My boyfriend works at UPS and he uses a black crayon to mark boxes. He called me at work to ask me how to remove melted, dried crayon from his work clothes and the dryer. Needless to say I was not a happy camper, lol. He used a magic eraser on the dryer and it worked completely.
Then he sprayed his clothes with Simple Green cleaner, let them soak for 20-30 minutes. He washed them in hot water with Oxiclean, a regular cup of laundry soap, and a regular cup of Dawn (regular being the cup you use with the laundry soap). He let washer agitate for a little bit then let them soak for 30 minutes then rinsed and they were clean.
All I can say is thank God I was at work, LOL.
Also, no WD40 smell. The Simple Green is organic so it won't hurt septic systems which I have. Thanks so much for this site. It saved us about $300.00 in clothes for work.
By JL Boyd from Gulfport, MS
Hi, I just had this same problem. I'm one of the editors here at ThriftyFun and when I have a cleaning emergency, I know just where to look. After I found the melted crayon in my dryer and throughout a load of laundry (including my favorite skirt), I read through the feedback to see what people generally recommended. There were suggestions all over the place. I figured I would start out with my regular stain treatment of Spray 'n Wash and then move on to harsher treatments if need be.
I saturated each red stain (had to be a RED crayon, didn't it) and threw it into the washer. After a little bit of sitting, I set up a soak cycle with my regular detergent, some baking soda (which I often add to keep my laundry fresh) and vinegar (ditto). I let them soak for 30 minutes or so and then washed them in warm (I often use cold washes).
To my delight, all the red was GONE! I had a mix of towels, kids clothes, my husband's work shirts, underwear and my favorite skirt. All look as clean or cleaner than normal (my husband's white shirt practically glows). So I guess my advice here is to start simple and work up to the drastic measures. I'm not sure if different crayons stain worse, I'm pretty sure these were the classic Crayola brand.
About cleaning up the dryer, I was able to wipe most of it off with a wet towel, while the dryer was still warm. It looks like the crayon moved to the lint trap pretty quickly, minimizing the mess. I'm keeping an eye on it and will probably do another wipe down after I finish drying the clothes from this last load.
I had a conversation with my oldest son about NEVER putting crayons in his pocket again. I think I should get in the habit of checking pockets better though. (06/18/2009)
By Jess
I really thank all of you who posted on this topic. I put in a pile of clothes - pants, shirts, shorts, which comes in stripes, printed, and some in bright colors. I was horrified seeing the dried red streaks all over the clothes and worse, parts of white, purple, pink, red and yellow crayons got melted in the dyer, from my 4-yr old son's pocket apparently. I thought I would just have to throw all of them out, but not until I got tips from the postings here.
1 cup color safe bleach (great value brand for HE washer)
1 cup Borax
1 cup Shout Triple Acting
1 cup hydrogen peroxide
1 cup distilled white vinegar (on-hand)
4 scoops (about 3/4 cups) SUN oxygen all-purpose cleaner
Result? Almost perfect! There's only about 4 shirts with little spots left, but I'm very impressed with the results, considering how bad the clothes were. I ran another express cycle and there were 2 spots left in two of the clothes which are not that visible... still impressive.
Note:If you don't have the washer's soak option, overnight soaking will do the work like some people did. (7/31/09) (07/28/2009)
By Evs
I washed three crayons and found them as I removed the clothes from the dryer! A friend told me to use a whole box of baking soda and wash as usual without any other preparation, and all the wax came out. (10/17/2009)
By Alacin
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