Laundry

Laundry piles by the door
Laundry piles on the floor
Laundry piles here and there
Laundry piles everywhere!

Cat Urine

While we had the pug over, our cat Tuesday hid most of the time. Well, until I found out where she’d been peeing.

I’m not sure why but our mean cat has become a scaredy cat. She hides whenever something is out of place, like another dog in the house. Dexter, our other cat, is the complete opposite as he will lay out in plain sight as if egging on the guest to take their best shot. It wasn’t until day two that I noticed an ammonia smell coming from the office and I was pretty sure I knew where it was coming from. When we moved in I had simply thrown down a bolt of fabric on top of my new and unused cutting mat I had gotten with a gift card for my birthday along with some hand towels. Yes, this was the “just unload everything and throw it wherever” pile. Needless to say, the cat took this as a pseudo litter box.

Fortunately the bolt of fabric was okay, but a couple hand towels weren’t so lucky, so I threw them into the garage to wash later. I should’ve washed them right away, but I didn’t. So, needless to say, the cat urine was rather ripe when I finally got around to washing the articles yesterday. I tried our usual Tide and added a couple scoops of Borax and put the machine on presoak, heavy soil and stain cycle. It still smelled like cat pee. So I decided to try the load again, but using All Free and Clear, which we use on all of our dog’s bedding because of her sensitive skin and allergy issues, along with a cup of Borax and half a cup of white vinegar. The sniff test after that load was done revealed no hint of cat pee, so I consider it a success.

So, perhaps next time, and I always assume she’ll pee on something inappropriate again either while she is mad at us or we have guests she disapproves, I’ll try this method first to find out if it does work better or if it really was just washing them twice that made a difference. However, from my last experience of washing pet urine it took three washes and a lot more vinegar, including a twenty-four hour soak, so perhaps the All does work better for getting out pet urine better.

Laundry

It seems laundry is piling up. I blame it on the fact that the washer and dryer are in the garage.

I’m not certain why, but not having an indoor laundry room is rather, well, weird. I guess it is because I was so used to seeing the laundry room from the kitchen every day that I would just instinctually throw in a load when needed. Now that it is out of sight, it is practically out of mind, with the exception of the piles of clothes in our bedroom that require cleaning. The piles are too big to close the closet door, which is probably the only reason I noticed it needed to be done in the first place.

So perhaps I need to come up with a better system. Perhaps I need to figure out a way to separate darks, sturdies and lights better so that once those baskets are full, I can take them out to the garage and wash them. Of course, coming up with a system will require me to actually separate the clothes in the first place, which means more work when throwing them, which probably means this won’t happen at all. We’ll see, I suppose, as the current Toss-And-Try-Not-To-Trip-Over-The-Pile Method isn’t working out so well.

Laundry

Yes, laundry is one of those words that feels dirty, probably because dirty is usually put before it when discussing unsavory topics. However, I have a few tips not discussed in my previous laundry day post that can turn dirty laundry into clean laundry.

We all know to separate like colors when doing laundry, but why? Well, dyes from some clothes can leach onto others and make them seem muddy. This is especially true of blue jeans, which when washed with a pink shirt can make the pink shirt look dirty. Yes, I know this from experience. So what are like colors? Jeans, greys, greens, purples and blues all seem to do fine together. Khakis, greys, greens and browns seem to do fine together too. The exception is pastels of these colors, and I’ll get to that soon. Ideally, I’d only wash our blue jeans with other blue jeans, but since we simply don’t wash them often (yes, I admit to wearing my jeans for a week in a row before washing them) but just having one pair in a load of greys and blues won’t harm anything, as long as the zippers are zipped and buttons buttoned. And by the way, reds should only be washed with reds or other red colors like burgundy and maroon, at least during the first few cycles.

The color spectrum of laundry seems to go light, medium and dark. I tend to toss out the medium spectrum and reassign the clothing to either the light pile or the dark pile. Lights in our house mostly consist of whites in the form of T-shirts, socks, towels and wash cloths. I also like to wash my pastels with the whites because it keeps them brighter and doesn’t muddle up their colors. Also, it adds to the load of whites, since this is usually the smallest load of the week. Another way I ensure brightness is by adding a scoopful of Borax with the detergent.

There are also times when it is necessary to wash clothes by the dryer cycle. It may seem silly to do a separate load of laundry just by how they have to be dried, but if you already have them separated it will make it easier to just toss everything into the dryer on that setting rather than pulling out what needs to be on one setting over another and drying two loads.

Separating your laundry may not be for everyone. However, if you do, you just might prevent that favorite pink polo shirt from becoming a pinkish-bluish polo shirt. And never underestimate the power of Borax in the laundry to not only soften your water (if you have hard water which doesn’t clean as well as soft) but brighten whites and boosts the cleaning power of your detergent.