My New Favorite Thing Ever – Tide Stain Release

A couple days ago, Andy was folding laundry and asked me to come over and look at it – “There are purple spots on everything,” he said. Sure enough, all of our clothes had little random purple spots. And on the load of towels that came out before that load. I thought it was detergent and was a result of his habit of putting the clothes in first and the detergent in second, but upon closer inspection we saw that the spots were sort of gummy. He remembered he had taken some sort of wrapper out of the dryer earlier, so he went to the trash can to dig it out.

It was a flattened, been-through-the-dryer half crayon wrapper. Nice.

So then we went to inspect the dryer itself, and sure enough it had purple clumps and streaks all over it.

Of course, what do I do but jump on the computer and plea for help on my Facebook status, and then google it. My google search brought up many concoctions that I’m sure would actually do the trick, if I had the time and the motivation to use them. I’m sure a chemistry experiment including borax, vinegar and peroxide, among other things, would get the crayon right out, but believe it or not I was short on borax. And vinegar. And peroxide. So that really wasn’t helping.

I was about to take this advice that Jenny’s brother posted on Facebook:
Two steps:
1) Throw clothing in trash.
2) Go to store and buy new clothes.

But I remembered the sample of Tide Stain Release I had picked up at BlogHer.
We threw the crayon-ed clothes back into the washer with one of these babies (which I might add eliminates the difference in opinion regarding the appropriate time to pour in detergent I mentioned previously)… and what do you know.

No more crayon spots. Just like that.

As I mentioned, I picked up this sample at BlogHer, where Jenny and I were invited to a lunch put on by Tide and Gymboree. We were both incredibly impressed by the event. Tide brought several representatives from their company – everyone from the scientists behind the product to the brand managers who promote it (all of them moms), and even had us try out the product by getting grass stain out of white linen napkins. And truly, after that, I was sold. I’ve always bought whatever laundry soap was on sale, but that lunch made me brand loyal.

However, even with my new-found love of Tide, I didn’t really think it would get crayon melted in the dryer out of our clothes… not without any pre-treating at all… But it did. I was amazed.

And my husband is so happy that his brand new old-style 1957 St. Louis Cardinals shirt no longer has purple polka dots.