Tonight the wg household had its first load of laundry with
a crayon in it. A purple crayon. DARK purple. (Like maybe Royal Purple
or Eggplant.) And no small chunk
either. I don’t know which pocket this
thing was hidden in, or how big it was but the damage was pretty severe. Voila.
I remember this happening once when I was kid… a green
crayon got in a load of my clothes, but it was a small piece of crayon, with
only little tiny spots of green scattered throughout the clothes. And I was just
nerdy enough to not care and wear them anyway. Along with my Kmart track shoes. (I was like a little 90s hipster in the late 70s/early 80s, with some
clueless geek thrown in to boot. (SO
ahead of my time!) Yes, the other kids
made fun of me.)
there was also a grey sweatshirt of Chance’s that came out… well…
lavender. Things I’ve learned:
1. Fleece blanket
sleepers (you know, the one item you don’t care whether it looks funky or not)
seem to repel melted crayon. Good to
know.
2. Expensive pairs of
jeans (such as the ones I washed with Chance’s jeans (what? Dreft is great for maintaining fabric!)
also seem to repel a certain amount of crayon. Very, very good to know. Though now I kind of wonder if they were
sprayed with something potentially toxic. Like, say, from
3. No matter how much
you scrub a dryer tub – way deep inside a dryer tub, breathing in what must be
lovely fumes of Goo Gone and heated baby
wipes – sometimes that crayon is just baked on. Our dryer is now purple.
4. If you follow the
instructions (or very close) that you find on the Internet you actually will get the crayon off your
clothes! Thank you, Internet, I love
you! (Though… it was a load of darks,
see, and you had to wash them on hot to get out the crayon – I never wash my
clothes in hot – and some of the shirts that had white trim, such as sleeves,
now… are all light blue. But at least it’s not purple splotches!)
I guess this means I now check all of Chance’s pockets. And I thought that stage didn’t start quite
yet. Damn it, I’m naïve.
– the
weirdgirl
For me, it was magenta color, and it was in a load of whites that I dried together with a load of Gabe’s clothes. Since it’s the washing part that leaches color onto whites, I thought I was safe if I combined colors and whites in the dryer if I kept them apart in the washing cycle.
That damn crayon showed me. Check your lint screen to make sure none of the wax baked into the mesh. It won’t pick up lint as well as it had if there is, and it can actually diminish your dryer’s power to dry as well as reduce the life of your dryer. Rinsing the screen with extremely hot water should get most of the wax off the screen if there is some on it.
I feel your pain. Although I’m thinking my crayon piece wasn’t as big as yours, because for the most part, there were only a couple spots, and I was able to get them out in the washer by letting Shout! sit on it for a couple hours, and then soaking them overnight in a hot water bath in the washer with a mixture of laundry soap and (my secret so shhhh!) dishwasher soap, the powdered kind. Though you might want to test some of the fabric with the dishwasher soap to make sure it doesn’t leach any color off your favorite jeans or something.
Ouch! I hope that you’ll be able to get it all under control. I’ve not had the crayon trouble before. My laundry troubles are usually kleenex related. I always forget to check my pockets for tissue and end up with white fibers all over my black clothes. Re-washing and drying usually takes care of it.
Andrea & KC, I DID manage to get off all the crayon. I did a combo of spray stain remover, a pre-wash soak with OxyClean in very hot water, and then another wash load (also in hot) with regular detergent. I was amazed it came out that easy!
And Andrea, thanks! I will check the lint trap. Crayon in there would be ugly.
(sorry I am so frickin late on everything web lately!)