Winter Cleaning

Sometimes it can be extremely difficult to stave off the winter doldrums.  The fall was filled with endless and exciting hostess-ing possibilities; pumpkin carving, costume parties, thanksgiving dinner, holiday baking, tree trimming and cocktail parties.  I for one felt like I spent the entire fall and early winter shopping, cooking, serving and cleaning, and loved every minute of it! While they are a blast, once the holidays are behind you it is easy to convince yourself that now is the time for lazing about, counting the days till spring. But to this I say NO! It is time to cook fantastic meals for yourself and/or your partner, to revisit your closets, your cupboards and the nooks you have items squirreled away and commit to another purge.  While you may have succeeded in giving your domicile a nice cleaning and re-organizing in the fall, I guarantee that there are one or two projects  that you were unable to get to because you were swept away by the holiday fervor.  Now is the time; February is brutal and while it is our shortest month, it has the ability to drag on endlessly.  The only way to get through it is to hunker down and refocus your attention to your home.

Clothing: Remember all those sweaters you cleaned in the fall? Well, that was months ago and I guaranteed there are a few frequently worn favorites that could use a mid-winter sprucing washing. I never got around to cleaning my winter accessories, so have decided to start small with my hats, scarves and gloves and see where it takes me. 

Linen Closet: Organizing my linen closet was on my list of fall cleaning, but it never got done. My linen closet is usually a source of great pride, something I show off to new houseguests under the guise of showing them where they can find an extra blanket or towel; I then “humbly” accept accolades for my perfectly folded and organized closet. Take everything out and wash it all.  Take advantage of your local laundry mat. For however depressing they can be, you can spend a miserable Sunday afternoon reading trashy magazines and novels while simultaneously accomplishing the huge feat of washing your comforters.   Once everything has been cleaned, weed through your stuff to determine what you will use personally, for guests and for cleaning.  In my book, linens are not acceptable items to donate to charity. I usually rip up old sheets and towels and use them as dust rags until they can no longer be recognizable as fabric. 

Kitchen/ Fridge/Freezer: It is truly amazing how long one can manage to hold on to near empty boxes of cereal and jars of mustard. When you use a sharp and discriminating eye when tossing stale and expired food and condiments, you will be surprised as to what you will find lingering. Once every thing has been disposed of, take all the remaining food and wipe down/scrub the inside of your fridge with soft scrub or any bleach-type product you are comfortable with.  Cleaning out and scrubbing down your refrigerator may be one of the most satisfying jobs you will ever do.  It makes you feel light and healthy and gets you excited about all the fresh and delicious food you can get to re-supply your now beautifully barren fridge. 

Buy/ Rediscover a Cookbook: As this is a blog entry, I know I should be gushing about the wonders of food blogs how inspirational they can be.  While I do like to peruse them occasionally, I am an old fashioned gal and will leave the blog education to others. I love to peruse cookbooks, but more than that, I love to buy new cookbooks. I recently purchased a new Williams-Sonoma cookbook titled “Comfort Foods” and it has made me so happy, I am almost ashamed.  If you are having cash flow problems, become a member of your library and check one out.  There is no better way, in my opinion, to become inspired to go to the grocery store with actual meals in mind than flipping though a cook book (new or old) waiting for that perfect recipe to find me.

The September Issue....continued

Much is being said about how Wintour has been made human with “The September Issue,” and this is very true. We see her ensconced in her surprisingly shabby-ish chic home looking lovingly at her daughter whilst talking almost candidly about her upbringing. The most telling insight into the soul of Wintour comes towards the end of the film when she is discussing her siblings. She had already explained that her father was raised amidst strident Victorian values and had chosen her career path for her at a young age (something she is resisting doing for her daughter). But when she lists the varied careers of her siblings, she states rather plainly and almost painfully that her family is “amused” by what she does. While some argue that she is the most powerful woman in America, her career, when compared to the serious ones of her brothers and sisters, is almost laughable to them.

Beyond slightly humanizing Anna Wintour, “The September Issue” succeeds in both introducing Grace Coddington, Creative Director of American Vogue, to mainstream America and portraying the Wintour/Coddington dynamic as a marriage made in fashion heaven. Wintour and Coddington started at American Vogue on the same day over twenty years ago and their relationship, like many long-term relationships, is chock full of admiration, animosity, anger, long periods of silence and occasional mutual respect. Part den mother, part fierce protector of all things creative, Coddington is the unsung creative powerhouse of Vogue.

