Moving is the perfect opportunity to start fresh — but packing dusty duvets, musty curtains, and year-old pillowcases directly into boxes just moves the problem to your new home. Taking a few days before the move to properly clean your bedding, curtains, and linens means you unpack clean, not chaotic. Here's a practical room-by-room guide to doing it right.
Bedding: What Can Go in the Washer and What Can't
Most cotton and microfiber duvet covers, pillowcases, and flat sheets are machine-washable — but the inserts inside your duvets and pillows are a different story. Check the care label before assuming.
Duvets and comforters
Down and down-alternative duvets often carry a dry clean only label, especially heavier tog-rated ones. Forcing them through a home washer can clump the fill permanently and leave a damp, mildewy smell sealed inside. If yours has a dry-clean label, don't gamble with a laundromat oversized machine either — uneven agitation causes the same clumping problem.
Pillows
Synthetic-fill pillows can usually handle a gentle machine cycle with an extra rinse, but feather and memory-foam pillows are trickier. Memory foam should never go in a washer — spot-clean only. Feather pillows need a long, low-heat dry cycle (add dryer balls) to prevent mold pockets forming inside the fill.
A useful moving rule: if a bedding item took you longer than five seconds to decide whether to wash it, it's probably worth having cleaned professionally before packing it away.
Curtains and Drapes: The Most Overlooked Item in Any Move
Curtains hang in place for months or years absorbing cooking smells, dust, and humidity — then get folded into a box and forgotten. By the time you hang them in your new place, the odours and creases are set.
What you can hand-wash or machine-wash
- Lightweight cotton or linen curtains (check for pre-shrunk labelling first)
- Polyester sheers — gentle cold cycle, lay flat to dry
- Cotton café-style panels without lining
What needs professional cleaning
- Lined drapes — the lining and face fabric shrink at different rates
- Silk, velvet, or jacquard weaves
- Anything with pinch-pleat or goblet-pleat heading tape (washing destroys the structure)
- Blackout-coated curtains — the coating can crack or peel in heat
Nova Dry Clean handles curtains and drapes for West Island Montreal customers as part of their pickup and delivery service, so you don't need to bundle awkward poles and fabric into your car — they collect and return.
Linens and Home Textiles: A Quick Pre-Pack Checklist
Table linens, decorative throw blankets, and bathroom towels are easy to overlook because they feel low-stakes. But packed damp or soiled, they can transfer odours to everything around them in a sealed box.
- Towels: Wash on hot, dry completely before folding. Towels hold moisture longer than they feel — give them an extra 15 minutes in the dryer.
- Table linens: Treat stains before washing. A stain that's sat for weeks will be permanent by moving day if ignored.
- Decorative throws: Check the label — many wool or cashmere blends are dry-clean only, and pilling from machine washing is irreversible.
- Mattress protectors: These are usually machine-washable but need a full dry cycle. Never pack one that's even slightly damp.
When to Call a Professional Before Your Move
Home washing works well for everyday cottons and synthetics. But if you're looking at a wool blanket, a set of heavy lined drapes, a duvet your grandmother made, or a tablecloth with a formal weave — those deserve professional attention before they spend weeks compressed in a moving box.
If you're in the West Island Montreal area, Nova Dry Clean offers pickup and delivery Monday through Friday 8am–8pm and Saturdays 9am–5pm, with a $50 minimum order. You can reach them at (438) 230-1800 or visit novadryclean.com to schedule a pickup. Getting linens and curtains cleaned before a move is one of those small logistics decisions that makes unpacking feel genuinely good rather than just done.
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