CLICK HERE FOR FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES, LINK BUTTONS AND MORE! »

ATTENTION READERS

This blog is currently under construction. I asked my sister, Kathryn, to update it and make it look fancy and she inadvertently deleted all of my blog lists! If you are my friend or family member and I am supposed to be following your blog, please email me or leave a comment so that I can have your blog address again and create a new list.

Monday, February 20, 2006

My little miracle

So here is my update on the 7 shirts that went through the laundry with a bright pink crayon.

The crayon is gone!!!

This was quite an ordeal. After spending a couple days bleaching and soaking and washing these shirts over and over again with no success, I was turned onto a nifty little product that, along with large amounts of elbow grease, saved the day. What is this magic product, you might ask? Here it is, Spray 'n Wash Dual Power. My little miracle solution!

Now this great product didn't work all on its own, and there is still a story here. I was given this magic product on Friday evening, but I had a ward social to attend that night. So after the social and after getting my babysitter home and my kids to bed I went to work on these shirts. It requires more than just spraying the solution on, you have to spray it on then use a butter knife to scrape the crayon off. It's a tedious process. Also, it says right on the bottle that this product is a skin irritant. That's putting it mildly. By the time I was done, a large portion of my fingers were literally white from being almost burned from this stuff. But I scraped it all off and put the shirts back in the wash hoping this would finally do it. I can't tell you how excited I was when I pulled the shirts out of the wash and they were perfectly white again. So I put them in the dryer and went to bed happy.
Then I got up Saturday morning with the intent of ironing the shirts so I could return them in perfect condition before heading out to Silverdale for the afternoon. I can't tell you how I felt when I opened the dryer and found the shirts covered in pink yet again. These were not the same marks having come to the surface again, these were new marks. I know because I knew these marks pretty intimately by the time I was done. These were not the same. They were brand new crayon marks all over these once clean shirts. I wanted to cry! I had done a load of my own whites in between drying these shirts so I can't begin to explain what happened or where these new marks came from, but there they were.
So instead of spending my morning running errands and being able to deliver nice clean shirts, I spent another two hours going through the same process of burning my fingers while scraping crayon off white shirts. By the time I was done, the hand holding the butter knife was so sore I could hardly straighten it. It's only now, two days later, that I'm starting to regain feeling in my pinky finger. I'm not kidding. It's been totally numb for two days. So after rewashing these shirts, you better believe they were line dried. There was no way I was putting them back into my dryer. We've had no crayon issues with the dryer since, but I'm not risking it!! But these shirts are now clean. I can't tell you how relieved I am to finally have that issue resolved.
Maybe once I've regained full feeling in my hands I'll try to get all the crayon out of my load of jeans from last week too! :)

5 comments:

Jill said...

That's a grim story, but at least it has a happy ending. Thanks for the tip as well.

georgia-mom said...

Oh, my. You are amazing to work that hard. Such diligence and perseverance and caring. Glad you were successful. So how are you feeling: mad or glad or sad? and is there a crayon hiding in your dryer? Who created those darned things anyway?

Elizabeth said...

Mostly I'm relieved to be done with this particular project. It was frustrating and I got pretty angry at times, but those emotions faded with the crayon. If that crayon is still hiding in there, neither Scott nor I can find it. Scott is ready to completely ban them from the house!

Anonymous said...

Ready to ban crayons? I banned them but was over ruled. Not my call anymore.... :-) I'm sure after a couple more incidents (like today), it will happen shortly...

everything pink! said...

thanks for the advice. i need it after today my daughter got into a slew of markers in my room. oh please let it come out.