Although finding three dollars in the dryer is generally cause for at least a small celebration, finding an empty tube of chapstick in the same dryer counteracts all of the three dollar goodness.
After putting the rest of the greasy clothes in a bucket of Oxy-Clean, I rewashed two of the six ruined shirts in hot water, one after dousing it liberally with stain spray the other after a careful application of WD-40 and Dawn. I’ve not yet returned for the results. I have a feeling I’ll be heading to Old Navy later this week to replace at least a few of the shirts to get me through the rest of the winter.
thatnervousgirl | 22-Jan-07 at 11:53 am | Permalink
If what you tried already doesn’t work and there are a few things you really want to save, you could try taking them to a dry-cleaner. In my experience with working at one, the dry-cleaning solvent was usually pretty good at taking out greasy or oily things better than washing, and there were a couple times they worked wonders on chapstick or even lipstick getting in a load of laundry. Good luck!
cara | 22-Jan-07 at 12:02 pm | Permalink
from burt’s bees (toward the bottom of their customer care page):
Help, I forgot to remove my lip balm from my pocket before doing my wash!
Here are few suggestions for removing lip balm from clothing that has gone through the wash and dry cycles:
* Soak clothing in boiling water with detergent. Repeat until the stain is removed.
* Turn washing machine to the highest heat setting and wash with detergent.
* If these attempts fail to remove stains, try commercial stain-removers or an Earth-friendly dry cleaner.
PIgs | 22-Jan-07 at 12:04 pm | Permalink
Oh, what a mess. I’ve done that before, of course with the pink kind, never the white.
sarah | 22-Jan-07 at 1:31 pm | Permalink
dude. that SUCKS.
andrea | 22-Jan-07 at 8:53 pm | Permalink
My husband does this ALL the time. So do my children. Of course I am the one not checking pockets before I wash anything, so…
I honestly haven’t had anything ruined.( Or maybe it’s just that all of our clothes are chapped. Ha- ha.) So, maybe it’s not as bad as you initially thought.
Good luck!
Elizabeth Jones | 24-Jan-07 at 8:33 pm | Permalink
Yeah, I washed my car keys yesterday (complete with the remote key to open the doors on my minivan).
Oz | 25-Jan-07 at 9:02 am | Permalink
For grease based stains, including chapstick, you lay out the (dry) clothing and put baby powder on the stain and leave it overnight. The baby powder absorbs the grease. Wash afterwards. We had success with this method when we washed chapstick with some borrowed maternity clothes. Make sure the baby powder covers the entire surface of the stain.
Or buy new clothes from Old Navy.