Laundry Love -- Take 2

I finished reading Laundry Love, which S says is now the most expensive book I've ever read.  I'm not sure he's fully right about that, but I see why he says so:

- I have bought new laundry soap;
- I have bought new stain remover;
- I (by which I mean K) have painted my laundry room a sunshiny yellow.

Regarding the last item, this is something I have wanted to do/have done for some time, prior to even knowing about (much less reading) Laundry Love.  The book was just the final kick in the pants that I needed to make it a priority.

I have attempted one radical washing experiment since getting this book.  I washed a many-years-old (and accordingly many-years-soiled) goose down sleeping bag.  It had gotten a touch mildewed in our basement, so my choices were either (1) trash it right now, or (2) attempt to wash it and see what happens.

It did not start out promising. First of all, the bag was so dirty that gray water was coming out of it after even several rinses.  But bedtime approached, the bag was still soaked, and it of necessity became a project for tomorrow me to deal with. 

I squeezed as much water out of it as I could, but I had to go to work when it was still dewy outside.  S obliged me by spreading it out in the hot summer sun to bake when the dew cooked off.  He turned it over midway through the day.  He put it in the dryer with some dryer balls for hours to try to break up the clumps.  We went to bed.

I went back to work the next day.  To hear tell, the dryer smelled like a moldy dead animal, and the bag wasn't much better.  

But, we repeated this cycle for several days.  Ever so gradually, the smell decreased.  And once enough water dried out, the clumps broke up, the dryer balls did their magic, and the bag was fluffy again.  I'm not sure it's fluffed quite to its original level -- or perhaps more to the point, I think due to the age of the bag, many of the internal baffles are busted and so the down shifted around quite a bit during this process.

But the takeaway is that -- though this was a much longer and much more complicated process than the book makes it sound like it should be -- it worked.  I have a home-washed goose down sleeping bag.  I always thought it couldn't be done.

I'll count that as a win.