Wiping out nacho cheese
I am very particular about my family’s laundry. I refuse to let anyone sort, wash, dry or iron our clothing. I even forbade my mother to handle the chore after four C-sections. I have a routine: seperate clothes, check for stains (dirt, pen marks, ketchup), treat, wash, check for stains again, dry for 10 minutes and then hang dry until ironing. You can slap me now.
When the children were young, they loved attending basketball games. Not because of the excitement of watching Daddy’s team but because they could eat nachos. The gooey canned cheese inevitably ended up on their fingers, hair, shirt, pants, and was one of the most difficult stains to remove. I finally resorted to a friend’s recommendation of treating them with the green Clorox Gel with bleach sink cleaner after all else failed: her reasoning - the shirt was already ruined so what else did I have left to lose? It worked most of the time if I threw it in the laundry quickly enough.
If only I had the “Tide to Go Instant Stain Remover” 12 years ago my life would have been so much easier. I picked up the pen yesterday at Bed, Bath & Beyond and stuck it in my purse. Little did I know I would use it five times before the day was over. Haircuts after school, a trip to the golf course to drop off sons no. 1 and 2, before racing to the tennis courts to watch a neighbor compete for a trip to the state tournament. A quick stop at Burger King before church and before I knew it, son no. 4 spilled ketchup on his shorts three times (I think he just liked using the pen), daughter no. 3 (one time - she needed an excuse to use it), and grease from the fries on my pants (one time-honest mistake). I took off the top to the Tide pen, wiped it across the two small grease stains on my tan cotton pants and was left with a little of the pen residue. After washing the pants, the stains were nearly gone - I should have performed additional pretreatment but the ketchup on my children’s clothes was gone. I was hooked. For $3.50, it was a good investment. The pen can be found at most grocery stores.
