Crayons and Laundry Don't Mix

What a day I had Sunday. After I got home from my morning walk, I was happy to hear my husband(AKA Viejo) had got the laundry going. We're leaving for Hawaii on Wednesday, and time is getting short, so I was grateful he had started this chore. Until it all went horribly wrong.

When Viejo pulled the laundry out of the dryer and found that it had been tye dyed with melted crayons. Not just one crayon, but from the rainbow of colors on the clothes and dryer, I'm guessing three or four in various colors, and even one sparkle crayon.What a nightmare.

I did my best to remember how many times I've run tissues through the laundry, leaving white lint all over all the clothes, to keep from completely freaking out at Viejo, and it worked. But we still needed to fix this. The load was basically all my daughters clothes, so I either needed to go buy her a new wardrobe for the trip immediately or figure out a way to get the crayon out. I suppose there was the third option of letting her walk around in an all tye dye wardrobe. I'm way to cheap to buy her all new clothes, and way to appearance conscious to let her walk around looking like a escapee from the commune, so I had to find a way to wash it out.

I googled it. Crayons in Laundry. I took much Solis in the plethora of poor soul who had suffered my same fate. And was I happy to find a concoction that many swore worked. The recipe called for.

2cups laundry detergent

1cup oxyclean

1/2 cup borax

1cup shout

1cup vinegar

It seemed like a lot of detergent to put in one load. I imagined soap bubbling out of the machine, like in that episode of The Brady Bunch, but it didn't. In fact after letting all the clothes soak for two hours in this mix it actually got nearly all of the crayon out. HOORAY!! I won't get into cleaning the dryer, suffice to say it involved oven cleaner and plenty of scrubbing.

Anyway, I better go pack for the trip, since I basically did nothing yesterday but one load of laundry, and have to work tomorrow. Just wanted to remind you all out there to check the kids pockets.

Aloha