Archive for the ‘clean it’ Category

I’m a bit obsessed with lemons this week.  It must be the new site.

I do promise this blog will cover subjects other than lemons in the very near future.

But for today, I couldn’t resist one more lemon post.  Plus this is a wonderful tip to have in your arsenal of stain fighters.

Did you know?  Lemon is a great laundry stain fighter.

Remember those teenage days of squeezing lemon juice in your hair and laying out in the sun to bleach it summer blond?  (OK, fine!  I am a brunette and I never squeezed lemon in my hair, it probably would have turned it orange or something terrible… but all my fair haired friends did it!)

Long story short, lemon works like a non-toxic, earth-friendly, inexpensive bleach.

As a bleach, lemon juice is suitable for whites.  It will bleach your clothes.  Don’t use it on any colored garment, unless you like light bleach stains.

Lemon juice works great on fruit or fruit juice stains.  It also works like a champ on those pesky rust stains.

Here’s how I use lemon to fight stains.

1.  Make Ina Garten’s Linguine with Shrimp Scampi and groan because your dinner is so good!  Make sure to leave some juice from one of the lemons.  That will be for laundry the next day.  Or buy an extra lemon if you have a lot of stains.

2. You don’t need to follow step one.  But you’ll be sorry if you don’t.

3. Squeeze the lemon juice so that it saturates your stain.

4. Place the garment with lemon juice in the sun to bleach.

5. After a few hours, launder as usual.

6. Make sure the stain is totally gone before placing in a dryer.

7. If the stain persists… repeat the process.

I don’t remember ever having to repeat the process.  This works like a charm every time on rust and fruit stains.

And the best part:  you might even enjoy doing laundry, it smells so good.

In December my husband took up running for exercise.  He has always worked out… riding his bike, cross country skiing, lifting weights.  But for some reason running made his workout clothes take on a whole new meaning of stinky.

Much to my dismay, his clothes were still smelly after a “run” through the washing machine.

On a whim, I threw in (my old standby) baking soda into the wash, and much to my olfactory joy… they came out smelling clean.  Ever since, whenever I throw a stinky load into the wash, I add about 1/2 cup baking soda to the load.

Now that summer is here, the running clothes are stinkier than ever… and sometimes there is still a hint of smell after adding baking soda to the load.  If there is, I dry them outside.  For some reason, drying in the sun and breeze seems to remove whatever smell was left.

With all the sweaty activities of summer, baking soda is an essential addition to my laundry arsenal.  Thank goodness I can buy baking soda in bulk… and on the cheap.

***I am in no way affiliated with Arm and Hammer…. other than buying and loving baking soda.