For my first contribution to this blog (I'm the other girl!), I would like to take some time to talk to you all about the pleasures and pitfalls of laundry. It's absolutely one of my least favorite chores, and as a result I do it as infrequently as possible, and fill each load to the absolute brim. Although my mother was much better at doing laundry properly, somehow she has not instilled that same knowledge in me. I've never been much for sorting laundry, nor was I ever schooled on the finer points of detergent, bleach and fabric softener.
This is where our story begins. I was wooed by the fancy Downy fabric softener/dryer sheet combos that I found in the store, and raced home to try them out. Not knowing the appropriate protocol for using said softener, I dumped it into the wash the same way I would with detergent. Directly onto the clothes (if I'm being completely honest, I thought it was detergent when I bought it, and not fabric softener, but I would've made the same mistake either way). Little did I know that it would create large and unsightly stains on my fabrics. I used it on my sheets and duvet cover, and was horrified when I put the duvet back on my bed and discovered it had huge stains all over it!
Guys, I can't be certain, but I'm almost positive that I even washed it once more before trying to get the stains out, so they were in there pretty good. Being the resourceful gal I am, I tried to look for solutions on the interweb (that's what the kids are calling it, right?) and found a range of suggestions from rubbing bar soap into it, to using concentrated laundry detergent directly on it. I went in search of either of these things, and instead came across my roommate's Shout Set In Stain Remover. Well, this was EXACTLY what I needed, so I looked no further and set out to rid myself of those stains.
Now the instructions suggested that I rub the product into the stain, and let it set for at least five minutes, but for tougher stains they recommend anywhere from overnight to a week! Well, I didn't have that kind of time, so I settled for the two hours it took to get through the rest of my laundry.
This is where our story begins. I was wooed by the fancy Downy fabric softener/dryer sheet combos that I found in the store, and raced home to try them out. Not knowing the appropriate protocol for using said softener, I dumped it into the wash the same way I would with detergent. Directly onto the clothes (if I'm being completely honest, I thought it was detergent when I bought it, and not fabric softener, but I would've made the same mistake either way). Little did I know that it would create large and unsightly stains on my fabrics. I used it on my sheets and duvet cover, and was horrified when I put the duvet back on my bed and discovered it had huge stains all over it!
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| The largest and most horrifying stain! |
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| The product, the cloth I used to rub it in, and ANOTHER STAIN! |
So, the results are in, it worked! For the most part. Probably not a huge surprise that it did exactly what it was supposed to do, but there was one stain that is still almost exactly the same. It's possible I missed that one. The grey of the duvet and the shadows and lighting in my room made it hard to tell if I covered them all, and I had no place big enough to spread out the whole thing.
So I obviously took the easy way out, and used the branded solution. Have you tried anything else that worked? Let us know!
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| The finish product! Please excuse the wrinkles... |
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