Longaberger Spring Cleaning and Liner Laundering

Another good thing to do: Spring-clean your Longaberger baskets, liners, and protectors

Did you have a favorite Longaberger fabric?  Many collectors designed entire rooms around longtime prints like Fruit Medley or Botanical Fields, and also enjoyed the nubby solids and  woven plaids along the way.  Longaberger always combined quality fabrics and unique liner styles.  Remember the bedding?  Beautiful stuff--I had a Grand Botanical/Botanical Fields bedroom and a Sentimental Rose/Garden Splendor guestroom.  From comforters to curtains to cute accent pillows, we had it.  Fitted fabric liners were offered for many years, beginning with the muslin liners trimmed with lace.

Longaberger Baskets, whether working hard or sitting there looking pretty, accumulate dust, grime, scuffs, or other problems.  Fabric liners and plastic protectors can gather pet hair and lint that sneak up on you.  While you have a little more time for spring cleaning, see if you need to clean some fabric liners.

Liners can be machine washed cold, and then it's best to stretch each over its own upside-down plastic protector to dry.  If it's an over-the-edge liner with a band that needs to hang below the protector's edge, elevate your protector on a taller item.  You may need to iron your liner, and ironing them while just slightly damp saves you steam and gives a nice flatness.

Plastic protectors stain and get old and brittle. You may need to repair a crack at the top of one with wide clear tape up and over the edge and back down. If the protector is too far gone, Dresden's Baskets and More, one of the fun shops in Dresden OH, can be found online and has replacement protectors that you can't tell from the Longaberger ones.  I hope they can continue to provide those!  Since you'll be paying shipping anyway, be sure to check your baskets for other protectors you need.

Baskets benefit from brisk dusting with a paintbrush all over, with special attention inside corners. I am on my second paintbrush dedicated to basket cleaning--it's hard on them. Some spots or scuffs on basket splints can be erased away with an eraser.  Those scratchy erasers on some old ink pens can be gently used.  We used to smooth rough new wooden basket handles by rubbing them with folded brown paper bags, kinder than sandpaper but still helpful.  

We also learned long ago to fold a fabric liner's zip bag and store it in the bottom of the basket under the liner, and that has paid off for me.  Beautiful as the fabric liners are, very few of the baskets in my home have liners in them. The liners are back in their bags and stored in my office closet.  I like my baskets bare, with a plastic protector inside.  St. Pat's and Christmas Baskets are two exceptions that still sport fabric liners here, as well as the cute Blue Ribbon Baskets' Plaid.