Laundry time again! When is it not, right? Anyway, I have been discovering a new love for stain removal, ever since I discovered that I can't pass down half of my oldest girls clothes, because she ruined them much worse than the boys ever thought about. Now, every load of girls' clothes is like a battlefield, with Tide and Spray'n'Wash as the weapons. It has made me realize that almost everything in your laundry room has some kind of stain chart. If you look under your washer lid, there is one there. There is one on every detergent bottle, on the bleach bottle, on the stain remover bottle (you would think it would just say "spray me for everything")...they are everywhere. And they are completely useless.
Unless you have committed a murder in a very grassy area while spilling a glass of red wine down your shirt, there is no use for this chart. I have looked and looked, but nowhere does it tell you how to get mustard out of your clothes or out of the dogs fur. So if you are wondering where to find a yellow dog, I am your man, because that stuff does not go away!
If you have kids, you will understand the next two...baby poo and "drool bib". You would think that someone would have developed a line of baby clothes that is poo resistant, but they have not. If you wash it within one hour, it comes out like a dream. Any later than that, and your kid is a walking scrapbook of how much he likes or dislikes any particular outfit. "Drool bib" you have seen if you have a drooler. This is for the kid who drools all the time, and constantly has a wet spot on the front of his shirt, shaped like a bib. (Yes, at this point I have figured out that a bib would have taken care of that problem, but it's too late now!!!) The wet spot then attracts anything within 100 feet of the kid. So, by the time the shirt gets to the stain removal stage, you have no idea what is there, but you do know that it's not grass, blood or wine. (If you have been at a function with your childless aunts or uncles, you may want to check the wine thing, though, which could have been the cause of all the drooling.) So, therefore, a little chart in there for "drool bib" is totally called for. Also, this would be good for many older members of my family, because apparently, a lot of us missed swallowing class, and at any given time, at least three adults are sporting drool bib.
There is also nothing on any stain chart for pink lemonade. Pink lemonade is what you give your kid when you aren't being mean and making them drink water, and you don't want them to have pop. And it's a much bigger mess than anything else. I know some people would argue with me that Kool-Aid is the bigger mess, but I don't think so. When you hand a kid a glass of Kool-Aid, you also say something like,"IF you spill this, I am going to go track down (here insert the latest Harry Potter monster that has been keeping them up at night) to clean up the mess, and WHEN he is done, I am going to let him drag you down to his cave to dine on you at will." See? With Kool-Aid, there is fear there -- that kid is NOT going to spill that drink, and if he does, he will do whatever he can to make sure that you never know about it. But with lemonade, you think,"Hey, it's pink -- light-pink, even. And it's mostly water, so I'm good, right?" NOPE! That's where it all goes wrong!!! As soon as you give that cup away, at least half of it is soaking into the kids clothes before you even turn around. Why??? Because there was no element of DANGER!!! You just handed it over as if it were nothing. No, an ounce of terror as you hand off the drink would have totally eliminated the need for a pink lemonade stain chart, had you known any better. And now, standing by the washer, holding a white (and pink) shirt that is sticky and also covered in ants, you have nowhere to turn, because pink lemonade is not on the chart.
Spaghetti....need I say more? I can't even get the stuff off of my tile. That is the one meal my kids are allowed to eat naked, preferably while sitting in the tub, as well.
Cheetos. Why isn't there instructions for Cheeto slime??? Ok, I know that Cheetos are just orange powder and shouldn't be worthy of stain-fighting, but that's just not true! When a child eats a cheeto (and it need only be one), the orange powder (cheese???) mixes with whatever else is around (yup, enter pink lemonade and drool) and makes something else. Orange dye or something. And that is a very common problem, and there is no stain chart option that includes cheetos!!!
So, I have come to the conclusion that it is the clothing manufacturers who write those charts, just so you will have to buy more clothes. And somewhere, hidden in the basement at Levi, is a real chart, that only the clothing lords have access to, while the rest of us are standing in our laundry rooms, fists clenched, looking at the ceiling and wondering just how we are supposed to get silly string out of the baby's bloomers.
