image from thenest.com

Stains are difficult but when you know what to do it can be as easy as 1, 2, 3.  Here are some very helpful tips from Betty’s Laundry Secrets book.  Now, you don’t have an excuse for throwing out the shirt with the grease stain.  Pay attention now!

Coffee:  Betty says that coffee isn’t hard to get out if you get to it with soap and water right away.

Fruit:  Betty always puts lemon on the stain first.  If that doesn’t work then she uses bar soap.

Mildew:  Wash the garment in warm or hot water with bleach, depending on the fabric and line-dry or dry flat in direct sunlight.

Oil and grease:  Sprinkle some cornstarch or baking soda on the stain, then place the garment, stain side down on a large rag on top of an ironing board.  Iron with a hot iron on the wrong side of the stain–most oil and grease stains will come right out .  (This trick works only for oil and grease, which need heat to dissolve.

Rust:  Soak fabric spotted with brown rust stains (which sometimes come from hard water) in a solution of 1 part lemon juice and 1 part water for at least 30 minutes.  Do not use chlorine bleach on rust stains.

Tea stains:  These are hard to get out, but Betty soaks tea stains in cool water and applies bar soap anyway.

Betty’s Rules of Thumb for Stain Removal

• Don’t ever try to use hot water on anything that’s stained.  Hot water will set most stains, especially those containing protein (such as blood stains and many foods stains.)
• When in doubt, soak it.
• If you notice a stain on a garment after washing it, don’t put it in the dryer.  Instead, while the item is still damp, attack the stain with ivory soap.
• If you catch a stain in the act–say, at a dinner party after one glass of wine to many–blot the stain immediately with a clean rag or sponge.
• If a stain is faded but not completely gone after you take the garment out of the washer, hang the garment outside with the stain facing the sun.  Often, sunlight will do the trick.

Real Simple takes on the old age question.  Does washing in cold water really work?

“Q: My friend washes all her clothes in cold water to preserve the color. Do they really get clean this way?
Faith Stafford
Brooklyn, NY

A. Yes. The consensus is that cold water is more than up to the challenge of washing everyday laundry. “Technological advances, in both machines and detergents (not just the cold-specific kind), have made cold-water washing a highly effective option,” says Colorado-based clothing-care expert Steve Boorstein. Sometimes it’s safer than using hot water.
For example, protein stains (blood, sweat) can set in when washed in hot water, and hot water may shrink or wrinkle synthetic fabrics. That said, some people find that workout clothes still smell unpleasant after a cold cycle (synthetic materials, like those in some Under Armour and Nike Dri-FIT pieces, tend to hold on to bacteria and odor). If this is the case, do a cool-water prerinse within 20 minutes after your workout. This will help eliminate residual odor during the next cold load. Cold-water detergent is a good choice for gym wear; regular detergent works fine for other clothing.
Another argument for turning down the dial? Since about 90 percent of the energy consumed while running a load is used to heat the water, the average household opting for cold can eliminate as much as 350 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. For most homes, this will amount to about $40 in savings a year.”

Find more information on laundry Solutions check out Real Simple.

Allergies, who doesn’t have them?  Luckily, we live in a day and age where even laundry products are created with the allergy sensitive in mind!  You can now find several products in your laundry aisle that fit the bill of dye-free, scent-free as well as green.  In this issue of Allergic Living Magazine, Pamela Lee, otherwise known as “the allergic diva” acknowledged a few green laundry products for the allergy sensitive one of which is Fragrance Free WOOLITE® Dry Cleaner’s Secret®!    Check out the article below and find out what other laundry products made the list and why!

Click on the article to read in full view!

1.  On warm days line dry your laundry instead of using your dryer.  If you don’t have a line outside try using a drying rack inside.  Either way you’ll save money and the environment.  When it is warm, take your drying rack outside.  Your clothes will dry quickly, the sun will help whiten your whites and your laundry well smell fresh!

2.  When the times comes and maybe it’s this year… consider replacing and old washer or dryer with an energy efficient model.  In the long run this too will save your wallet!

3.  Use ProWash Activewear Detergent as a booster to your regular laundry detergent or as primary detergent.  ProWash not only washes your garments thoroughly, it’s designed to work in both high efficiency washers and toploaders.  Plus, you can feel guilt free purchasing ProWash since it comes in a pouch container which has 9X less effect on the earth than hard plastic bottles.

4.  And, don’t forget to load your utility room with WOOLITE® Dry Cleaner’s Secret®.  Our home dry cleaning kit will save you money on your dry cleaning bill and will reduce contact with harmful chemicals like Perc. 

5.  Invest in a depilling sweater comb and a sewing kit to get more wear out of your wardrobe.  Most of us need to save right now and that includes not buying clothes.  I know, sad but true.  The good news however is that wardrobe conservation reduces our carbon footprint on this fair planet!  Here’s to a Greener 2011 – cheers!

So, I recently purchased a wonderful new washing machine.  Yep, I got a front-loader and it’s amazing.  The machine is so much quieter than my old machine and it uses a lot less water.  I’m in love!  It’s a whole new world coming from a top loader that was 22 years old.  Goodness, was it time or what?  So, after my purchase I was feeling good because I’m going to save money in the long term on water and I’m helping the environment with this purchase.  But, after reading an article from the Portland Tribune on August 12th on washing laundry with cold water, there’s more I can do, or dare I say we all can do!

