a peek inside the fishbowl

I bought a new cotton sheet set. I’ve been waiting to buy something for over a year because of our Shopping Embargo and the pledge we made not to buy anything deemed non-essential. As far as I was concerned, as long as our old sheets still had life in them, new sheets were not a necessary purchase.

My resolve was seriously tested back in the fall. I was hired to research and write an article for Costco Connection about their new Kirkland Supima cotton sheet sets and I learned a LOT about the whole process: from the fibres of cotton plant to what happens on the warehouse floor. I was particularly impressed by the buyer I interviewed for that article. She was so passionate about the company’s commitment to deliver a great product to their members that I swore our next purchase of a sheet set had to be those Exact Ones from Costco.

I am rather, er, particular about how our bed linens are laundered. I wash them, stick them in the dryer for five minutes, then smooth them out on the bed to dry. Sadly, that did not prevent permanent creases to form along the top hem of the flat sheet of the ones we have been using to date. PERMANENT. CREASES. They drive me a tiny bit batty. I think it must have happened that ONE TIME I left the sheets in the dryer too long when I first got them. Once the creases were there, I couldn’t do anything to fully get rid of them. No matter what I did, how much I pressed and prayed and cursed, heck, I even tried ironing out the creases and the shadows of creases but they never truly went away. And of course, as soon as we slept in the bed after laundry day the creases just went right back to their creasy old selves.

I swore that THIS time around, with our brand new 420 thread counts from Costco, was going to be different. I did my research, or at least, I tried. Before I washed them for the first time I searched “how to prevent creases in cotton sheets.” Unfortunately, this didn’t result in anything very helpful so I decided to go it on my own.

How to avoid creases in your gorgeous brand new cotton sheets

1) I put the sheets and pillowcases in the washer on a quick cycle on “warm” with a very small bit of detergent. Our washer has a “maximum extract” setting, which I turned off to minimize the spinning and wrinkling.

2) As soon as the wash cycle was done I hung them on the line (indoors) and smoothed out the wrinkles and the hems.

3) I left everything hanging for an hour or so and then brought them upstairs and smoothed them out on the bed.

4) I ironed the sheets, right on the bed, while they were still damp. I took extra time on the top part of the flat sheet where the worst of the creases tend to occur.

It worked! No creases! You know what, they look great, even after we’ve slept on them a bunch of times. Tey FEEL great too. This has nothing to do with my laundering process but it’s worth mentioning, although now that I think about it, trying to describe what our new sheets feel like is kind of like describing the texture of a cracker. They’re crisp but not too crisp. Smooth, but not slippery. They have the right texture, and they’re surprisingly toasty. I will say this, it feels like sleeping in a hotel bed… which is my ultimate goal when it comes to sheets. Clearly, I’m willing to put in a bit of elbow grease in order to achieve the bed of my dreams. (No pun intended.)

Now if I could only figure out the pillow side of this equation! I find pillows so hard to buy. It’s not like you can really try them in the store. And as a side sleeper and bedtime reader I have been finding it hard to make my pillows work for me. Is there a brand or type of pillow you can’t live without? If so I’d love to hear about it!