Laundry Day! The Fight For Brighter Whites!

The mission? To make my "white" sheets white again!

So, today was laundry day, and I was definitely feeling a little nervous at the seemingly impossible and daunting task at hand: to get my once pure white duvet, back to its former glory. When I'd first gotten it, it was impossibly white, but my love for blue ended up being its downfall, as the peacock blue cover completely bled into it and gave my duvet an almost smurf-like shade of blue. Unfortunately, I didn't notice this til after the winter, when I washed the cover and discovered the unwanted dye job! :(

I've always been a little wary of Clorox, partly because of its habit to eat away your fabric if you use too much, but mostly because I just can't stand the eye-watering strong smell! So imagine my surprise when I was at work and noticed Clorox pods :O! I was completely gobsmacked and couldn't believe it!! I'd (obviously) heard of Tide Pods and Gain Pods, but Clorox Pods were completely unheard of to me! When I read the directions on the back of the bag, it said that the pods were more concentrated and not only helped with it not eating your laundry, but also all but eliminated that awful smell ❤❤❤ Talk about a dream come true!

Funnily enough, when I mentioned this to my husband, he told me we'd had these pods for a long time, and he started laughing when I told him I'd never seen them before, so how could it be that we'd had them before? He laughed even harder and said they're on the top shelf and since I'm only 4'8'', I probably just never looked up that high before. Hated to admit it, but he was entirely right haha!!!

As someone who grew up seeing Billy Mays repeatedly telling everyone how amazing it was, I'd decided to finally take a shot in the dark and buy a small container of the original Oxiclean to see if it really lived up to the endless promises I'd been fed my whole life... and I loved it!! It really did clean my clothes better than before and it made it smell even nicer, something that definitely helped push me over the edge to decide to keep using it in the future. So, when I knew I needed something to whiten clothes, my first choice was Oxiclean White Revive :) I read on the back of the container that you were supposed to soak the laundry for a few hours beforehand, but my duvet was just too big so I was hoping it wouldn't really hurt my chances of unsmurfifying it.

I added my normal detergent, and then the Clorox pods and White Revive and crossed my fingers, hoping for the best.

When I was waiting for it to be done washing, I kept coming back peeking inside hoping to see a white so dazzling white that it would seemingly sparkle back at me, but that never seemed to be what I saw, so after a while, I just decided to stop and let the detergent and washer do their job. My idea being, that if a watched pot won't boil, then a watched washer won't magically whiten my sheets either. And so I waited.

After what seemed like forever, the washer let out its alarm, telling me it was time for my dreams to (hopefully) come true .

Sad to say, when I opened the washer and looked inside.... my duvet still looked blue and didn't even seem to have any difference in the colour at all, not even a small amount. Rather than admit defeat, I decided to give the sheets a second wash, and change things up a little, and despite hating the smell, switched from Clorox pods to the old-fashioned liquid Clorox, thinking maybe the pods just weren't as strong as the liquid.

I added liquid Clorox and way more White Revive and waited for the second wash to be over, and this time, I was even more anxious about what the outcome would be. About twenty minutes in, I went to check the colour of the duvet, and it was still that blue-ish tint!! I paused the machine, thinking it might help whiten if it "soaked" in the Clorox/Oxiclean mixture for a little bit and after ten minutes, started it again. 

Imagine how even more disappointed I was when the second wash was done and it still hadn't brightened at all!! Now I really didn't know WHAT to do! But I still didn't want to give up. But what else could I do? It wouldn't be smart (or environmental) to just spend all day and night repeatedly washing the duvet hoping for it to whiten.

Since I wasn't prepared to give up just yet, I decided it was time to pull out the big guns: I went to the store, and got some heavy duty Oxiclean detergent, and went to remove and add different whiteners and detergent for the third and last attempt at whitening my duvet. Once everything that I wanted was in (and at the varying quantities that I wanted), I set it to wash and went to wait.

After what felt like an eternity, the wash was done and I went to see what (if anything) had changed. Disappointingly, but not exactly that surprising at this point, absolutely nothing had changed at all, the only difference being that my duvet now had a sickeningly strong Clorox smell to it, that made my eyes water a little. So not only was it disappointing, but I felt like I had completely wasted my afternoon :( 

The thing that made me feel even worse about the whole laundry disaster, was that after everything was said and done, my dad told me he knew the entire time that I wouldn't be able to whiten the duvet, but wanted me to learn for myself! I guess I can understand where he was coming from, but at the same time, it feels a little cruel.

Afterwards, as I was folding and putting up my duvet for next winter, I couldn't help but feel a little better knowing that since it was my duvet that was off-colour, no one would know once it was inside its cover :] Even if I couldn't fully push away my disappointment at being unable to get it back to its original colour.... 

When I told my husband what had happened, he pointed out that if my blue duvet cover had bled through and partly changed the colour once, even if I had managed to whiten it... as soon as I put it back in the duvet cover next year, it'd just turn blue again haha! If only I'd though of that before!! 

End result? No change at all.