Well...I have been seeing posts on whitening solutions (especially to whiten pillows) and I was skeptical. I have only found one product in the many years I have dealt with well water that seemed to work the best and I have not been able to find that again now for a couple of years. So....I had to try it out.
I was so skeptical that I didn't want to wash the pillow I used all the time...just in case it came out misshapen or deformed from my small size washer and dryer. So the picture above if the before picture of a pillow that we don't use but on occasion but that resides on my bed all the time as an extra pillow. It gets washed probably every 2 to 3 months but doesn't have as many well water stains as the one I use and wash all the time.
Here is the after picture. I realize that the picture does not do this process justice as it is not that easy to see the before and after and how much whiter the after picture is....so I decided to go ahead and try it on my regular pillow...which I was every couple of weeks and is VERY stained from the well water.
Gross difference right! The bottom pillow was the one I had already washed in the whitening process and the top pillow is my every day pillow that is stained from washing in the well water (and from sweat too I am sure). When I put them next to each other I was grossed out...even though I knew I had just washed my every day pillow last week. So I used the whitening process on my every day pillow too.....
While not perfect...it was a very big improvement....How did I do it....well here ya go
I found the recipe for the whitening process online and you can see it here at One Good Thing by Jillie but I made a few adjustments to her process.
I have an apartment size washer, not a full size, so it will not fill with the lid up. This makes it more difficult to fill the washer and then add clothes or other things to it. Mine also does not have an option for a second rinse or allow you to change to a specific part of the cycle at all. So I put the pillows in the wash machine first then added her whitening solution which is:
1 cup of laundry detergent (I used my homemade also from her site)
1 cup of dish washer detergent
1 cup of bleach
1/2 cup of borax powder
I closed the lid and let the washer run like normal. When it was done, I checked to see how they turned out and then flipped the pillows so that the bottom portion that received the treatment before was now the part I could see and then ran it again adding the same amounts as before. After the second time through everything was much nicer looking and I put them in my apartment size dryer with a tennis ball (I only had one but it would be better with 2 or 3 if you have them). The pillow I washed first was misshapen from many washings previously (one of the reasons it was delegated for an extra pillow only) and this helped to smooth it out. My every day pillow had also flattened a lot and this helped to plump it back up. I have to say they also smelled wonderful under my head last night and I enjoyed a very good sleep after a long day of testing. Hmmm....I think I will have to try this out on my white socks next (since I have well water socks seemed to be the only thing I bought in white...maybe not anymore).
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