Part 2: I Nearly Strangled Myself With A Duvet Cover

My Brilliant Idea.  Isn't that the name of a movie???  Should  have shot myself when I had the chance - 'cept I don't own a gun.  I don't think a squirt gun would quite do it.

Brilliant Idea:  USE A WHITE DUVET COVER UNDERNEATH THE WHITE-ISH IKEA DUVET COVER TO HIDE THE WHITE-ISH JACQUELYN SMITH COMFORTER!

I eagerly dived into my (am proud to say), organized but much smaller linen closet than I used to have at the former Maison Newton, so I donated a lot of things and guess what -- my full-sized plain white duvet cover was one of them.  BUT --

I still have a twin size plain white duvet cover.

No, you're saying, oh no Jan, you didn't. YOU DIDN'T!

Yes, I did.

What's that song -- you put the spell on me, baby, ooohhhh oooooooowwhhooo, you put the spell on me...



The Ikea duvet was calling my name, and I was powerless to resist.  I hauled out that twin-sized white duvet cover, and ironed the heck out of it:

And ironed, and ironed, and ironed...  Seems no matter what I did, more wrinkles appeared than disappeared.  Hmmm....

I finally gave up and hauled it into the mistress bedroom and proceeded to wrestle with -- are you ready for this -- a DIFFERENT COMFORTER -- that I pulled out of storage, cuz I knew my Jacquelyn Smith comforter would not fit into the twin size white duvet cover.  So, nope, I instead used a big fat puffy but somewhat smaller "full" size of comforter -- black and beige paisley print on one side, beige and black stripes on the other --

And then I huffed, and I stuffed, and I fluffed, and puffed and - actually, I huffed and puffed a lot.  Eventually, I got to this:

At this point, I asked myself "Why on earth would anyone want to sleep in a bed that looks like this???"

But, I am nothing, if not stiff-necked stubborn determined, and so I persevered.  By the time I got the duvet looking half-way smooth, I was exhausted.  Too tired to wrestle with the Ikea duvet cover, which was already filling me with deep forboding of what was to come, I fluffed and huffed and stuffed and puffed up the pillows and went to bed with things more or less looking like this:

It doesn't look too bad (from a distance), but it's wrinkled.  I don't like wrinkles.

I thought about nixing the entire idea of duvet covers, and hemmed and hawed for several days.  The covered comforter was unceremoniously tossed into the guest room the next morning and I returned my beloved Jacquelyn Smith comforter to its rightful bed in the boudouir.  If this was going to work at all, I needed to get a full size white cover for my Jacquelyn Smith comforter to try and hide the black toile pattern.

So, after girding my figurative loins, I went shopping online.

I ultimately purchased a full/queen size comforter set (came with two pillow covers) at Overstock for $29.99 -- microfibre.  It IS very soft and silky feeling, I'll say that for the product, and it arrived within about a week (standard shipping).

I laundered it THREE times -- and still could not remove the smut that was on it -- a supposedly brand new duvet cover arrived looking like it had spent some hard time in a bordello.  Oh come on, I thought, that will wash out!  Oxy-Clean gets out everything!

WRONG.

You say - why did you not return it?  I say - why would I pay more to ship it back than it's worth?

At least I know now it is clean.  The final time, I put it on extra-super-duper wash (tap water temperature) and I added a smidegon of bleach to the water despite I should not use it on microfiber.  Didn't make any difference. The smut was still there when it came out of the washer.  I'm thinking if I ever now wash it in hot water, it will dissolve...

But, I assured myself, since I would be wrapping this within the lovely Ikea duvet cover, some sanitized smut wouldn't make any difference...