Confession time — I am horrible at doing the laundry. Both my mom and my mother-in-law are going to shudder when they read this, but I don’t sort things by like colours. I don’t sort things at all. I just dump dirty laundry bins into the basket by the armful, toss it in the machine and wash it. Everything goes in on the same setting, heavy, cold water, second rinse, extended spin. Then into the drier, and off we go with the next load. Rinse and repeat, quite literally.
Um. Pre-treat a stain? What’s that? I’m busy just trying to keep up with Mount Laundry. Usually by the time I notice something is stained it’s already been through the wash. I notice there’s a problem as the clothes are getting put away, or even better, when my daughter comes running out of her room wearing it and I need to send her back for a wardrobe change. My solution usually involves creative uses of jumpers and overalls, or when all else fails adding the item to the growing pile of “art clothes” (perfect for painting in, or otherwise making messes, and not much else).
When the kids were little I could get away with this lackadaisical approach, however as they get older they are starting to have favourite pieces of clothes and some pretty strong opinions on my lack of laundry skills. At the same time, these girls are hard on their clothes. When they step off the bus at the end of a typical school day they are covered in an assortment of grass, glitter, dirt, snot, juice, sand, food, glue, blood, marker, paint and other unidentifiable bits. (Seriously, my 5 year old comes home from school looking like she could be the stand in for PigPen, live action Peanuts movie anyone?)
So I’ve got two options, I can either treat their clothes as disposable (um, hello, even used clothes costs money, this is not really an option!) or I need to step up the game when it comes to stain removal. So I’ve started doing something a little crazy, I’ve been grabbing the most obviously horrible messes and pre-treating them before they hit the wash.
Case in point, we’ve got this cute #LikeAGirl t-shirt, which is a little big on my 8 year old, but she likes using it as PJs. The other night she spilled tea all down the front of it, and of course didn’t mention anything to me about this until it was dry. Tea stain on white shirt. This can’t end well, right?
Well, I pre-treated it with Resolve Gold In-Wash Stain Remover, and, well, watch and see….
When I showed it to her my daughter was super impressed that I “saved” her t-shirt. She has even started handing me specific pieces of clothing telling me to “use your magic stain stuff on this”. Um. Okay, or you know how about just not spilling your entire dinner down the front of your shirt, maybe? On the bright side I’ve got the kid pre-sorting for me.
Do you have any good stain removal tips? Share your stain removal tip on the Resolve TipExchange and you could win a $5,000 shopping spree! The site is full of awesome stain removal tips, which frankly I need to read through because I am really trying to brush up on this whole laundry thing.
What about you folks? Are you the master of stain removal? Got any tips to share? I’d love to hear ’em (and don’t forget to enter your tips at the Resolve website for your chance to win!).
Disclosure: This sponsored post was brought to you by Resolve®. As always my words and opinions are my own.
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