Things my laundry taught me

I have to give myself a pat on the back about laundry these days. As in, I'm actually doing it. We are caught up and it's great to not see mountains of questionable clothing in laundry baskets and not break into a sweat. (They're questionable because I never know if, when I do the boys' laundry, if the clothes are actually dirty. I have a feeling a lot of clean clothes go into the laundry basket because my boys are too busy to put them away correctly.)

Last week, as I'm cheering for myself as I take a load out of the dryer, my enthusiasm stopped as I was face with the mystery of the orange spots.

At first, I thought it was Play-Doh because Hoover and Mini Me were playing with orange Play-Doh earlier in the week, in the pool, and I saw the mess it made on their hands. It was only when the perfectly cylindrical -and empty- wrapper came tumbling out of my tumbler did I figure it out. Crayon. ORANGE crayon.

(This, I swear, is like the laundry equivalent to lice or poison ivy, or maybe even having your dog sprayed at 3 a.m. by a skunk.)

So, I took to Facebook and Google. And the news was not good. Some sites said WD-40, others claimed Dawn dish soap would take it out. Lots of people mentioned an iron and a paper bag. However, when I looked at my full dryer, with every piece having Crayola Pox on it, I knew an iron wasn't going to cut it.

Disgruntled Husband's secretary of steel, Carol, had an idea. She suggested I go to the grocery store and buy some Fels-Naptha.

Honestly, I thought Fels-Naptha was an STD.

But it worked.

The dryer doesn't work for Sylvia Plath-like deaths. Though you may want it to.

I had to scrub and re-wash a few times, plus sacrifice a pair of Hoover's pajama pants and a beloved shirt of DH, but the rest of the laundry looked great. Did I mention Fels-Naptha cost me $1.19?

It was a long afternoon and evening full of laundry. One I didn't want to soon repeat. On another load of laundry, I made sure I cleared everything from the pockets. I found $.68 worth of change and two pens in one of DH's shirts.

When that load hit the dryer, I heard something. I opened it several times to try and figure out what it was, and each time, I couldn't find anything. I told myself I must be paranoid and it was probably just the buttons on DH's shirts.

Oh, it was his shirts, all right, but it wasn't the buttons.

My google history says it all:

How to get crayon out of dried laundry
How to get roller ball ink pen out of dried laundry

I could have shot him.

After more time scrubbing and re-washing, most of the ink is out of the clothes. By the way, it was far easier to get crayon out of a man's shirt than it was to get ink pen out of a child's shirt. In case you're wondering.

I suppose that's what I get for catching up on laundry.