Spring Cleaning Tips
Jane Robson, founder of The Fine Cotton Company and all-round expert in everything relating to home linens, offers top tips on how to clean bedding and towels to keep whites white and towels super fluffy – plus she has great laundry bags for making washing a pleasure not a chore.
Keep Whites White
Wash regularly at 60 degrees to limit the build-up of dirt and detergent that will dull whites over time. Be exact when measuring laundry cleaner, too much will cause a build-up of product and too little won’t clean the clothes thoroughly. A biological detergent should also help to banish the yellow or grey tinge and make whites brilliant again.
To bring a new lease of life to whites that have lost their sparkle try including half a cup of white wine vinegar in with the wash. It’s a wonderful cleaning agent as the high acidity levels are naturally anti-bacterial, this neutralises odours and dissolves residual product.
For crisp white bed linen, our Biarritz 320TC Cotton Percale Bed Linen Collection is a sophisticated choice or for a softer silkier feel, our Brooklyn Bed Linen.
Ensure Towels Stay Soft and Fluffy
A damp, used towel is full of dead skin cells and micro-organisms, so when left to dry in a moist, warm bathroom environment this makes a lovely home for bacteria to breed in.
As people tend to have different personal hygiene habits, rather than talking in weekly or daily terms, it’s generally it’s accepted that towels should be washed after they’ve been used three times – that’s providing they can be dried thoroughly in between washes.
Any odour at all indicates the presence of microbes so that’s also a very good sign that towels could do with a spruce.
Wash at a minimum of 60 degrees to kill bacteria and go easy on the detergent and softener – far from making towels soft and fluffy, it’s a build-up of these products that can make towels start to feel matted, stiff and scratchy.
Replacing softener with vinegar or baking soda will strip away odours and can help to restore the soft and fluffy feel of your towels, along with increasing their absorbency.
It also pays not to overload the washing machine and tumble drier as allowing space for air to circulate will ensure the fabric fibres don’t become squashed and matted. That said, too much tumble drying can also take its toll, so it’s perhaps best to try and alternate between air drying and tumble drying.”
Como Organic Cotton Towels
Investing in a quality products will ensure towels stay softer for longer. A collection of thick and super absorbent white towels such as these Como Organic Cotton Towels from The Fine Cotton Company are manufactured from fully combed 700 gram organic cotton will feel as good as new wash after wash.
Weekly Washing For Bed Sheets
Bed sheets should be washed on a weekly basis at a minimum temperature of 60 degrees Celsius in order to destroy micro-organisms and other nasties that may be living in our linens. Fresh air and sunlight is also a very effective way of killing germs, although it’s not always possible given the UK’s unpredictable weather, so running a hot iron over sheets and pillow cases will ensure any leftover bacteria is destroyed.
Good quality natural materials won’t fade or wear with washing so they can be laundered weekly at high temperatures and it won’t stop them from looking their best. All of our bedding is washable at 60 degrees – the temperature that kills dust mites and bacteria.
And finally, make washing a pleasure not a chore
Personalised laundry bags will help all members of the family take charge of their laundry and hopefully limit the need to search under beds for stray socks and shirts.
Any of our laundry and shoe bags can be customised with up to 10 letters for a name or perhaps the uber-organised among us could label them with ‘darks’, ‘whites’ and ‘colours’ so the laundry is sorted before it gets to the washer.