How we mask

I thought I would do a post about our mask habits.  It's funny how masks have become such a regular part of our routine now, and will likely remain so for awhile.

We have cloth masks - some homemade (not by me), some from The Gap and Old Navy, and Dave and I both got masks from our companies.  We also have a couple of boxes of paper masks.  I keep some in the car in case we need them. 

The kids wear masks all day everyday at school.  I send two cloth masks and an extra paper mask with them each day.  They don't always need the second mask, but it's nice to have. 

I bring a mask with me to drop them off and pick them up, and when I go to stores.  Since I don't wear them for long periods of time, I can usually use them over several days before needing a new one.

Aside from school and other indoor public places, we will wear masks when outside and where it is difficult to maintain distance, such as walking down the street to do errands (up on Bloor where there are lots of other people, not on my own street), and at the playground/park.  I also wear it when at a drive-thru or picking up my groceries.

All dirty/used masks go into the basket at the front door.

Once a week I wash them all.  I put them in a load with our towels. I use powdered Tide for this load (I use Tide Pods for our other laundry).  The powdered Tide goes right into the tub (yes, you can do this).

Then I pick the hot cycle with an extra rinse cycle. 

The towels go into the dryer, but the masks all get hung up.

A side note about the towels - the hot cycle with the powdered Tide and extra rinse is great for them too.  I had found our towels were kind of musty and didn't dry that well.  This summer I stripped them (using gocleanco's method) and wash them like this now.  We have had these towels for 11 years and I thought it was time to replace them, but now they are like new and I think they will be fine for many more years.