In one of the first scenes of the documentary, we see Wintour being told by a Nieman Marcus executive that product supply has not been keeping up with customer demand. Her secretive smile in response indicates that the exercise of keeping product just a little out of reach is a successful marketing ploy. Does Wintour create the market? Is she a fashion soothsayer? Or has she been around long enough to set a sense of the cyclical metamorphosis of fashion? She states plainly “fashion is about moving forward,” but this statement is contradicted by Grace’s 1920’s spread; in the creative meetings for this feature you can see an actual library book in Grace’s hands which she uses as a reference and for inspiration when accessorizing her very 21st century hour. Fashion, more aptly, is in flux it is constantly expanding and contrasting and in such a constant state of inertia that statements like “the jacket is the new coat” are made with reverence and complete faith. Wintour has the ability to decipher what can sell and the know how to advertise those pieces in accordance with when they are expected to hit the malls and department stores, and Coddington understands how to present those pieces with a stylized whimsy that presents the clothes as part of a fantasy that is both approachable and out of reach. Wintour thinks about fashion not only as it relates to the concept of “wearable art,” but also how to advertise and sell that art. And she is willing to sacrifice style for business as demonstrated in her decision to pull a fantastic dress from Coddington’s 1920’s spread. When Coddington puts up a fight, Wintour reminds here that the piece will not be available until November, and tells her to use it in that edition. This exchange demonstrates how the Wintour/Coddington relationship is a perfect encapsulation of the creative/financial dichotomy in the fashion industry.

“The September Issue” is a visual homage to Vogue, a fashion institution and a capitalistic Mecca where creativity and industry collide. If you are a fashion maven this movie will inspire you and reaffirm the belief that fashion is art. If you are a nae sayer, do yourself a favor and avoid it at all costs as the details of expensive photo shoots, airbrushing and expressions like “September is the January of fashion” might set you over the edge.

Laundry List #2 - Room Change

The purpose of this post is to outline some basics of room change as it pertains to closet organizing, or closet change, if you will.  There will be years when your closet change is lazy or uninspired, late or minimal; but every few seasons you need to take initiative and clean out your closets and wash, pretty much, everything in your wardrobe.  With sweater cleaning you have to adopt assembly-line choreography of washing, rinsing, rolling, flipping, moving and rotating.  With closet change, you have to strike a balance between militant obedience to organization and inspired whimsy, while constantly doing laundry.

While packing up your spring and summer clothes take advantage of the fact that your sartorial decisions of the past few months are fresh in your mind.  Think realistically about what you did and didn’t wear.  Be ruthless and unmerciful with your decisions about which items you donate, if they have no emotional hold on you they should be gone. (Note: If you do have a lot of pieces that carry sentimental value and/or are too incredible to throw out, you can create an archive of these items.  Just be sure you tend to them over the years so they don’t get musty and moth ridden.)

While you are washing and/or dry cleaning your spring and summer pieces in order to prepare them to be stored away, unpack your fall and winter wardrobe. If your sweater cleaning has been dragging on, room change will light a fire under you for sure.  If you had dry cleaned your winter wools and put them in air tight containers with cedar blocks the previous fall, then they won’t be too musty.  But, even if you do all this, they will still be stale and will need a little TLC.  In order to revive them, you can:

-         If your iron has a steam function, flip your pants with linings inside out and steam through them so they are a little damp, hang them to dry. This process will freshen them right up.

-         Hang your wools all around your house with the windows open for a day or so to let them. This is why I like to get started on this project while it is still warm out, you can open the windows and air stuff out while you still can.

-         Dry clean your items; a good rule of thumb is, if an item of clothing has a lining, you should either steam clean it yourself or take it to the dry cleaners. Everything else is pretty much fair game for hand washing.

Whether it is instigated by seasonal change, inspiration from a photograph, the need to make room for a new purchase or basic boredom, closet change and ensuing room changes, are a tricky business; time consuming and surprising, they often inspire a domino effect of orderliness.   The supreme satisfaction, however, that results from having clean and orderly closets and a list of the items you will need to buy to make your fall and winter wardrobes complete makes it worth it as you realize you are one step closer to creating the perfect refuge from the oncoming winter.

Laundry List #1 - Caring for your Cashmere

For those of you who have never experienced this arduous process, let me enlighten you. If you have tons of sweaters or even just several sweaters, the process of washing and drying all of them can (and will) take several weeks, or at least several days and a full weekend devoted wholly to the cause. The only philosophical outlook one should co-opt when undertaking the washing and drying of all their sweaters is that of an assembly line system with the timing and fluidity necessary to keep the process moving.  Follow these instructions as closely or loosely you like, just make sure you adopt your own groove:

Step One: Gently comb the nubs off the sweater with a De-Fuzz-It.  Be careful to only comb the nubbie parts; don’t take off too much fuzz.  If you really want to take this step to the next level, flip the sweater inside out and comb.


