This $3 Hack Makes Cheap Sheets Feel Like a Million Bucks
TruTV’s Hack My Life series is truly a gift that keeps on giving. Along with spotlighting some game-changing home hacks — think everything from opening wine bottles to getting rid of pet hair on your upholstery — the show has lots of hacks on making life easier. Case in point: The show’s inexpensive but ingenious trick for softening up cheap, stiff bed sheets that involve nothing more but a couple of ingredients you already have on hand.
The show asked six blind testers — notoriously tough-to-please New Yorkers, no less — if they could tell the difference between the hacked sheets and a pricier set, and the results might surprise you. Read ahead for a breakdown on a foolproof way to make your cheap bed sheets feel like a million bucks.
How to Hack Your Way to Softer Sheets
True to the show’s form, this cheap-sheet-softening-trick is unbelievably easy to execute, and you can treat every sheet set in your home with about $3 of materials:
Simply throw your stiff sheets into the washer, along with one full cup of baking soda and ½ cup of vinegar, and run for one full cycle.
For the best results, the pros behind the show suggest starting your washer on hot and then switching to cold during the rinse cycle, and then voila: you’ve suddenly scored a set of silky soft (albeit inexpensive) sheets to sleep in.
Here’s What the Testers Had to Say…
The show had six blind testers each lie down in a makeshift bed dressed one at a time in both sets of sheets — a set of super luxe (super pricey) sheets and a set of cheap sheets hacked with the baking-soda-and-vinegar wash trick above.
When asked to identify which sheets were the cheap set, five of the six testers were convinced that the expensive bed sheets were actually the cheap ones. This means that based on the show’s results, it’s safe to assume that the hacked sheets are indeed softer and more satisfying to the touch than the super luxe set.
Translation: Before you go buck wild on a fancy bed sheet spending spree, try washing an affordable set (or the cheap ones your great aunt gave you at Christmas) in baking soda and vinegar to see if the show’s results ring true for you, too.