laundry, how you taunt me!

Laundry makes me insecure. I feel like a little defeated every time. And stains are the worst. The bully's knee in my face every time I watch grease or food soil our clothes - you win, laundry! You always do!

I make guesses and hope for the best. Coloreds in with whites this time! No one even knows what permanent press is! Throw that shirt in with the jeans! I make random and sometimes arbitrary rules based on tidbits I've received along the way: Bright colors get cold water. Whites get hot. Unless they should not shrink or are special in some way. Then they get warm, because it's halfway between hot and cold and sometimes compromise is the best solution.

It's a crapshoot, ladies! Which, by the way, I just discovered is a "risky or uncertain venture." Exactly. Will it bleed? Was that the best way? Do any of these rules actually matter? Hand-wash doesn't always mean hand-wash? But sometimes it does? Dangit.

Anyway, I just found a tool to help that helped me begin to overcome what is essentially my sheer lack of knowledge about these things. GoodHousekeeping's website has a tool called Stain Buster that successfully helped Charlie and I clean week-old spaghetti sauce spots out of his cream-colored dress shirt. It was magical! This particular spell required the alternating application of laundry detergent and white vinegar.

I know sometimes it's easiest just to google "remove dog vomit stain from denim vest" (that has never happened to me) but I thought this website was a nice central location to run to in times of stain-induced distressed.

And if anyone has a trusted Laundry 101 resource to share, please don't leave me in the dark!