Step Two: You have to start with the right detergent; you can use Ivory liquid (or flakes), Dreft or whatever green “delicate detergent” your local Whole Foods has in stock.
Note: Mrs. Meyers does not have a delicate detergent, but if you are a big fan of their products you can always use their baby line. NEVER, ever use Woolight. Don’t let the name fool you; Woolight will leave your sweaters with lingering “wet wool” odors.


Step Three: There will always be recommended measurements and water ratios from your detergent of choice. Once you have cleaned several sweaters you will be able to gauge what amounts you like to use; some sweaters will require more detergent/washing than others. Add the detergent directly to the faucet water and whip the water around with your hand to make it bubbly and sudsy. Once there is an inch or three of water collected at the bottom of the tub, put your sweater in and move and shake it around with the palm of your hand in order to get it thoroughly wet and work the detergent into the fibers. Flip the sweater over to get both sides saturated with soapy water.
Note: If a lot of dirt/dye out of the sweater, you may want to drain the water and refill the tub before this next step.


Step Four: Situate the sweater across the length of the tub and soak it for a few minutes (also be sure to check your detergent instructions on this step) and then rinse with cold water Feel free to do the washing process twice if you notice that the rinsing water on a light sweater is very dirty. When draining the water, push the sweater up the side of the tub and rinse the tub down; the dirt and dye will stain the bottom of the tub if you let them stand. Rinsing is easier with a handheld shower head, but it you are not equipped with one, just run the cold tap or shower.  Hold the sweater under the water, without stretching it. Open and close the drain alternatively, so you can let the sweater    soak in clean water and then rinse it thoroughly with the faucet water.


Step Five: Once rinsed, do not wring the sweater out; lay it flat on the bottom of the tub. Gently push the water out of the fibers with your fist or the palm of your hand. Bring the sweater up the side of the tub, keeping the sweater as flat as you can, and press the water gently out.  Flip the sweater over and repeat. It is okay to bunch the fabric a little, smooshing, rather than wringing, the water out. Don't get hung up on getting all the water out. No matter what, your sweater is going to be really wet and will require a day or so to dry.


Step Six: Spread out a towel.  If you have just washed a particularly large sweater like a men’s or an irish wool sweater, or if it was particularly dirty and really soaked through, you will need two towels in this step, one on top and one on the bottom.
Note: If you notice some lingering suds on your sweater dip the small area in some clear water in the sink or with a soaked wash cloth.
Place the sweater on the towel and flatten out as many wrinkles as possible. This is probably one of the most important steps. The flatter the sweater is the more water gets wrung out; the sweater is also prevented from drying with deep wrinkles.  Flip the excess towel edges over the top and bottom of the sweater and then begin to roll the sweater up in the towel(s), squeezing along the roll tightly. Let the roll sit for several minutes.


Step Seven: Unroll the sweater and place it on a new towel to dry, the wet these fibers are very malleable so be sure to stage the sweater properly so it does not dry pulled and misshapen. Now, the hardest part about cleaning sweaters is the drying process (some sweaters can take up to three days to be completely dry) and you should not become complacent as this is where the real assembly line “dance” gets choreographed.  Monitor the sweater; flip it over so both sides get equal time on the towel and change the towel once it becomes damp, also if you have carpet move your drying station frequently so the carpet doesn’t get too damp. You will want to rotate/move/change the towel three or more times or your space will begin to smell like wet wool, which is a defeating then when you are knee deep in sweater washing.  You will be semi-constantly, drying soaking wet and slightly damp towels and rotating, washing and rinsing sweaters
Note: It is a good idea to use the slightly damp towels for rolling water out of sweaters, takes out a drying step.
They should only take about twenty-four hours to dry… if you tend to them and keep the area they are laying on as dry as possible.  If a sweater is particularly large and/or thick, I like to let it relax on a towel in the living room for a bit and then move it to the laundry room (not recommended for a basement laundry room). The constant drying of towels that occurs during the process gets the room nice and warm for the sweater to dry.


Step Eight: Once dry; give the sweater a touch with an iron, on a dry setting not a wool setting, to get out any wrinkles.

Cleaning your wools and cashmere is a humbling, exhausting and lengthy process.  It is disgusting, seeing all the dirt muddy up the bottom of your tub.  As it washes away you think of all the place you wore that particular sweater to, meetings, cocktails and dates; you feel like a terrible person who is lazy and spoiled, who am I to treat my beautiful clothes with such neglect?!  But do not fear this disgust will quickly give way to intense feelings of contentment, satisfaction and superiority. The ideal would to be to be on a sweater- washing rotation throughout the entire winter, taking them to the dry cleaner only when necessary.  Also, you need to adopt a suitable spring/summer storage strategy, but that will be discussed in other ‘Laundry List.’ Moreover, seeing all that dirt that’s hiding in your sweaters, leads to the question, where else is the dirt hiding, what else needs to be cleaned?