Friday, June 17, 2011

Storage Stained Clothes

When going through Kye's baby clothes to put aside things for the new baby I discovered that a LOT of his stuff had gotten stained in storage. It was this strange yellow discoloration on many of his clothing items, especially the white ones. I took EXTREMELY good care of everything he owned and never packed something that was stained so this really made me mad!

Like any girl would do - I called my mama ;) She has a Stainbuster's Bible and it said that the discoloration from storage is caused from the clothes having stains on them but the stains being so deep in the clothing that you can't see them until they sit in the dark for a long time and they come to the service. It's mostly caused from washing clothing in cold water...which I do, every load. I mean who can afford to wash all their stuff in hot water??? That's expensive! 
To get rid of the stains it said to soak the clothes in an Oxi-Clean type stain remover.  I soaked all the colored ones together and all the white ones together (I did end up throwing out all the plain white burp rags and onesies, why go through the cleaning hassle for stuff I can buy so cheaply?). I let them soak for several hours.

Next wash the clothes using bleach and hot water. I didn't use bleach on the colored clothes, but I did with the whites.
A few of the badly stained ones are still stained, and I could do the process again but I probably won't! Thankfully the swaddles, some of my favorite outfits, and some cute sleepers all came out clean! I'm so thankful that I didn't just throw it all out! Hope this helps some other mommies too :)

2 comments:

Ashley said...

That's interesting to know! I'll have to keep it in mind because my daughter is due in September and we have a lot of bigger sized clothing which are hand me downs from family in storage now. So if I have the same problem I'll know how to clean the clothes properly!! (I am going to follow your blog, thanks again for visiting mine.)

Emily said...

This was exactly how I get those "storage stains" out too!

For extra punch, I laid everything out in sun after I soaked and washed it. After a couple hours in the sun, I ran a rinse cycle and dried them normally in the dryer. The sun trick is great for stains (I cloth diaper, so I am very used to getting stains out...works on any stain I've ever tried, especially amazing on breastmilk poop and spit up stains!!!)