Clean comforter and pets. Is it possible to have both?
Day 7 and we're talking pet hair today. If you are not a pet person, you may want to skip this one because you'll probably roll your eyes 11,000 times at how cute I think my dog is. Sorry.
In an effort to focus on less stuff and more of what makes my house a home, I can't possibly leave out our little 40lb monster. He's by far the thing that makes me feel most like going home at the end of a bad day because he greets us at the door with a wagging tail and (literally) jumping up for joy. He can barely handle going outside long enough to pee before he wants to run right back into the house to be near us. It's the greatest thing when you've had a rough day and I honestly couldn't do without it anymore.Does this mean I have the perfect pet? If you follow me on Instagram you know what a real pest this little guy can be - he eats EVERYTHING. You also know how ridiculously adorable he is.At around 9:30-10:00pm every night, Luther gets ready for bed.Oh, you think I'm joking?No. Dog literally curls up next to us on the couch (right after his habitual 3 spins) and settles in for a long nap. It's insane. And adorable.The second we say the words "let's go to bed" or "it's bedtime" he's running up the stairs and waiting by the bedroom door. Sure, he curls up in his own doggy bed and we throw a blanket over him and...Okay.Pause.A blanket? On a dog?Let me explain... this little brat (that we adopted almost exactly one year ago from The Humane Society) loooo-huh-huh-ves being curled up underneath some blankets. How do we know? I mean, how does anyone know anything about dogs. They're just animals and they don't talk, right?But you guys...this dog jumped up on my bed one night and pawed at the comforter next to me. I lifted it up thinking he saw something under there and he (as fast as lightning) got under them, crawled down around my legs, spun three times, curled up and FELL ASLEEP! Out cold!This brings me to my next issue...
Luther does this thing where he pretends to fall asleep in his bed, but really he's just waiting until we fall asleep so that he can very stealthily jump up on our bed and curl up between Alex and I, thus taking all of my covers away and leaving me with little to no room to move if I so wish.Seriously, it feels a little bit like torture sometimes. Then he curls up around my waist, puts his face on my hand and licks it, like he's saying "Thanks for letting me sleep here tonight, even though I know how much you hate it when I steal your covers and push you over the edge of the bed." And in my sleepy haze and lazyness, I don't bother to shoo him off the bed. Stupid me.Then I wake up in the morning to make the bed and I see dog hair all over my off-white comforter and I want to scream a little. Sometimes I actually do. Then I take out the lint brush and start going at it like a lunatic, ripping off stupid sticky sheet after stupid sticky sheet only to see that THERE IS STILL DOG HAIR ON THE BED!Please, please, please... tell me I am not alone.Just this weekend I changed the bed sheets and announced for the one billionth time that "Luther is NOT allowed on the bed!"My husband laughed at me. Rightly so.I lost that battle. Hard!So what's my solution to this?
1. I clean/wash the comforter often.
Washing a comforter or duvet cover all the time can be a bit of a pain, so I often vacuum the dog hair off of the bed in between washes. It works surprisingly well!
2. Put a blanket on the bed.
This doesn't always keep him off the sheets, but it does help a lot to contain the hair to one blanket, which is way easier to wash than a comforter or duvet! I use light cotton throws that are easy to wash!
3. Use patterned sheets and comforters.
It's not a way to keep hair off, but it is a great way to camouflage the hair so you don't see as much of it. All white sheets are nice, but not great for seeing all of the dog hair!
In case you are equally perplexed about this issue, an article in the New York Times called "Warm Nights, Cold Noses" goes into great detail about pets (not just dogs) sleeping in a bed with its owners and also quotes Cesar Millan. It brings up issues of people being more prone to getting diseases and yet doesn't seem to make any real statements that you WILL get sick if your dog sleeps with you, so for now things are staying as they are.
*Update (July 27, 2016): You guys, it worked! #4 is the reason I can now keep my sanity about dog hair on the bed. Luther has learned (mostly) to only come up when invited and won't even go on other beds in the house when we're not here. He gets it!!!!Has anything worked for you? You can see lots of tips in the comments, so please feel free to add your own!!