Do you use wheat packs?  I got introduced to them a few years ago and I love them! I microwave them, they get warm, it’s a nice way to calm aching muscles or something to snuggle when I’m lonely. I also like using them to open up my pores to clean my face out before I use a face mask. In winter, I go for one of those before I’ll put the heating on because it’s cheaper when it’s just me in the house…

…Yeah, they’re great until you need to clean them.  This might be the funniest story of domestic ungodessitude that I’ve ever managed to experience.

Last year, when two of my indoor rabbits were outside for the summer I got them a snuggly dog bed (they don’t make them for rabbits – pet shops are so racist) and it had a removable wheat pack in the middle that you microwave for your bunnies (or dogs).

When they moved back into the house, I brought the rabbit bed back in. The new bunny Timmy managed to confuse it with a litter tray, and I removed the wheat pack and put the rest of the bed through the washing machine. I sorta thought the wheat pack shouldn’t be washed but it *was* part of a pet bed and surely anyone designing a pet bed would know how messy pets are and how their stuff needs regularly cleaning.

That left me wondering what to do with the wheat pack.  Anyway, in true MsAdventure style, I managed to forget about it for 6 months, and I found it while cleaning this weekend. It was stained brown and I thought I was doing the right thing by cleaning it. I’d forgot it was a wheat pack, and I chucked it in the wash, thinking it was a bean bag (with those styrofoam beans). I found out after this whole misadventure that it had a care label but I hadn’t read it before I did this.

Oh God that didn’t go well.

I put it in the machine with a load of other pale things, setting the temperature at 40 to get rid of the heavy stains, and somehow the entire load of washing smelled SO BAD, so I put everything back through the washer again (including the wheat pack), with a cupful of vinegar as well as the usual detergent (I was out of my usual favorite, Listerine), and it all smelled WORSE. Like, after 10 minutes in the tumble dryer (and I’d removed the wheat pack by now), the kitchen was filled with the worst decomposing fish smell and nobody ever wanted to smell that. It was disgusting, but I couldn’t work out where the smell was coming from (it stank so bad, I wondered if there was a dead mouse in my tumble dryer, and I don’t have mice in my house as far as I know).

I put it on the radiator to dry (I knew enough to know not to tumble dry it) thinking that a pair of socks had caused the bad smell. Nope. I finally worked out it was the wheat bag. I cut it open to see what happened, and instead of neat little brown balls of wheat it looked like this:

It sorta looks like sprouted popcorn with all the residue from the bottom of the popcorn bag. The smell was so bad I had to brush my teeth after smelling the inside of the bag (it was so much worse after I opened it) because I couldn’t get the smell out of my nose.

So if you’re wondering whether that “do not wash” label on your wheat pack or wheat bag is ignorable, DON’T!! If your wheat pack is dirty, you have two options. Either cut it open, remove the wheat, and wash/dry the bag then replace the wheat and sew it back up, or just buy a new one. The warning on that label isn’t like the warning on cheap clothes that dares you to tumble dry them, that warning on your wheat pack is real.

I threw it in the garbage.

Don’t do what I did (unless you’re trying to attract stray cats, zombies, or you really want to scare social workers into investigating your home)!!