Grody

One of the things that I noticed in the weeks before I left for Burning Man was this sort of a Spring Cleaning feeling.

Like, a need to get rid of unnecessary things around my place.

I gave away some kitchen storage containers I haven't used in months and then I started thinking about my duvet.

I'm pretty fastidious when it comes to cleaning my bedroom.

I have a sort of dust allergy.  It's maybe not an allergy so much as, when there's dust, I notice it.  I get sneezy.  Sniffly.  Will wake up with crusty eyes and a stuffed nose.

So, maybe that is an allergy after all.

Anyway.  I wash my sheets every week.  Probably shouldn't as it tears them apart pretty quickly, but I also sleep a la (I want to say a la mode, but that means with ice cream, no?) naked, so I figure I'm keeping away the germs or skin dust or whatever by washing my sheets.

And I dust and sweep my floors, too and my bedroom is pretty free of clutter.

I notice on the weeks when I don't dust that my eyes and nose are icky by the morning.

Well, it occurred to me last month that I don't remember the last time I'd washed my duvet.

Or the cover.

And I wasn't particularly bothered by this, because, well, I wash my sheets every week.

I debated and debated taking my duvet and cover to a wet cleaner (the more environmentally friendly version of the dry cleaner) but they said they'd need it for four or five days and even though it's summer, I still like my blankie at night.

I hemmed and hawed, but didn't like the idea of coming back from Burning Man to a dirty(ish) duvet so I decided to wash it.

I looked up on the internet how best to do this, and then I spent most of a Saturday washing, and rewashing and then dry dry drying my duvet and its cover.

Now, that's not the part that shocked me.

What shocked me was when I unzipped the cover.

And saw the piles and piles of dust in the creases and edges.

Oh.  My.  Goodness.

I guess I'd never washed the thing.

Like.  At all.

Somehow it just didn't occur to me.  My parents bought me a brand new, fancy, expensive (they had it made! At a store!  It's cool!) duvet cover, and I never wanted to ruin it.  Or.  Something.

Because the amount of dust was disgusting.  Or, at least by my standards.

I vacuumed the thing first.

Which was gross.

And then washed it.

I don't know why, you guys.  But all that dust that had been falling on my floor, and on my bureau and chest of drawers?  I never thought through the fact that it was also falling on my duvet.  It just... I never thought about it.

But it had.  So I washed out years and years worth of dust and let's not talk about what all dust is made up of, let's just say that I followed the internet's directions and washed and carefully dried both my duvet and my duvet cover.

And I noticed that the cover did look a different colour.  Lighter.  Er... maybe... dust... free.  Ahem.

Totally gross.

But the best thing of all?

I woke up the next morning and for the first time in months, did not have crusty eyes or a stuffed up nose.

Go figure.

So now you know how I was accidentally gross and disgusting and didn't even know it.

The more you know!