Spot Clean Only

Ok, so I bought these pillows at Home Goods for pennies a piece.  You can't tell by the pictures because I must have used a flash or something but the white part got dirty.  Actual dirt.  Wouldn't spot clean.  Actually I didn't try.  

 And on this one...Can you see on the bird? The bit where you might imagine a wing?  Looks like a shadow? That's poop.  I didn't have it in me to take a damp sponge to it.   I had reached my threshold of being grossed out for the day- my 7 year old wiped a booger on his arm and then my middle guy ate it. OFF OF HIS BROTHERS ARM.  NOT HIS BOOGER.  THEY WERE LAUGHING! I was gagging.

 And plus this was happening....

open, close. Open, close. Open, close. 

Open, open, open, open.

The drawers look a lot messier on camera, so does the kitchen. 

Open, open, open, open.  

CHEESE! 

 So I read the care label on the pillows.  Like I said, they didn't set me back and probably should have been tossed...but I loved the looks of 'em.  It was declared poop by my two year old- it may have been pudding.  We had pudding in the house and like I said, I really liked the pillows.  I couldn't go in for a sniff test.  When I saw Spot Clean Only I had a little chuckle.  You see, back in the day, I worked in production for a small woman's clothing company.  I'm pretty sure now they are a big company and they do a whole lotta lines- no pun intended.   Then, it was a small women's clothing company.  Most of the volume was in pants, (they invented the boot-leg pant, imagine still living in a world without a boot-leg pant? Shudder.) Ordering the care labels was the production departments job.

Let's say we sold about a thousand pants a season, just say, I don't really know.   Then say we sold about 20 skirts, 300 shirts, 30 leather jackets...the point is it was a low volume operation.  Care labels are sold in the thousands.   In order to write the care label that actually suited the proper care of each piece, (and each piece was basically custom when you're working in double digits), the production department would have had to test all of that fabric, put through so many washes, drying, steaming, or ironing- then ordered a thousand care labels for each puny style.  Can you imagine that poor suffering production department? Doing their best? Working their hearts out on stitches and hems and the right buttons and fabrics- just so the design team could get their vision to market and the sales team could fulfill their orders?! Amazing department.  AMAZING.  So busy. The production department didn't have that kind of time.  I know because my boss and I were the production department.   My boss, I'll call her Wheels, the one half of our production team- had been in the business for years.  This wasn't Wheels first spin around the track of care labels.  She 'splained me how it was going to go down.  Two care labels.  Machine Wash Cold Hang Dry Cool Iron If Needed & Dry Clean Only.   Any time we went to production we'd grab a handful of each and head up to the sweat shops.  They weren't really sweat shops but we called them that.  Wipe brow.  Anyway, with master craftsman-like precision we'd assess the proper care of each and every garment.  Silk, leather or shiny? Dry Clean Only.  Everything else? Machine Wash Cold.  You can't ruin anything with those two.  Saved us a bundle in time and labels.  We got no complaints. Voile.

I've never trusted a care label since.

Looking at my pillows -Spot Clean Only- that is an honest mans escape for a job undone.   I put my assessing skills to work.  There was a zipper and down feather insert-they were polyester.   Whoever was in charge of production was taking the safe way out. There's no way anyone tested these.  I tossed them in the wash- cold, I hung them dry.

 Poop or pudding, they're clean now!  Now, do kids come in polyester?

Have a great week! xo