Bleach + Milk

A couple of years ago, my mom bought me a really cute Halloween shirt. Early this month, I pulled it out of storage, and in amongst the jack-o-lanterns and black cats and candy corns, there were lots of little stains. I washed it before I put it away, but those particular little brown dots seem to show up in everything we pull out of storage. And they don't want to come out! Not with Shout. Not with bleach. Not with Oxyclean. Not with soaking.

Now, I know I'm not the cleanest person with the best fashion sense. In fact, I am a person with absolutely no fashion sense whatsoever. This weekend I read an article I just loved about Homeschool-Induced ADD. (It was such a hoot, and so true-to-life that my husband thought at first that I'd written it.) What I'm talking about here in this post though is "Homeschool-Induced Acceptance of Cruddy Clothing."

A person spends her early days of motherhood getting spit up on, being drooled on, and having diapers leak on her. Then she advances to playing in the sandbox, having paint spilled on her shirt and playdo ground into her jeans seat, getting grass stains on her knees, accidentally splashing bleach or ammonia on her shirt sleeves (because she's always cleaning something). There are blood stains from kids' booboos, mud stains from the playground, spaghetti sauce stains from making dinner, grape juice stains from short peoples' spills, and more stains too numerous to mention. If a mommy desires to keep her children's clothes clean and tidy, and her own clothes clean and tidy, she will buy Shout by the caseful. Me... I didn't try. I figured my kids could look grungy at home, have a few decent clothes for going out in public, and when all else failed, buy new things from Goodwill cheaper than investing in copious quantities of stain-removing chemicals.

But my Halloween shirt is so cute. And now that we are past the worst of the Kid-Stain Season of Life, I have begun to care a little bit more about how our clothes look. I actually made one kid throw out a shirt this week because I could no longer stand the grunginess level, even at home where nobody else could see that old green-and-white striped shirt that shouldn't have even been passed down to the last kid because it was so worn out from its previous owner who seldom took it off when she was 10.

So to make my shirt wearable, I hauled out my trusty bleach+milk concoction. That stuff is utterly amazing! I fill a shot-glass nearly half full of milk (the higher the fat content, the better) and fill it the rest of the way with bleach. It can't be made ahead; there's a chemical reaction that causes a slight color change and a significant rise in temperature; the effectiveness lasts for 10 minutes or less. Using an old toothbrush to scrub that concoction into a stain on white fabric has done wonders to clean things. I don't trust it; it's pretty strong on the bleach and I'm never sure whether it might ruin something. But when an alb or a surplice gets such horrid sweat stains at the neckline that it's in dire need of replacement, I've discovered that bleach+milk will garner us several more years before we have to go ahead and order new vestments for the pastor. (Those you can't pick up at Goodwill for three bucks like you can kids' clothes.)

And I can wear my Halloween shirt today too.