Pillow Talk

After all my decluttering and making my home a fresher, happier place to be, I decided to reward myself with new pillows for our bed.  The pillows we were using were Ralph Lauren feather pillows that we had gotten for a wedding gift almost 15 years ago.  That's a pretty good life span for anything nowadays, isn't it?  But they were getting rather flat and not quite as comfy so it was high time for some new ones.

As I was in the pillow aisle, I decided to do something that I normally don't do.  I  bought the most expensive pair, instead of the $1.97 ones on the aisle cap.  (Which ones do you think will last longer?)

It felt so great coming home, placing those nice, fluffy, wonderful pillows on my bed.  Till I had to decide what to do with the old ones!  Do I just stuff these in the trash?  They’d take up half my garbage can!  I can’t in good conscience donate them to the Sally Anne – that’s just….ick.  I have to admit, I’m a terrible drooler when I sleep, and well….you can picture the result!  But I’m trying to become more mindful of what I put in the landfill, so wanted to see if I could figure something out.

I went to the “The Google” to see if I could recycle flattened pillows in some way that would be useful.  One of the sites recommended cutting them open, pulling out the inside, refluffing it, and using it to stuff new pillows or refill stuffed animals.  I got my scissors (oh my – they were so easy to find in my new Drawer of Fabulousness!) and cut them open.  Wow – who'd a thunk?   Feather pillows are really stuffed with feathers!  And those 15 year old feathers actually looked clean, fresh & feathery!

I took a plain white pillowcase from the linen closet, took the feathers out of the two old pillows, and stuffed them in the new one.  This was a very entertaining project for my four year old  and I to do together.  Feathers stick to everything!

Then I simply hand stitched the open end of the pillowcase together.  Voila!  A new, full, fluffy pillow to present to my 10 year old when she got home from school.

This project took me no more than 30 minutes from start to finish, which by the way, is shorter than the time it took me to go to Wal-Mart & back.