What are some of your worst laundry disasters?

16 responses total.

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A tube of lipstick in the pocket of my scrubs. Questions?

Money in my pockets from time to time.  Once when I was little I left a stick
of gum in a jeans pocket and put it in the laundry.

I usually remember to check my pockets before I throw something in the wash
but if not, bits and pieces of paper of all strange colours come out with the
wash.

I have this one pair of bright red shorts that once ended up in the whites...

No, seriously, is there any fast way to get excess colour out of jean-type
pants besides sending them through fifty loads of wash? I've had these pants
for about 3 years, and I still have to wash them all by themselves. I can't
even put them in a load of dark jeans- the other stuff *still* comes out
pinkish. Any suggestions?

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Caitlin, if you soak your clothes in vinegar and cold water, it will set the
dye. 

When I was 7, I left birght red gum in a pants pocket and it got all over the
rest of the family's clothes. I had to check the pockets in the laundry until
I was 10 and I started doing my own laudry. 

And, after that, you could have as much bright red gum over your clothes
as you wanted?  8^}

I don't see that as the sort of fashion statement Liza'd go in for.  Do they
make black gum?

But then, you're parents always were silly, lizaroo.

ref #9: Yes! Black Jack gum is well and truly black.

ref #2: I haven't been in this conf in a couple of years. Dropped in to ask
about getting burgundy lipstick out of a khaki cotton shirt and what do I
read?
I *really* need to get in the habit of checking my pockets!

Three years later...

I did manage to get the lipstick out of the khaki cotton shirt, but don't 
remember how.

New disaster: I have been using "20 Mule Team Borax" for light and white 
clothes since taking so much grief over chlorine bleach. It works 
acceptably well.
But a couple weeks ago I mistakenly put it into a load of black clothes, 
most of which now have very interesting and entirely maddening brown 
swirls and blotches on them.
Short of a packet of Rit, any ideas? Repeated washings in all-black loads 
have had no effect.

Borax (sodium tetraborate) won't do that: at least, it is not a
bleach. You must have used tghe "with bleach" (sodium perborate)
version. In regard to fixing it - Rit is Right.

But rit is a very poor quality dye.  It makes it look fine at first, but keeps
washing out and staining the rest of future loads in which it's iuncluded and
eventually (a year or so) the brown swirls will be back.

There are higher quality dyes on the market -- sold where weavers and spinners
gather.

Add vinegar, alum or even salt to the dye bath as a mordent.  Mordent help
make dyes colorfast.

The  appropriate mordent depends upon both the dye and the textile.

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