CrossTeam Properties Offers Advice on Home and Garden Improvements

When winter is fast approaching, we all feel the need to have a nice comfy bed to snuggle in. Cold weather means it is time to dig out the heavy artillery from your linen closet. Your flannel sheets, comforters, and heavy blankets will make an appearance at this time. Here, we offer you some tips on how to care for them.

•    If the washer and dryer you have at home are too small, it might be a good idea to take your winter beddings to a commercial laundry that has machines big enough to handle even the heaviest comforters. This will not only result in cleaner beddings, it will also avoid damaging your washer and dryer with loads that are too heavy for them.

•    It may surprise you to know that most down comforters can actually be washed safely. It is important to read the manufacturer’s instructions carefully and use only the mildest soap possible.

•    Put some tennis balls into the dryer when drying your down comforters to minimize clumping and allow the down to maintain its fluffiness. To ensure a long life for your comforter, it is recommended that they be washed once a month at most.

•    For softer comforters and beddings, you may want to use fabric softening sheets as opposed to liquid softeners. This will ensure a more even distribution of the fabric softening ingredients and prevent static electricity from building up.

With all the many bed linens that you will buy in the course of your lifetime, the amount of money that you spend could add up significantly. Bed linens should really be seen as an investment of sorts, and skimping on a few pennies now may mean having to deal with bed linen that does not last as long as you may have expected. It is important to be clued in to the proper care and storage of bed linen so that you can get a lot of quality use out of them for a long time to come.

•    Keep in mind that different types of bed linens will require their own specific methods of care and storage, even if they look a lot alike to you. It is important to follow the manufacturer’s instructions carefully with regard to their use, storage, and care.

•    Keeping three sets of bed linens on hand is a good idea since it will allow you to have one set on the bed being used, another in storage for quick replacement, and one set in the laundry.

•    Make sure that you use all sets of your bed linen equally in order to lessen the wear and tear on any one particular set.

•    Bed linen should ideally be changed every week, depending on the climate where you live. Places with hotter or more humid climates may require more frequent changes.

•    When using the same fabric for bed sheets in your pillowcases, wash them less often in order to preserve their life.

Caring for your bed and mattress is one thing, but your bed sheets, blankets, and pillowcases deserve their own special treatment as well. Here are some tips on how you can prolong the life of your valuable bed linen.

Washing bed linen
• In general, most bed linen should be washed in cool or tepid water at a lower temperature than 104°F. Hot water is generally not necessary nor recommended, although you will want to check the label for exceptions to this rule.

• If you feel that your bed linen is fairly clean, you may want to set the wash cycle to “light” in order to make them last longer.

• Don’t use too much detergent. Most bed linen will do just fine with half of the amount of detergent recommended by the instructions on the detergent’s box. If you happen to use too much detergent, you may want to run the bed linen through another rinse cycle.

• Do not use bleach unless absolutely necessary as it will cause the fabrics to break down much faster.

Drying bed linen
• Keep the bed linen in the dryer only until it is just short of totally dry. This will lessen wrinkles in the fabric.

• Make sure that you remove the bed linen from the dryer as soon as possible and fold them quickly. Again, this will lessen the wrinkles.

• If wrinkles develop in spite of your best efforts, throw a slightly damp cloth into the dryer along with the bed linen and run it for an additional ten minutes.