A few years back, around 2001, I noticed there was no pillow option for asthmatic children.
There were normal sized pillows ‘standard’ but nothing smaller or flatter. There were smaller beds and smaller doonas for children and we were supplying dust mite allergy covers for some time. I thought ‘I can do something about that’.
But then I thought, ‘kids love their pillows and take them to sleep overs, sometimes they are sick with them, use them as play things’.
Anyway, we started making samples with cotton and wool.
They were natural materials after all, comfy, breathable.
Ok, this is a good start.
Breathe, we’ve got this, but when we washed them in hot water 100 times, the wool and cotton clumped and lumped and became a total mass of knots, a mess.
Oh my, this is not going to work.
6 weeks in and still no solution, we’ll have to give this up, it’s just not working, I’m not the right person to be doing this.
Then at 5 am one morning it struck me.
I thought ‘You know what, I’ve read polyester is an inert material. Yes, it’s a man-made fibre, and people use them in all sorts of clothing and bedding and furnishings right next to their skin, we can use this material to last longer’
So that week we sourced the ‘best of the best’ polyester balls material, our cotton pillow covers ‘zipped’ to meet dust mite prevention and safety stuff, and by the end of the month we got the thumbs up, the materials survived the 100 hot water wash test.
The pillow is easy to wash in hot or cold water, and dry outside or in the dryer, comes out fluffier, and is earth friendly.
Today we produce a healthy, adjustable, washable, dust mite free, long lasting pillow in a reusable calico bag.
I’m still using these pillows in our home today, washing them every 3 months when the weather is warm and sunny, give them a blast in the dryer if need be.
But this always reminds me, sometimes we already know we need to try something to see whether we like it, or not.
We already know polyester is all around us.
And that is why we often tell people to go by their gut feeling, choose what is best for them.
