7 Tips for Parents Who Hate Stained Clothes

Do you hate it when your kids are constantly coming home with spots on their clothes, or worse, when the clothes come out of the dryer with stains?  If either of those scenarios sounds familiar, there are some things that you can do to take care of the drips and spills before they set in and become stains.  Check out these tips for parents who hate stained clothes and see if any of them help alleviate your laundry woes.

1. Invest in a detergent pen.  This might seem like a strange suggestion, but the sooner you can get to a spill the more likely you will be to get it out before it sets.  Many times quick action can be the difference between getting a stain out and having one that’s set for life.  Even if you can just lighten the stain by using the detergent pen, you’ll be much more likely to be able to get the rest of the stain out during the laundering process.

2. Use clothes pins to mark stains.  One of the main reasons that clothes end up stained is because the person washing the clothes was unaware that there was a spill on the clothing.  Implement a procedure in your house where everyone has a few clothes pins that they can use to mark a spot on their clothes before they put them in the hamper.  That way when laundry day comes you will see the clothes pin and know that there’s a spot that you need to be aware of.

3. Pre-treat the stains.  Once you are aware of the spot, you need to have a good quality pre-treater that you can apply to the stain so that you have a better chance of the spot coming out in the wash.  After you have washed the garment you need to check the spot before putting it into the dryer.  If the spot is still there you do not want to set it in further by drying it in a hot dryer.  You will need to try another method for stain removal.  Try to find out what kind of stain it is.  If it’s a greasy food stain, you can often use dishwashing detergent to break up the grease before laundering it again.  Knowing what your stain is will help you know how to effectively pre-treat it.

4. Buy white clothes.  It may sound silly for someone who hates stains to buy white clothes, but it’s really not.  White clothes can be bleached without worry of damaging the design of the shirt.  Bleach will get out many more stains than other pre-treaters. 

5. Add dye to a dingy shirt.  Do you have a shirt that used to be white, but no longer is?  How about a black shirt that has lost original black-ness?  You can use inexpensive fabric dye to make a dingy white shirt pink or blue or some other favorite color.  You can also dye your not-so-black shirt black again so that it no longer looks faded.  Dying a shirt can help breathe new life into an otherwise stained or dingy article of clothing.

6. Get crafty.  So, you have a stain that is set in and you absolutely can’t get it out.  Do you have to toss the shirt?  Nope!  Look to see where the stain is and see if you can add an iron-on patch to the shirt over the stain.  Or if the stain is right in the middle of the shirt and it would look funny to put a patch there, then you can use fabric paint and create a design that runs all the way across the top of the shirt, covering up the stain. Fabric paints are available at your local craft store or discount center. Find fun, creative ways to cover up stains to keep from having to throw clothes out.

7. Cut them off.  If your kids have pants that have drug the ground so much that you can no longer get them clean there is still hope – just make those pants into shorts!  If the pants still fit it’s silly to throw them out. 

Now that you are armed with a few tips and tricks to deal with those pesky spots, hopefully you will not have to worry about your kids wearing stained clothes again.  

Source: nanny.net