I posted a disclaimer before my birth story, so perhaps I should post a disclaimer here, too: this is a laundry story. You've been warned.
Over a year ago my mother-in-law visited and she did the exact same thing that my own mother does when she visits: evaluates the environs with pursed lips and one eyebrow raised. My non-enthusiasm about housekeeping must have surfaced when she noticed that my cleaning closet, containing not much more than a glove and a bottle of Clorox spray, sorely lacked Lestoil (which I had never heard of.) Well, we drove around all of Madison, checking grocery stores and hardware stores, but there was nary a bottle to be found. SO, after returning a short while later to her home state, she generously mailed me 2 nice big bottles of the yellow, oily, smelly goo. I wasn't sure I would ever use the stuff, but when someone I trust tells me something-or-other is a lifesaver, I am happy to have it tucked away in my cupboard.
Well, not long after that, Zoe went to the playground down by the zoo, which has evil, hateful, toxic, indelible shredded tires as ground cover. She was wearing her cutest green Lime Chiffon dress, which made her dance like Lime Chiffon from Strawberry Shortcake's gang, especially whenever she got on a trampoline. But the main point is, her dress got covered with smeary black tar smudges and I could not get them out with any stain removers.
When we went to visit Grandma, I showed her the dress (THAT'S how bad I am at cleaning - I hauled it in the car for a thousand miles to plead for someone else to fix it.) She whipped out the lestoil and scrubbed and laundered...and saved the life of that dress!
So now Lestoil is a good pal of mine. First I'll show you my running shoes, and you'll want to run and wash yours when you see this. (Or else you'll want to run to Costco; they have Adidas supernova control for $33 this week and I bet they'll be gone by next week.) Well, my shoes were so dirty that they were headed for the trash if I couldn't clean them up. I removed the insoles and threw them in the laundry, but when they came out, they were still dingy-looking (albeit smelling fresh.) So, I got out my Lestoil and a toothbrush and scrubbed a few patches of the mesh, rinsing frequently with water. Wowee! I took a photo so you could see the comparison.
Incidentally, this is the proper progression of my shoe. 1)Indoor running on the track until a small hole starts to appear by the toe 2)Outdoor running on the street until they get a little dirty 3)Outdoor running on rainy days until they look awful 4)Gardening until they are embarrassing 5)Shoes I wear in the river while tubing, that mysteriously vanish forever when my husband finds them. So, even though I am fashion ignorant, I still manage to have a closet full of shoes.
Now, y'all know I love to save a buck whenever possible and I enjoy judicious use of freecycle. Someone recently posted that they had Land's End jacket and snowpants that were in fine condition except they had (evil voice) shredded-tire-playground stains which did not respond to laundering or stain-removal. So, I accepted them and did some Lestoil charm. The fabric on these is really tough, so instead of using a toothbrush I actually used my grout brush. Here are photos with 1/2 cleaned so you can see that I revived them from 'trash' status to 'not even embarrassing to a 5-year-old' status.
1 comment:
Wow! Never heard of lestoil either. Love the new blog background and header.
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