1/10/10

Our Clothes Are Minty Fresh


This morning I started the dryer to fluff clothes I put in yesterday. After a few minutes I opened the dryer and started to fold clothes. The first shirt I grabbed i noticed a purple smear on the shoulder. Then I realized half the clothes in the dryer sported the same purple smear!!!! SHIT! Someone left a crayon in their pocket and I missed it when I checked pockets.... a whole load of whites covered in melted purple crayon. Ugh....
I pulled the clothes out and set aside the stuff with smears. My poor, 1 yr old dryer looked like this.


Oh my goodness! The world is coming to an end! J's favorite pink sweater has purple smears all over it! She was very upset when I sent her off to school this morning, and I promised to do everything I could to salvage her favorite accessory.

After the girls are gone another thought occurs to me.....Damn!!! Everything I put in the dryer is now going to come out purple!!! Damn Damn Damn!
I ran for a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser because they seem to fix everything.

After 10 minutes of scrubbing I noticed no discernible difference. This stuff was not coming off. So being the nerd that I am, I turn to my friend the internet, more specifically Google, and begin the search. It appears that this has happened to quite a few people, and my search found quite a few helpful tips.

One specific search lead me to the Crayola "helpful information" website (i.e. how to get our product off and/or out of your stuff) which yielded a lot of information on how to remove stains left by their products in many different situations. Good place to start? No, not really. I found it quite disturbing that they listed WD-40 as a possible solution to our problem. Yeah, I'm going to spray a flammable liquid into my dryer in the hope I get it cleaned up enough so as to not to start a fire when the next load of clothes are dried. Great idea, crayola.

Dissatisfied with what I had found so far, I happened upon one idea that seemed a little far fetched, but in the end proved to be the winner. It involved toothpaste. Lots of toothpaste.


Here's what I did to remove the dried crayon from our dryer.

  • 1. Heat empty clothes dryer by running it on the hottest setting for about 5-10 minutes.

  • 2. Stop the dryer and slather toothpaste over the crayon afflicted areas. Make sure every area that has crayon is well covered. The more the better.

  • 3. Close the dryer and start it. Again, let it run on it's highest setting.

  • 4. Start removing the crayon from the walls of the dryer by breaking out a chisel, a jar of elbow grease, and a wet wash cloth. After vigorously scrubbing for a good 15min, you should notice that the waxy crayon residue will begin to dissipate.

  • 5. Repeat steps 2 though 4 until crayon residue is gone.
In my opinion, the Extra Whitening did a fantastic job. Though I highly doubt the whitening part of the toothpaste had much impact on the overall performance. I would like to think it did, after all, my dryer IS white.

So, there you have it. Clean as a whistle. No more purple waxy crayon residue. The whole process only cost us a tube of toothpaste and a few years off my life from inhaling super-heated toothpaste fumes for two hours.

The fate of the clothes is still to be determined...
They soaked in hot-as-it-gets water with 2 full capfulls of Concentrated Era Ultra Stainfighting Formula detergent, half a cup of Oxyclean, and 3 Shout Color Catcher sheets....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Im just a passerby and I love this post. The toothpaste solution is fantastic.

Anonymous said...

Toothpaste is a miracle compound I swear it.

This is awesome to know because it's only a matter of time before this happens to me.

Princess Chelsea said...

how'd the clothes turn out?

Kate said...

Toothpaste fixes lots and lots of things. And I wouldn't fear using WD40 on the clothes. Seriously. It won't stain them.