How to Get Crayon out of a Full Load of Clothes...

 Yup, this happened yesterday...

 

I heard, *thupumk, thumpumk* coming from a load of mostly t-shirts and thought... there is nothing in there that should be making that sound!

I opened the dryer door and found all of this...  As it was, we were playing with Mr. A on Sunday and would stick a green crayon in his church pants while he wasn't looking and then he would look for it, then would get all excited when he found it!  I guess we didn't get out the last time...

And I know what you're thinking, *thupumk, thupumk* doesn't come from a crayon... nope, but it doesn't.  That sound came from a now crayon covered rock from Mr. C's pants, all the way from Utah!

 Yup, they got all the way through the wash and about half-way through the dryer cycle.  On a HUGE load of shirts! AAAAHHHHH!!!!

The culprits...

So I did what any self respecting Mommy would do and took a picture.  Then cried, just a little, and then naturally, took to the internet!

There are lots of suggestions online to get crayon out of clothes, but most of them involved ingredients I didn't have or ingredients I didn't want to worry about getting out later (aka. WD-40, It may get the crayon out, but it stinks and I really didn't want to have to get WD-40 out of the clothes later)

The simplest and easiest I found involved just three things that everyone has!

Laundry soap (normal amount)
2-3 Tablespoons Dish soap
1/2 c. Vinegar

Yup, that it!

 First, fill up your washer with the hotest water yur clothes can handle!  Since we live in AZ and the water out of the tap can burn you (yes, I know you can turn down the temp on the water heater, and honestly ours is already really low, but it's Arizona!)  If you need to, boil water on the stove in your biggest pots and pour it in, the hotter the better!

Then put a couple of tablespoons of dish soap (Blue Dawn probably is best, it's the miracle soap, right?!  But I only had yellow Ajax brand, it still worked fine!)  and half a cup of vinegar (don't worry the smell is not a problem!) and your regular amount of laundry soap.

Fill up the washer and then I make sure everything is submerged in the water (I used a wooden spoon) then pause the cycle so it can soak 15-30 min.

When it's done check each item over for crayon, if it passes toss it in the to-dry pile, if not, repeat!

Now, let that sit for a minute while we talk about the dryer...

When I discovered the Crayon, I had a giant load of sheets in the washer... Trying to catch of up from nearly 2 months of crazyness!

so now I have a load of wet things and a green dryer... ARGH!

Back to the good 'ol Internet!  This time I opted for WD-40!  Did you know that WD-40 was originally designed as a cleaner?  Well it works!

I know it's hard to see, but there is a definite green tint to the entire inside of the dryer...

Cue the WD-40, a green scrubby, a cute hubby, and lots of elbow grease!

Whew!  Green Gone!

 Basically he just sprayed the WD-40 then scrubbed, sprayed, scrubbed, and occasionally wipped the excess (and the green) off with an old sock-rag.

When he was all done we wipped it down with soapy water, then plain water to help get the WD-40 out of the dryer.

This is the same shirt beore and after the soak/wash.  This particular shirt and about 4 of the 45 (Told you it was a huge load) shirts that had crayon on them still have some green, the rest came completely clean!  I kept pulling them out and being stunned it worked so well!

It seems that there is a correlation between fiber type and how well it came out.  The more stretchy the material the harder time it had.

Whew!  So glad that's done with!  now to catch up on the drying of two large loads since the dryer is now white again!  Good luck!  I hope you have as much luck as me if you ever encounter this problem!