I have a little bit of a backlog of stuff going down so will do some catch up, starting with this: The Pillow Washing Incident.
I have used the same pillow for years. I don’t know if twenty is the right number, but it feels right. To be safe, we’ll lean towards fifteen-years since I started using the pillow.
The kind of pillow that is neither the same color nor shape that it once was. The original structure has been consumed by time and replaced by a strange new realm.
And it slept perfectly.
But like all such things that once were pillows, you have to wash them to keep the gods-of-nightmares away and it has been some time since I have washed it. How long? Well…
It has been a time.
I figured last Friday was a good time to wash it up and threw the vaguely orange tesseract into the vortex of a Hygiene+ wash cycle. It went perfectly fine for the first 95% of the process. Then, right at the end, when it should have just been bringing the ray of light to Doug’s sleep-land, something occurred.
The stitches on the corners of the pillow-esque thing popped out in the final spin cycle and two-decade-old (give or take) fluff, albeit clean and once again white, exploded into the washer and as it went to drain out the water, the water-saturated fluff got sucked into the works.
How many works, you ask?
The drum had fluff in and around it. The drain hose was clogged. The filter was clogged. Water was spewing out of the system. There was the extra spice that it was Halloween when this occurred and Kaz and B were off doing some Halloween-themed things. Which meant it had to wait until we could teamwork it.
I had a washer half full of water, half full of a poem entitled “The Deconstruction of What Was Once a Pillow,” and half full of despair. It was a 150% situation. I did what you do: I watched Blacula and Trick ‘R Treat.
The next day (November 1), Kaz and I had to work on clearing it out and getting some of the water and still-water-saturated fluff out of it. Thanks to some YouTube videos and finding an English-language version of the manual, we got the drain hose out and slowly got the excess water out and then was able to get the filter clear.
I did not take any photos of the process, which is a shame, but you can roughly replicate it by just staring at Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” especially the right-hand piece.
Then we had a few cleaning washes to get the rest of the fluff out.
As of right now, the system is working as intended and, thanks to some sunny weather, we are getting some speed drying done to make up for the backlog.
What lessons did we learn, Space Pilgrims?
LESSON THE FIRST, wash your pillows more often.
LESSON THE SECOND, either tie off the pillow case or get some sort of laundry bag that zips up, just in case.
LESSON THE THIRD, every screw up is a good time to learn some new valuable life skills. In this case, how to drain and repair and gunked up washing machine.
We have yet to figure out LESSON THE FOURTH, which is where in the heck do I buy a new pillow in Brussels? I suppose at some point in time, I’m going to figure out what the IKEA is like.
In better news, here’s a blurry photo I took last night before bed to show off how bright the full moon was. My phone camera is not the best at night photography, but I appreciate the mood.
