How Do I Machine Wash Puked on Pillows Without Wrecking Them?

[NoWittyUsernameIdeas]

We are in the throws of a tummy bug going through our house, and DD2 (22 months) has not quite yet developed any bucket skills, resulting in 3 x puked on pillows.

I have put them all in the washing machine (label says machine washable at 40 degrees), with the dettol laundry sanitiser etc, but they have all come out with the filling clumped up inside the cover. I have managed to 'tease' it out so they might be just about useable but they're still not great and buying new pillows all the time is going to get expensive (especially for the cot size ones!)

I thought it might be to do with the spin, so turned it down a low as it would go, but still the same.

Any ideas?

read somewhere about this problem with gilets & the advice was to put in tumble dryer with dryer balls on tennis balls and this helps restribute the stuffing might work for pillows

That's a good idea, thank you.

Yes to tumble dry with dryer balls or clean tennis balls.

buy hollow fibre pillows (ikea does fab ones).
they can be washed as required, don't go lumpy and dry quickly.

I think these are hollow fibre, they're the mothercare bog standard cot bed ones, and an M&S one.

then fluffing them up a few times whilst they dry should do it.
I don't have a tumble dryer and they come up fine.

Fingers crossed then!

For future, buy pillow protectors. A good thick one should act as a barrier between the pillowcase and the pillow itself and would limit the sogginess of the pillow itself.

Do you know if they make cot pillow sized ones Pooka?

I would soak them in water and washing powder over night and then leave them to dry flat. Takes a bit of time but the pillows don't get ruined

I use waterproof pillow protectors to protect pillows from puke/pee

Next time use some nappy pins through them at various points before washing them. I use these:

www.amazon.co.uk/Beautiful-Beginnings-Nappy-Pins-Size/dp/B00AWB6M22/ref=sr_1_11?s=baby&ie=UTF8&qid=1428879004&sr=1-11&keywords=Beautiful+Beginnings

Crikey, I found a way of doing this and I cannot remember exactly what it was.

It was something like ... I soaked them in the bath in hot water and detergent, rinsed them in the bath a few times, then I rolled them up from top to bottom and then put them in the washing machine to spin with the roll horizontal in the drum.

So imagine your rolled up pillow is like a really fat piece of swiss roll, then imagine just putting the swiss roll into the machine so that one rolled-up end touched the left side of the drum and the other the right side of the drum.

This counteracted what I felt was the problem with spinning pillows in a machine: that the pillow often end up lining the inside of the drum and that spinning it in this position was what caused the stuffing to screw up badly.