Stains on vacation

When you're on vacation you won't spend hours to get rid of stains.
Take a stain pretreatment stick with you and when you've got a stain use the stick well.
Some stains will disappear, others will be more easy to remove at home.

Ink stains

Long ago we used real ink in fountainpains to write.
My uncle kept in in a topdrawer.
One day I had to fetch the ink and when taking the bottle out of the drawer it turned out the lid wasn't closed well.
A few drops fell on my new dress.

I feared the anger of my mother and went to the kitchen and poured milk on my dress, put kitchen paper to absorb the coloured milk and repeated it often until the stains were gone.

When I came home my mom asked me what smelled so sour. LOL!

Some people use alcohol to remove ink stains.

On some surfaces and fabric bleach will do too.

Remove chocolate stains

Removing chocolate or cocoa stains shouldn't be a problem.
When it's a large stain why not try the old fashioned way by using borax and water?

You can also use borax to make linnen white.

Jeans softener

New jeans and other new cotton fabrics can be unkind to the skin.

When you wash them add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of salt to the detergent.
It will soften the fabric.

It might sound old fashioned, but it helps.

Drying clothes outside in the winter

No, I don't use a dryer to dry the clothes of my large family. Not even in winter.

I use the clothes to get the right humidity in the house. You know that the heating causes low humidity, so drying clothes will act against it. Your clothes need to be rinsed well, and to do so I put them an extra time through the rinsing part of the laundry program.

When I dry the clothes outside I put half a cup of salt in the last rinsing water.
That prevents the clothes from freezing.
My gram taught this to me a long long time ago.

In the dryer

To dry your clothes fatser in the dryer add a few tennisballs.
I've been told it saves 25 to 50% of the time you'll otherwise need to dry your clothes.

I would love to have some feedback on this item, because I hardly use my dryer.

Sheets

It's OK to use the standard size of sheets on your bed, but we prefer a bit more.

So I buy unbleached cotton at the market in town, and take one or two meter extra in length and width.

You can put the sheet well under the mattress at the bottom, so you won't get cold feet, and at the top there's a good overlay, which can be pulled up in the neck at cold winternights.

When making the bed you can fold the overlay down over the blanket, and then fold half of it back upward again.

The unbleached cotton causes less pollution and after washing it a couple of times it get whiter.

No ironing

I don't like ironing, do you?

This time of year is perfect to unwrinkle your laundry without ironing.

Just hang it on the line in the evening and during the night.
The humidity and a bit of wind will take care of the clothes and in the morning they will be less wrinkled.

Take care: they are a bit humid and need additional drying.
When you hang them inside they'll be dry in the evening or earlier.

Towels as laundry

In a small household towels are just a part of the laundry.
Because they're not really dirty you can save costs by putting them in a bucket with hot water and detergent.
Let them soak for a few hours, then quickly handwash them and use the laundry machine for a few quick rinses.

laundry and spiders

I hate spiders and so do my children.
So I have to change the way I deal with the laundry.

The past years I've had the habit to hang the laundry outside and get it in late at night when it's dry and the humidity can't undo the drying.

But now it's almost autumn I can't do that anymore, because I can't see if there are spiders on it.

So I either have to hang it all inside, or get it in before it gets dark.

Yes, yes, I hear you thinking I should by a lamp. LOl!

We did, but it illuminated just one side of the laundry and with a family of 6 I can't take the time to turn every item inside out.

Any advice?

exchanging summer- for autumnclothes

There's no way of escaping: autum is approaching.

So it's time to clean out your closets and put the autumnclothes in there.

Many people take at one day all the clothes out and have a mess in their home for a few days to get it all sorted.

Why not take it easy?

Take the clothes that are washed and dried apart.
Will they be used next year? On one pile.
Are they OK to be given away? On another pile.

When you take out the summerclothes after laundry before the summerseason has ended you'll wear those clothes that you've missed this summer too.

Always keep some nice tops for christmas and other occassions!

Wash silk clothes

Silk is a natural product, so it should be treated with care.

Use only a light soap of special detergent for silk to wash silk clothes.
Wash them by hand, not in the washing machine.

Don't leave the clothes in the water, but finsih washing immediately by rinsing in clear water several times.

Then press the water out between towels and iron the silk between the towel, if ironing is necessary.

Most often drying silk on the line in the wind, not in the sun, will be equally well and results in a longer life.

Good luck!

remove stains from red fruit

Remove stains from red fruit by soaking the stains in lemonjuice.
Don't wash them first.

remove chewinggum

Don't you hate it to have chewinggum on your clothes?

Rub with peanutbutter.

stains from rust

Rusty stains can be removed by soaking the stains in lemonjuice a whole night long.

ketchup in fabric

When you've got ketchup on a T-shirt it's hard to remove.

Not!

Wash the T-shirt and hang it in the sun.

stains

When you throw your laundry on the pile, you have to look first for stains.

Most stains are terrible to remove once they've dried.

So wash clothing with stains straightaway.

Washing glass curtains

Never ever wash glass curtains at a high temperature and you'd better also be careful with detergents that contain bleach and/or whiteners.
You may end up with curtains which are even more yellow than when you put them in the laundry machine.

laundry refreshener

Some detergents wash well, but they leave a strange smell in the laundry.

Ofcourse you can use expensive laundry softener, but you can also use in the last water: lemon, vinegar, or a small drop of mouth refreshener.


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smelly t-shirts

Sometimes T-shirts can smell so bad, that you wonder whether the whole laundry will smell the same after washing it with other items.

Make a mic of vinegar and some water and soak the T-shirt in it for a couple of hours.
Rinse it and after that put it in the machine.

Works well.