While the end-of-summer breeze is wafting the scent of freshly cut grass, it is time to freshen up my curtains. This house has great curtains: Curtains from a time when people really bought curtains, not these cheapo things I see in the department stores these days. Curtains with lead weights in the bottom. Curtains with pleats, hooks, and a mechanism to draw them.
These curtains are, however, a bit musty and dusty. I don’t really want to throw most curtains in the wash. Some are delicate and will fall apart, some are canvas and will shrink, some are polyester and will pill, some have dozens of little hooks placed just so, and I don’t want to have to take them all out and put them back in. Curtains are expensive to replace if you make a washing error too. Shrink one panel and there goes the whole room, unless you have spares. Who has spares?
That’s why I wash mine on the clothesline. Here’s what I do:
- Fill a spray bottle with 1 Tbs dish soap, 1 tsp laundry detergent, and water up to the top.
- Hang the curtains on the line,
- Hose them down to saturate them.
- Spritz curtains with soapy water and gently work the suds through with your hands.
- Hose out the suds, let dry.
- Iron appropriately for the fabric, and
- Rehang!
P.S. Top it off with a DIY linen spray! There are lots of recipes for homemade linen spray out there, and the main way they differ is what kind of alcohol to use. Here are 3:
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