- Clorox Holiday Stain Hotline: The Clorox Holiday Stain Hotline (1-877-STAIN411) features advice from Dr. Laundry, a.k.a. Mary Gagliardi, a scientist at The Clorox Company and a mother of two. Dr. Laundry offers home entertainers advice by phone, in both English and Spanish, on how to treat everything from gravy stains on your shirt to red wine on your new tablecloth. The hotline will be available from now through the New Year.
- myStain: myStain is Clorox’s handy (and FREE!) mobile app that is available for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Droid smartphones. Packed with advice on how to treat tricky stains while on-the-go, the myStain app also includes an interactive game in which people can spin a wheel and get funny stain removal tips for all occasions.
- DrLaundryBlog.com: Dr. Laundry also maintains a blog where consumers can submit their stain questions and receive answers directly from Dr. Laundry herself!
I had an opportunity to do an e-interview with Dr. Laundry. These are applicable throughout the year, not just around the holidays!
1) What are some of the most common holiday stains and how can they be dealt with?
With plenty of parties and family gatherings, getting bumped while standing and holding a drink is the perfect recipe for a stain disaster. Eggnog, red wine, coffee, and hot chocolate are very common holiday stains, as well as gravy, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Frosting stains also show up more often, especially after a kid’s holiday cookie decorating party, and markers that kids use to make holiday art projects often leave stains behind on tablecloths. For help with these stars of the holiday stain lineup, moms can call my Holiday Stain Hotline (1-877-STAIN-411) for step-by-step instructions on how to deal with them.
For example, eggnog has lots of cream, eggs and sugar which makes it a more complicated to get out. To begin, blot away any excess, then submerge and pre-soak the item in cold water and good liquid laundry detergent for about 30 minutes. It’s important to use cold water because eggnog is a protein based stain and hot water will “cook” the stain into the fabric fibers. Then, if the item is white, wash immediately in warm water using detergent and ¾ cup Clorox® Regular- Bleach. Or, if the item has color, wash immediately in the warmest water recommended on the care label using detergent and Clorox 2® Stain Fighter & Color Booster. Finally, air dry the item and check to make sure the stain is completely removed. If any stain remains, you can repeat the treatment, and as long as the stain hasn’t been set in a hot dryer, you have a much better chance of success.
2) What are some tips if someone is at a party and can't take care of a stain right away?
The sooner you can treat a stain, the better your chances of success. Some stains like cranberry sauce benefit from a quick cool water rinse before you get home, but oily stains like gravy or frosting should not be rinsed with water. A rinse with club soda helps “bubble” off a red wine stain. Keeping track of all these tips is easy for Smart Phone users who can download the free Clorox® myStain app, which features both on-the-go advice, as well as instructions for what to do when you get home.
For example, if you are at the party and there is more frosting on your child’s shirt than the cookies being decorated, the app would instruct you to begin by using a knife to scrape away the excess frosting to minimize the amount of stain you will be treating when you get home. Since this stain contains butter or shortening, don’t rinse the remaining stain with water. At home, pre-treat the stain with liquid Clorox2® or liquid dish detergent: rub in and wait 3-5 minutes, then wash in the hottest water recommended by the garment care label along with your favorite detergent and Clorox® Regular-Bleach for whites or Clorox 2® for colors. Air dry and check for success. Repeat if necessary.
3. Do you have any advice for ways to avoid getting stains to begin with?
For me, a stain-free world would be a boring one. If my son’s pants are muddy and grass stained after a happy laughter-filled roll down the hill, then it’s worth it. Being at a party with friends is a blessing, even if I get bumped and spill my glass of wine! To help ease stain stress I recommend planning ahead for the inevitable: choose a white tablecloth for your buffet table and then you can easily and quickly get out cranberry stains with Clorox® Bleach Pen Gel. Cute aprons as party favors for the cookie party will at least keep the stains contained and off the guests’ clothes. Having a plastic dishpan available to easily pre-soak muddy kid’s clothes (with powdered Clorox2® dissolved in a gallon of hot water, of course) means I can relax and let my kids be kids!
4. Do you have any tips on doing laundry that can help families save time and/or money?
The biggest habit that saves me time is air drying clothes to make sure any stains are completely removed. Most of the time, when pretreated properly, stains do come out on the first try, but on the odd chance that some stain remains and has been through a hot dryer cycle, then it is set and nearly impossible to remove. Even if I have to wash a stubborn stain twice to get it all the way out, I am still saving the runaround and the cost to replace an item that has a heat set stain from the dryer. That’s why I recommend “air dry and check for success” so often.
Another tip for saving time relates to the newer phenomenon of High Efficiency clothes washers developing smelly odors inside the machine that get transferred to the clothes. Controlling this problem can save time because you won’t have to rewash any laundry to get the smell out. Clothes washer manufacturers recommend running a clean out cycle, but instead, simply keep the odor problem under control by washing a white load with ¾ cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach at least once a week (or fill the bleach dispenser to the max-fill line). This will prevent the buildup of odor-causing residue in your machine, plus you will be getting your whites cleaner than you would with detergent alone.
Finally, the more I can get my family to do, the more of my time I save! When they pre-sort their colors, shake out their socks or turn those skinny jeans right side out before putting them in the laundry, then I don’t have to. And even if it is just a small amount of time saved, in the long run it really adds up!
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