dryer. Sometimes, the pillows and blankets I wash are too large to be washed and dried completely in my washing machine and dryer. This is due to the fact the washing machine and dryer in my house are not big enough to wash the size of my blankets or pillows in the thickness my pillows are in. Also, ironing isn’t an ideal last step for washing and disinfecting them. Instead, I steam the pillows and blankets.
Well, that’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed this post! Thank you for reading!
