Wash Day!

Have you ever checked into the prices to have furniture professionally cleaned?  Oh, my goodness!  I think I should go into business.  I know it involves bringing a steamer into your home but I never expected it to cost nigh onto $400 to clean my living room set.  That is a tad outrageous when you think that my whole set only cost around $2000.  Back when Hurricane Katrina thought my old set needed washing, I was forced to buy a new one.  Even though she tried to help by dousing everything with water, it was nasty flood water and, well, that did not set well with me.  I had the boys haul everything out into the yard to wash it down with buckets of water as we had no running water yet.  Mark took one look at that mess and told me to get rid of it.  "Buy a new set." he said.  So, my sweet sister, Susan, drove me all the way to Jackson some nearly three hours away.  (That being the nearest town that had furniture that was not all squishy and muddy!)  When a kindly salesman asked me what color set I wanted, I told him "mud"!  He sort of scrunched his face and questioned me again.  "Mud!"  You see,  I was using my head on this one!  I live on a Bayou. Bayous have mud..icky, brown, smelly mud. And..I had just gotten Ms. Ez, one soon-to-be very large dog.  I figured if you cannot beat them..join them!  Mud-colored furniture would be ideal so if a small spot of mud happened to get on it (ha ha ha!  Happened to get on it!  Yeah!)..I could wipe it off without too much stress.  Since Katrina, the set has served us well.  It has not shown the mud, coffee, blueberry, dog, grease and other stains that come with living on the Bayou.  I would wipe the thing off and it was good to go!

But today, it occurred to me that the set had never been really "cleaned" in the eight years that I have had it.  That thing has to be pretty dirty by this time! Over breakfast, I asked Michael what he thought we should do.  I really did not want to spend $400 on cleaning the sofa when I still have a dog and still live on the Bayou where mud literally jumps on just about everything.  "Wash it."  Huh?  "Wash it." he replied for the second time.  "Wash it?" I queried.  "Yep."  So, we washed the living room furniture.  I cannot say we actually hauled it outside and squirted it with the water hose as I refused to go that far.  Michael pulled off covers of all the cushions and I handwashed them.  Ugh!  I was right when I thought the set was dirty!  The water was...like muddy bayou water!  He hung them out to dry on the clothesline and came back inside to vacuum the entire set.  Afterwards, he wiped it all down with a damp cloth.  (I have a great son!)  It already looked a lot better even though I now had large white cushions.  Late this afternoon, we slipped the dry covers back onto the cushions and the set looks and smells wonderful!

So, save yourself about $400 and wash your upholstered furniture!  (Or at least wash those cushion covers!)  I do not advise putting the things in the dryer though..you might find that they will not fit ever again.  Hang them on the clothesline!  (This reminds me of something so cute that my sweet son-in-law said one time.  When he and my daughter moved into their current home, he informed me that they now had an outdoor air-drying system in their backyard!  I looked puzzled and asked what he meant.  "You know, like that thing where you hang your clothes to dry!"  Ahh, a clothesline!  I love this young man!  He had never used one before and did not know what that strange thing was called but he was really happy that they had one!)  So, make sure to use your outdoor air-drying system if you wash your sofa covers!