Comments on This Is a Joke, Right?

Yes, this is for real. The tennis balls fluff up your goose feathers and prevent them from bunching up in the corners of the quilt. Some instructions also recommend a clean tennis shoe.

quilt=quilted areas on your jacket

Yes - that's completely serious. The purpose is to distribute the down evenly throughout the garment. If the Tennis Balls aren't in the dryer, you may end up with a giant wad of down in a pocket or sleeve.

Wow...that's news. Welcome to the world of washing.

#1 is right. REI will tell you exactly that for all down products - sleeping bags, jackets, etc.

REI also sells the special mild detergent - it's a few dollars for a small bottle, but you don't (and shouldn't) launder down goods too often.

Who grew up in a barn? It works well for washing pillows, too: You can throw several tennis balls in the dryer with them to keep the pillows from becoming lumpy. Don't tell me you don't wash your pillows... 10 percent of the weight of a two-year-old pillow can be composed of dead mites and their droppings.

One of my fever dreams last night produced the phrase "butterfly balls." I like to think that somehow relates to this. I don't know how, though.

Wow. Thank you. I do wish it were a joke though. I would make little jokes all the time if I were a washing instruction label writer. Mild detergent, cold water. Tumble dry low. With dead babies.

I take offense to the dead babies comment.

I like to use ones that Serena Williams has handled, they are the best.

Don't turn the heat up above low or the dead babies will melt.

Also, to avoid getting bright green on anything put the tennis balls inside of a white sock.

I hear golf balls and soccer balls work great too. But don't use footballs. Too pointy.

Kids these days.

Before they started printing crap like this on the care labels, every housewife knew you could keep your down things downy through a machine washing by throwing a pair of sneakers in there with them.

I have a briefcase by Tom Bihn which has washing instructions in English and French. The English instructions read:

"HAND WASH WARM WATER
MILD SOAP LINE DRY
DO NOT BLEACH
DO NOT MACHINE DRY
DO NOT IRON"

The French instructions go a little further:

"WE ARE SORRY OUR PRESIDENT IS AN IDIOT. WE DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM."

No shit.

@9:
You’d prefer live babies? You sick bastard.

Oh, and for the white sock, don't use one of those flimsy thin ones, use a real one, or those green threads really will pull a number on it.

"10 percent of the weight of a two-year-old pillow can be composed of dead mites and their droppings." Oh. My. God. My pillows must be, like, 40 percent dead mite + dead mite droppings at this point. That might explain why they smell a little funny.