My Laundry Disaster

Laundry Disaster
pronounced /ˈlɔndri, ˈlɑn-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [lawn-dree di-zas-ter]

Definition:
A laundry disaster is when the red dye from an item in the wash bleeds on everything else in the load and turns it all pink.

-----

Everyone must have a laundry disaster as one of their life experiences.... it's a rite of passage.  It took 34 1/2 years, but I finally had mine this past Sunday.  I've always been super-careful when it comes to doing laundry with new items that could bleed, so this took me by complete surprise when it happened, particularly since my laundry disaster had a bizarre result.

And I mean BIZARRE.

For the record, this wouldn't have happened if weren't for the dogs.

So, as in previous years, we had a red and white tree skirt around the Christmas tree stand.

DJ hanging his first ornament (and a good view of our Christmas tree skirt)

When I took the tree down this weekend, I discovered that a dog had marked the tree skirt, right on the white part.  GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.  I have my guesses as to which dog (IO) but it was immaterial since I now had to wash the tree skirt. 

I tossed the tree skirt by itself into the washer on delicate cycle (no spin), and cold water.  When it was done, it was soaking wet, but I didn't see any evidence of bleeding.  So I tossed into the dryer, and I went back upstairs.

After DJ fell asleep for his nap on Sunday, I went downstairs to check on the dryness of the tree skirt.  I opened the dryer and to my horror, I found this:

My pink dryer drum

A quick note: you can always click on the picture to get an enlarged version.  Then hit your browser's back button to come back to the blog post.

My jaw dropped to the floor.  In any other situation, a string of words that could make a sailor blush would have come out of my mouth but not this time... I was stunned mute.

I pulled out the tree skirt, and all the white parts weren't just pink, they were as red as the rest of the skirt itself.  I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of it before I threw it out.

Despite the fact that we had company over to watch the football game, I went upstairs to get Steve.  "Steve, come with me right now."

When he saw it, he was impressed.  "Nice job, honey!"  He tried to rub it off, and barely got any to come off on his finger.  But to be sure that was really the case, we decided to throw some dog laundry in to see if the color on the dryer drum would bleed off onto freshly washed stuff.

The dog laundry came out just fine, but the dryer was still pink.  Here's another picture of the dryer with a white bag in it for contrast.  Although I think there's so much pink that the bag is even taking on a pink hue...

Another view of the pink dryer drum

The pink (nearly red) dyer door

So I did what I do best, and that's ignore it for the next few days.  Ok, that's not true, I at least did a few Google searches to see if there were any home remedies out there.  Most of the results involved getting crayon or pen off of the drum, but I found a few ideas here and here.  Man, what did people do without the Internet???

Still, embarrassed to face my own failure, I let it sit for a few days.  I had to do something about it, though, when DJ ran out of clothes yesterday.  I had to run a load of laundry for him else he'd have nothing to wear today.

So I thought about what to try.  I didn't want to use nail polish remover or rubbing alcohol because I didn't really know what it would do to the drum.  I didn't have a Magic Eraser handy.  So I mixed a bucket of OxiClean and hot water as Billy Mays' OxiClean ads ran through my head, and started scrubbing.

Lo and behold, the pink started to come off slowly (and I started thanking Billy Mays, God rest his soul...) and boy, let me tell you.  Dryer drums are big when you have to scrub every square inch of them 50 million times to get any results whatsoever.

After one round of (a lot of) scrubbing, I saw a marked improvement.  I probably spent an hour scrubbing.

Results after 1 round of scrubbing

I did another round scrubbing, and then I soaked rags in the OxiClean solution, didn't wring them out, put them in the dryer, and ran it on low heat.  When it finished, the dryer drum had an OxiClean film on it.  To get that off without re-scrubbing with clean water, I ran the rags through the washer, and put them, soaking wet, in the dryer on low heat again.  Upon completion, the dryer looked like this:

The final result

The not-so-pink dryer door!

Then I ran DJ's clean laundry through the dryer and when it was done, it did not have a film of OxiClean on it!

Clearly, the dryer is not perfect, though the dryer door looks almost like new; I have to look really hard and in the exact right spot to find where it was pink.  The back of the dryer is still pink as that was the hardest to scrub, but it's a whole lot better!  The dryer drum isn't as smooth as when it was untarnished by my laundy disaster; you can tell it still has a little film on it, but that will come off over time, I think.

But seriously, it never even crossed my mind that I could stain a dryer drum.  So let my laundry disaster be your warning!!!  Don't let your dogs pee on your Christmas tree skirt and if they do, DON'T WASH IT.  Just throw it out and get another one.  It's not worth it!!!