The joys of washing!

My dining-room cushions (that I recently mentioned) have had a temporary make-over.  It is amazing what you can do with some stain remover!  My lovely neighbour who is a sewing whizz said she would make new ones but at £20 a piece that would not be much cheaper than buying replacements, and she was wisely concerned that new covers would not last long with 3 small children!  So she took in the worst affected cushion and returned it looking nearly as good as new - no longer marbled with green and blue paint, but cream again and respectable enough for my book-club get together!  Less than a week later, my children seemed to have an uncontrollable need to release their creative juices - and so out came the green paint... again!  I went in to the room to find a puddle of green on the floor - and a sea of green on our table (luckily covered by an oil cloth)!  So the cushions back into the wash while I continue my hunt for fabric to re-cover them myself.  Being a seamstress' daughter, I should be a dab-hand at sewing, but my fear of power tools (whether it be a sewing machine or band-saw) keeps me away from the sewing machine I inherited from my grandmother.  A phobia which I should persevere in over-coming, as a year on a shoe-string would benefit greatly from home-made items being quickly made up on a machine!

Perhaps I am a little odd, but to me there is nothing better than a basket of clean washing.  There is something very satisfying about solving a problem like a stained shirt by soaking it, scrubbing  it  and then watching it transform into a clean item as if by magic!  With my trusty washing powder and stain-removers our clothes last for season after season, and once we have out-grown the items, I gain much satisfaction from passing on my children's clothes to friends or on to a charity shop where someone else can benefit from them.  For environmental reasons mainly I am not a fan of tumble dryers, but I do have a washer-drier and so when the need occasionally arises to quickly dry school trousers at 7am, or help out a neighbour's teenage son who needs his jeans a.s.a.p. to go out in - it is possible!  A load of sheets or towels will find their way to the drier on a rainy day; unfortunately this summer this has been much more than I had hoped for. They just don't fit on my faithful clothes-horses, and it saves filling every room with draped sheets!  However, this resistance to using tumble driers, although not really financially driven, does save me £40 in energy bills per year. Ironing is also practically non-existent in this household now - thanks to a friend who showed me how to create ceaseless trousers by wiping them with a firm hand. This performs wonders on clothes. Otherwise hanging them out in the sunshine keeps them pretty straight!