I am all for penny pinching, you know, and I am also all for products that make life much easier for a mom. Sometimes the two do not mesh, in which case I have to decide whether I am going to be thrifty or just a tad extravagant.
It is summertime. Berry season. Stains on little white blouses. Verdant grass. Green knees on jeans. Glorious sunshine. Sweat rings on shirt collars. That is just the way it goes. Now I have never been happy with stained, grungy clothes on my children, even if they are just play clothes. Those of you who live in the South with that orangey red clay dirt, I know, it is impossible. But when I do laundry, I like it to look like my effort has paid off. I don’t mind faded shirts, or holes, or tears in hemlines as much as I do stains. That is just me.
Any how. My children know lots of creative ways to become just filthy, and I have lots of creative ways to remove stains. I have soaked gallons and gallons of buckets full of clothes in Oxy solutions of one kind or another. I have even come across a pretty dependable source for impossible stain removal. (It’s called Google, and go with the method that sounds most likely. ) I have rubbed my knuckles raw with that caustic blue soap from developing countries. I have sprayed Shout on mounds of stinky blue jeans. I have even bleached stuff on the washline for days. Lots of thing work when you use enough elbow grease and never give up.
But what if I told you that there is a product that does it all for you? Just toss it in the washer, throw the laundry on top and run the accustomed cycle? There really is such a thing. I got introduced to a free sample pack, and ever after I have had the ethical dilemma of whether I want to spend so much money on laundry detergent when I can mix up my own for pennies a load. The thing is, I don’t hire a maid to help me do my work, so I find myself a bit short on time to scrub. I call this product my maid. 🙂 Dilemma solved.
I don’t know how you feel about using a product with enough chemicals that they give away free “reseal” stickers so that the homeowner can keep little paws out of the dispenser. All I know is, for about 25 cents a load you can do the worst stained laundry effortlessly. I lost, or rather, my children lost both my scrub brushes, but it isn’t too great a disaster when I have this stuff on hand. For the record, Tide also sells a product that is just stain remover pods, as well as one that is just a whitener. I get the stuff that is detergent, stain remover, and brightener all in one.
Some of you may scoff, “What is 25 cents a load?” Well, I can easily do between 10 and 20 loads of laundry a week, depending on the weather, the state of the pond-in-progress, and the whims of the little guys. That adds up rather rapidly. On the other hand, that is just too much Oxyclean in buckets. So I buy Tide and use my cheap, homemade soap for the less soiled loads and drop these expensive chemical bombs into the unbelievably grimy loads. It comes out okay without breaking the bank or my back. 🙂
Give them a try. Be fearless. Go and scrub no more.
That concludes my mavenly love sharing for today.
wocket in my pocket 
I also got a free sample of Tide Pods recently but have not even tried it yet. Thanks for the tip- I identify with cheap homemade soap, blue scrubbing bars from Honduras, AND a desire for clothes that are truly clean when they are laundered.
Yes! Im sold on these things! For awhile I thought they were just way too expensive, so avoided them but when I did my math, it didn’t seem too bad after all, considering I had snowy white clothes out of it. And one box lasts an amazingly long time.
I will flat throw money away by the handfulls on those giant jugs of clorox wipes. And now I am compelled to buy this! I shall, and I thank you for the review. I was depressed the last time I was hanging out clothes because of all the stains. And I get depressed using cheap laundry detergent, then supporting it with gallons and gallons of expensive stuff. I am all about the pods! The easy, throw in a pod and the job is done.
Since my boys do there own laundry thats the easiest soap for me !! Thats one of the best things they came out with in a long time i think ! heres a toast to happy easy laundry days 🙂
Janie, I am impressed. Your boys doing their own laundry has to be a very smart decision!