The Red Crayon Incident

Every mom needs one of these, right?

Ok maybe not. But we had one a couple weeks ago.

It all started innocently enough. I was doing laundry. I was transferring wet clothes from the washer to the dryer. Hyrum came over and wanted to help. He was SO cute about it; how could I refuse? He put some clothes into the dryer for me.

What I didn't realize until way later is that he also had a red crayon...and it went in the dryer, too.

Imagine my surprise when the load was dry! Red spots EVERYWHERE.

Of course, it had to be a RED crayon. It couldn't have been, say, white or yellow or something less noticeable. Oh no. It had to be RED.

I was NOT happy. I had no idea how it happened. Maybe part of the red bath crayon got stuck in Emma's towel? It wasn't until that night that I remembered that Hyrum was helping me...and that a few days before, he had colored on the wall near the laundry closet with a red crayon. The same red crayon, apparently, that he threw in the dryer.

I immediately threw the load back in the washer for a special stain batch. Then I asked for help from all my Facebook friends. Everyone recommended OxiClean. We were going out that day anyway, so I picked some up.

I added OxiClean to my already-soaking stain batch and let it soak overnight. I was able to get the spots out of about 2/3 of the load. Thankfully, I got it out of Emma's super-cute blue coat, her jeans, and mostly out of Hyrum's khakis. The khakis have 2 teeny tiny light orange spots, but they're only noticeable if you really look for them.

Some items, however, still have red spots. I tried soaking them again, but no luck. Thankfully, most of the still spotted items are kid towels, washcloths, socks, underwear, and PJs.

Unfortunately, one of my favorite sleepers still has very obvious spots on it. And of course, it's a white one. Hyrum only got to wear it like 3 times before this happened; it's one of the newer ones my mom sent.

Here he is in his spotted PJs:


I seriously soaked this sleeper in OxiClean for days. I don't think those spots are ever coming out :( At least they're only jammies. But I'm still kinda bummed about it.

Hyrum, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care. He probably didn't even notice.

I've definitely learned to be more aware of what's nearby when I let the kids "help" me with laundry.