warning: sick lady attempting to think

Today I learned that if we don't cover up the cork underlay overnight when we're in the process of putting down more wood flooring, I can't sleep anywhere in the house. This situation was aggravated by my increasing sensitivity to my sheets, which seems to be getting worse.

Since I'm having trouble with the sheets and seem to be unable to hold onto a train of thought, I'm going to worry about laundry on virtual paper, where it's harder to forget what you're thinking about, and see if I learn anything.

1. I was using baking soda on my clothing and vinegar on my bedding when I got into trouble.
2. Washing my favorite quilt with just water and then running it through the dryer on air fluff for 3 hours made it tolerable.
3. I switched to washing soda for my clothing, and I tried it in my regular sheets, but not my flannel sheets, and after air fluffing both sets, I tolerated the regular ones for one whole night. I believe I bragged about it, but I failed to mention they were bad the next night.
4. I don't tolerate my regular bed pad or my terry cloth substitute bed pad, and I know I tried the terry cloth in ammonia, since washing soda didn't seem to help.
5. Everything I own feels kind of extra-dry, and the terry cloth almost sand-papery, as opposed to fabric-softened.
6. My favorite quilt wasn't quite as tolerable after the last time I washed it, but the quilt I keep on the couch isn't as bad. I don't wash it as often, but it's totally in line to become my favorite quilt for a while. That'll probably last until I have to wash it.
7. I just washed 5 yards of new canvas eight times: once in ammonia, twice with just water, a soak in lots of vinegar, then water, 1/2 teaspoon of washing soda twice, and then just water. It smells somewhat like canvas still, but I react to it just like I do my non-flannel sheets.
8. The flannel sheets got air fluffed for 3 hours again a few days ago. I didn't tolerate them then, so I put them down on a metal chair in the living room and forgot about them. They're actually pretty good now, which is an indicator that if I hung everything up outside, I'd be in better shape, except for that thing where it'd all have acacia pollen and sawdust all over it from the floor construction.
9. I collected every type of potential laundry powder from next to the washing machine and sniffed them all. The baking soda smelled horrible, so we scooped out the garage-odor soaked stuff. The stuff underneath smelled better, but I react to it a little. The washing soda was fine. The borax and the Trader Joe's were both not too bad, but I wouldn't use them. The Seventh Generation was awful.
10. I heard from friends that ammonia leaves no residue, so if you're totally desperate, it'll work if you're careful with it.

Moving on to the conclusions I think I can draw here:

1. There's something wrong in the washing machine. It's either the 'soap' I'm using, a residue, or car pollutants because airing stuff out makes it better, as opposed to just washing it. I've been running the washing machine when the the garage door is part-way open to let out the car stench, but I can't rule out it polluting the washer overnight. But, this all started before the car went into the garage.
2. I've been mixing some clothes I thought were mostly decontaminated into the regular laundry now that they don't smell too awful. I should fish all of them out.
3. Since we've been fussing with the wood flooring in the garage, we haven't parked the car in there for two days. If my laundry problems suddenly disappear today, I'll know what the problem was.
4. There was one termite hole in the crack in the garage floor near the washer, so there was some termite poison injected into the floor near the washer. I'm not that concerned about it since the laundry was all wonky before that.

Well, there - that was about the least linear thought process I've seen anywhere, but at least I got to the conclusion part without ending up worrying about the laundry problems of a guy in Los Angeles I've never met or the scorpion I shook off a piece of cork yesterday in the back yard.

So here's the plan: I'm going to use plain hot water on everything except that stuff I said I'd fish out for a week and see what happens. I'm going to wing it with air fluff. I could also hand-wash some things and see how that goes, and then maybe I can concoct a way to test vinegar residue.