Fitted sheets are an invention of wondrous convenience when you’re making the bed, but not so much on laundry day! We’ve all got the one clever friend who really knows how to fold a fitted sheet — flip, tuck, fluff, fold, and hey-presto! Elastic corners are tucked out of sight, and the recalcitrant fitted sheet’s now a tidy little well-behaved rectangle, ready to put away in the linen closet with its neat little flat-sheet buddies…

I’ve poked around YouTube a good deal, looking for help, but most of the instructional videos for folding fitted sheets aren’t really all that clear, or the results aren’t as good as we’d really like, if you’re going to go to all that bother. Finally, however, my newlywed pal Katelynn discovered The Perfect Fitted Sheet Folding Video Tutorial:

Okay, now take a deep breath and just watch that first part again, where she’s putting the corners together. The whole trick is in getting all four corners of the sheet tucked inside each other, the way the video shows. Grab a fitted sheet to play along while you watch this, and you’ll find you quickly get the hang of it.

Also, yay for the beautiful white-haired calm and capable Granny-type lady who makes you feel like, hell yeah! — oops, sorry Gran — we can do this stupid chore. No fitted sheet is going to go unfolded around here from now on, gol’dang it!

Soap scum and mildew are icky facts of life, and they just love a shower curtain.

Frugalistas refuse to toss out a shower curtain and buy new, however, when it’s so easy to clean them!

Fabric shower curtains can usually be laundered in lukewarm water and a gentle machine cycle — check the tag to be sure — but how do you clean a vinyl shower curtain?

In fact, it’s actually very easy to get a vinyl shower curtain looking as clean as new.  Just pop it into the washing machine every couple of weeks with the bath towels and a splash of ordinary laundry detergent, and wash the whole lot in warm water.

• Note that the water has to be warm — not hot and not cold. Hot water will shrivel up the curtain and end its useful life — and cold water will make it too stiff to slosh around in the washer.
• The other key here is to be sure to throw it in with the towels, because the towels will buff gently against the curtain and help to get it clean. (Saves a lot of “elbow grease”!)

Stop the washer before it progresses to the cold-water rinse, and take out your nice clean vinyl shower curtain while it’s still warmed up, and all soft and flexible.

Hang it back up on the rod over your tub, and just use the showerhead spray to rinse off any leftover detergent.

There you go!

And here’s a sneaky little mildew-fighting tip that I discovered by happy accident:

See, our upstairs bathtub is set under a sloped ceiling, so the shower rod is set a bit lower than normal. That means the average shower curtain is always a bit too long, so I just trim it off at the bottom with scissors to keep it from dragging underfoot in the tub.

And that’s how I discovered the benefits of cutting off the stupid little hem they put at the bottom of a vinyl shower curtain (why do they do that, anyway? It’s not as if vinyl will ravel and fray like a woven fabric!)…

That turned-up hem is just a trap for mildew and grime. You don’t need it, so get rid of it.  Yes, get out the scissirs and just cut it off. Without the hem to trap moisture and soap scum and such,  your shower curtain stays cleaner-looking for much longer.

Curtain photo: PlayfulLibrarian

How do you know when it’s time for Spring Cleaning? Some people go by the calendar, to know when it’s time to roll up the sleeves and muck out the house.

My grandmother was one of those housekeepers. Not that Gran’s house was ever anything less than pristine (and we’re talking “eat off the floor” clean, not a concept with which I, myself, am intimately familiar!) — but she did watch the calendar.

Every year, immediately following St. Patrick’s Day, she’d boil up gallons of water and get out the scrub brushes. Curtains were washed and ironed with starch. Rugs were draped over the clothesline and vigorously beaten with a wire gizmo that was made for the purpose. Beeswax and lemon oil were melted gently together into a furniture polish that filled the place with that evocative scent that, ever since, has spoken to me of damned hard work, dust up my nose, and rubber gloves…

Some people go by the calendar to start their spring cleaning; but others go by the weather –

Is it warm enough outdoors to throw open the windows? Yes? Then it’s time to start washing those windows, inside and out.

Yep, that would be another way to go…

But the truly gifted Domestik Goddess relies on more subtle signs that Spring Cleaning Season is once more upon us:

• Your mother admires your attractive beige mini-blinds; but the blinds were white, when you put them up last fall.
• The mudroom has been earning its name for at least three weeks.
• No matter how often you put it firmly away, the vacuum cleaner keeps re-appearing, as if by magic, in the middle of the living room floor.
• The dog’s squeaky ball rolls underneath the spare room bed… and he refuses to go in there after it.
• The cobwebs are getting dusty.
• A visiting small child gazes around your home, then looks up at you wide-eyed with awe and wonder, and asks: “Did you know that people can tidy up sometimes?”

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear off the top — I am not obsessed with laundry.

That said, I think we can all acknowledge that clean is better than not clean. There’s nothing like the remnants of last week’s lunch on your shirt-front to ruin an otherwise promising first date or job interview.

Or so I’m told…

And I’ll bet Kelly Ripa would agree. (Even if she weren’t the perky new spokesperson for Tide’s latest offering.)

The main point of Kelly’s amusing pitch is the ease of schlepping a nifty little bottle of 2X Ultra Tide from the store to the laundry, compared to the giant old-style detergent bottle.

Concentrated detergent, you see, means the same number of loads can be cleaned with the contents of a much smaller bottle — lighter to handle. And good for the environment, too, of course, what with that much less plastic packaging.

But, hello… aren’t we missing a low-cost exercise opportunity here? Buy two giant jugs of detergent, maybe, and do a few bicep curls in the checkout line? Beautiful biceps could be yours in no time!

And then maybe no one would notice a dirty shirt?

Oh, right.

It’s Kelly Ripa.

She could crawl into work in a potato sack and all the fashion mags would be talking up the “mud look” before coffee break. For the rest of us, however… the Tide people say they’ve tweaked their formula for 2X Ultra Tide, not just the bottle, to make the product better than ever at stain removal.

Squint close at the screen, what do you think?

Hmm, Kelly’s shirt does look spick-and-span bandbox clean…

I’ve just been looking at HGTV’s ideas for sewing a table runner, thinking of seting a special table for all those holiday dinner guests.

If you’re going to do the festive holiday table runner, why not make it much more than just a simple strip of cloth down the middle of the table?

Especially with an opulent fabric like a tapestry or brocade, pointed ends that are weighted with thick silky tassels add flare to a classic, and classy, dining room decor!

And here’s the best tip for laundering your fancy table linen that I’ve come across in some time, courtesy of Mary Wilkins:

Machine washing can turn your tassels into a tangled mess. Instead of sewing them to the runner, sew a small shirt button on the wrong side near the point. Slip the loop of the tassel over the button and no one will be the wiser. Next time it goes in the washing machine, slip the tassels off and wash as usual. Your tassels will be just like new when you put them back on.

I’m reminded of the button-on collars that were standard wear for men in earlier times, and of the fancy beaded pieces that Victorian and Edwardian ladies fastened on to perk up a plain dress.

This handy tip could apply to any delicate trim or embellishment on an item that’s otherwise machine-washable — not only table linens and bedding, but everything else from blouses to handbags.

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