Yesterday I had high hopes for my Friday night. I anticipated a relaxing evening with dinner, celebrating my mom’s birthday at our house. However, it ended up with me learning how to get melted magenta purple crayon out of a full load of white/light clothes. [Note: picture in blog post does not do justice for what I saw in the dryer]. Most would immediately think it was their toddler. Not me. I knew who it was. My husband.
The day started out like any other day. I took our toddler to the gym and let him “workout” in the playroom as I got my workout in. We ran errands going grocery shopping and picking up my new glasses. It is the first time I have ever needed glasses [only for distance] since I was in elementary school.
When I tried them on for my toddler he said “Not cool mama.” AWESOME. If I was not already annoyed that my eye sight was starting to fail me now, nothing like having my toddler hate my new glasses to make me feel even better.
Once we were home, my husband left to play racquetball. Leaving me with the two kids. I figured I can do this. Feed the toddler his lunch, have him nap and the one-month-old should nap while I prep my mom’s birthday dinner: salad, lasagna, bread and a homemade peanut butter pie cake [recipes coming soon]. Wishful thinking on my part. Seems to be a common occurrence these days.
Everything took longer than it should from getting my toddler down for a nap, to prepping the dinner because the one-month-old decided he did not want to nap.
When my husband finally got home I was happy to have another set of hands. I had asked him to swing by Walgreens on the way home to pick-up some photos. He picked-up half the order. He was next to me when I placed the order which had large photos in it (ie: 8 x 10s). So a small 4 x 6 envelope should have sent off some red flags. But nope…it did not. I asked him to go back because I needed the other half of the order for my mom’s gift. SMH.
While my husband took the boys out of the house to run a few quick errands, he thought that would give me some time to relax, shower and catch my breath before celebrating my mom’s birthday. After showering, I ran downstairs to check the laundry. I opened the dryer and there was magenta purple all over the white/light clothes. It was like one of those bath bombs had exploded in the dryer.
A Magenta Purple Dryer
One by one as I pulled the clothes out of the dryer, I felt more and more sick to my stomach. My favorite J.Crew joggers were in there. Right away I knew what had happened. On Christmas Eve my husband’s aunt had made crayon wallart for our one-month-old. Super cute. One of the cousins had pulled the crayon off and my husband had put it in his khaki pants. Still not sure why he thought sticking crayon in his khaki pants was a good idea.
When we got home on Christmas Eve I had asked him if he had the crayon so I could glue it back on the wallart. He said “Yes, I need to get that out of my pant pocket.” I responded, “Um yeah, because I do not want that going through the wash.” That was Monday and here we were Friday night with a magenta purple dryer right before I was hosting my mom’s birthday dinner.
I quickly started Googling how to MAYBE salvage the clothes in the dryer while simultaneously sending my husband angry texts. The different blogs I found on how to get melted crayon out of clothes started by saying “Breathe everything will be alright.” Yea…maybe if my head was not already spinning from the day I had.
I frantically started boiling water per the steps below in hopes of saving the clothes. Not exactly how I had planned my “down” time before the birthday dinner. Despite the chaos of the magenta purple dryer, the birthday dinner was a success and my mom loved her new KitchenAid.
As for the success of removing melted magenta purple crayon from white/light clothes, that is TBD still. I ran through the steps twice last night and then a third time this morning. So far I have saved half of the laundry. The verdict is still out on the other half. If you are interested in how to remove melted crayon below are the steps I followed.
Steps to Remove Melted Crayon from Clothes:
- Fill a few large pots with water and put them on your stove top bringing them to a boil.
- Put the clothes in the washer, and set the water to hot. You want it to be super hot, so that’s where the boiling water comes into play. You can start the washer letting it fill with hot water while you wait for the boiling stove top water.
- Once the water is boiling, add it to the washing machine.
- Add laundry detergent. Whatever kind you normally use is fine.
- Add 1/2 cup vinegar (I did more because I was really wanting to get rid of the crayon) and 5 Tablespoons of dish soap (Dawn works great).
- Soak clothes for 15 minutes.
- Run the washer.
- I repeated this a few times.
Don’t forget to clean the dryer so you do not stain the clothes again. I used vinegar and water to scrub it, along with a magic eraser. Then I tested the dryer with some old cleaning rags I did not care if they turned magenta purple.
Depending on who you ask, depends on whose fault it is. Some may say my husband is to blame because he put the crayon in his pocket and never removed it. Some may say I am to blame because I did the laundry and didn’t check pockets. I never check pockets and he knows that.
I’m thinking this may not be the last time something like this happens so clearly there needs to be some laundry process improvements in our household.