Journalist Peter Korn asks the question, does cold water actually clean as well as warm or hot (and why does it matter)?  According to U.S. Department of Energy data, “if we all washed our clothes in cold water rather than warm or hot water, we’d save over 50 billion pounds of carbon emissions a year.”  The article also mentions that only “two of 10 people in the U.S. wash all their clothes in cold water.”  A stain test was done at a local laundromat in Portland with Korn and laundry attendant June Sanders.  Sanders tested dirtied towels using both cold and warm water.  She found that with stains like dirt, grass, salsa and lipstick, cold water worked just as well as warm. 

Something else you may want to consider is avoiding laundry detergent with brighteners.  Martin Wolf, a chemist at Seventh Generation (www.seventhgeneration.com) said that brightener detergents “don’t get your clothes cleaner.  They give you the illusion your clothes are cleaner.”  What this means is that “brighteners contain a dye that uses ultraviolet light to make clothing look brighter,” Wolf says, however, “they also evaporate and contribute to air pollution.”  Eek!  It makes you think twice about your next purchase in the laundry aisle, or at least raises awareness about how everyday products like laundry soap (and water temperature choices) can directly impact the environment.  Helping the planet in these seemingly small ways is a bright spot in the otherwise routine task of doing the laundry – at least for me.  Might I add that my amazing new front-loader, while quietly purring in the corner as it washes a load of laundry in cold water, couldn’t agree more!

Green is in.  Helping the world is in.  Fashion is in. So, why not collaborate all three? That’s what Fashionandearth.com did.  This company has it together.  Fashion and Earth purchases only fair trade organic garments and gives 5% of it’s profits to World Vision and WWF.  I mean, wow!  And, the clothing is stylish, reasonably priced and they offer free shipping!  Yes, free shipping!  They also include a “Green Fashion Guide” on their website which includes tips on recycling and reusing clothes, and a guide to learn about eco friendly fabrics.  Discounts are available to shoppers too!  So, here’ s my plug, next time you have the bug to go shopping, try going green and helping the world all at the same time!

Peace out!

If you’re on the budget boat trying to stay afloat like me you need ideas on how to save and get creative with your means.  Because, as they say poverty is the mother of invention, right?  Well you can leave the invention to someone else because someone else has already thought of it…

A friend of mine found this book called Generation T Beyond Fashion at her local library on renewing your wardrobe using old T-shirts or making new items out of them.  Believe me you probably haven’t thought of most if any of these ideas.  It’s a great resource and the sewing is easy to follow even for those who haven’t sewed since 4H (yes, it’s true I was in 4H Sewing)!  Plus, the author, Megan Nicolay, has her own website giving you instructions how to make anything from mens ties mad from T-shirts to a World Cup Soccor Ball made of, you guessed it, T-shirts .  Check it out!

Fashion comes and goes as tastes and trends change. But, this new green, sustainable fashion kick? It’s here to stay because it’s not a trend, it’s the new norm. Every industry, not just the fashion world, is turning to sustainable resources. Cars, food, construction. Yes, even the laundry industry [Dry Cleaner's Secret shout-out opportunity!]. There are more and more products out there nowadays that are safe for your health and the environment, so take part in the revolution. Think green.

That’s our little pep rally for the day.

Dry cleaning is losing a couple popularity contests — our waning economy can’t afford it, and our critical environment wants no part of it. Skyrocketing gas prices are causing Americans to put a hold on some of life’s luxuries (such as having other people wash your delicates), while the country’s skyrocketing environmental conscience is steering us further from energy-inefficient and toxic processes (such as having other people wash your delicates in mondo machines with harmful chemicals). These are the two most apparent reasons why professional dry cleaning is on the decline, and cheaper, greener alternatives are beginning to take their place.

In Cathleen Jeffrey’s blog, “Let’s Talk Money…,”I read about the decline of business at the local dry cleaner in the small town of Hull, Massachusetts. The owner of Family Ties Dry Cleaners admits that business has been at the slowest its ever been, and she believes it has all to do with the rising gas prices. Here’s a video that Cathleen put together:

In a separate article from STLToday.com, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch online, about how the economy is affecting the household budget, one reader commented about how her family has begun to line-dry more their laundry in order to save energy and money.

A separate, but not-too-disconnected issue that also affects Americans’ dry cleaning habits is its environmental ramifications. With the environment and sustainability brought to the forefront with rising gas prices and a push to find a cleaner, more plentiful source of energy (not to mention a desire to patch that gaping hole in our ozone layer), people are becoming more environmentally conscious. That said, and considering the fact that professional dry cleaning is far from enviro-friendly, the industry is taking a hit. Aside from the huge amounts of energy it takes to keep a dry cleaning plant up and running, the cleaning agent used to wash the clothes — perchloroethylene — is a soil contaminant and a central nervous system depressant, and therefore dangerous not only to the environment, but to also to people in direct contact with it.

In response to the hard times, and in the spirit of greener times, alternative dry cleaning methods are gaining in popularity. They’re more inexpensive, more environmentally friendly and more easily accessible than professional dry cleaning. Products like ours, Woolite® Dry Clean At Home by Dry Cleaner’s Secret, may be the solution for homemakers with a mortgage, a gas bill, and an environmental agenda.