Crayon Stains on Clothing?

Gracie

March 20, 20110 found this helpful

The hands-down winner for me. I followed the advice of the editor which was to start simple and work up from there. I used 1 box of baking soda and followed the regular washing instructions, voila, almost everything was gone from 4 dress shirts and 2 high-end restaurant aprons. (My son works at a high-end restaurant and picked up a brown crayon and put it in his apron. He forgot all about it and all his uniforms were 'ruined', at least till today.)

Of course, that's after I gave up following my first method (it was grueling and I couldn't get it to work). At first, I started with one of the aprons and a blunt knife, trying to scrape off the excess crayon and running boiling water from the back of the fabric through the apron and blot onto a clean white towel to 'blot' off the crayon residue. This was grueling because the apron was water-resistant and I couldn't get the boiling water through it easily. Hardly anything was coming off and I scraped and boiled water for 2 hours, barely making a dent in the apron.

I gave up and searched the internet and found all your great ideas. Starting simple was the miracle for me - although I was worried, the washing instructions called for a gentle cycle and cold water. I used almost 1 full box of baking soda, upped the temperature to 'warm wash and warm rinse', used my gentle detergent and set my HE washer on gentle.

After the first round, I had a couple spots of crayon left on an apron and a bunch on a shirt sleeve (it had been turned inside out on itself, so when I opened it there was still crayon all over inside it), so I put the whole load thru another gentle cycle with warm wash/warm rinse and detergent. (I didn't have any more baking soda). After the 2nd time, I only had 1 small spot on the apron that I could rub off with my fingernail. Too easy!

Thanks for the great tip!