The Great Crayon Exorcism of 2008
Or…How to get melted crayon out of a load of laundry without losing your everlasting mind.
- Discover crayon carnage.
- Much gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, ripping out of hair.
- Coerce confession out of oldest child. Declare that the Largest Lego Collection Outside of Denmark will be sold if he ever leaves a crayon in a pocket ever again amen.
- Cry.
- Drink wine.
- Beg for help on blog.
- Research online. Get depressed.
- Drink more wine.
- Ignore large pile of afflicted laundry for three days.
- Drink more wine.
- Scrub waxy crayon deposits out of dryer.
- Run load of towels to confirm dryer is safe.
- Deep breath.
- Pre-treat the artistic laundry with Goop (this stuff is good. Once got car grease out of white jeans).
- Quit pre-treating when you get all skeevey about the amount of Goop under your fingernails.
- Claim that the untreated sheets will be the “control” group.
- You wanted new sheets anyway.
- Toss it all in the washing machine.
- Add two ginormous scoops of Oxyclean.
- Put in twice as much detergent as usual and fill up the pre-wash.
- Let sit for 20 minutes and blog the excitement to this point.
- Start machine (front-loader) on sanitary (extra-hot water), pre-wash, extra rinse, extra soiled, please God let this work setting.
- Go to bed and hope for the best.
The next morning…
- Crawl exhausted self out of bed into a humid and foggy morning.
- Check laundry.
- Rub sleep out of eyes in disbelief. 99% of crayon carnage is gone!
- Lather, rinse, repeat with remaining 1% of crayonage, adding the shorts that husband found while dressing.
- Take kids to camp. Get hair cut. Run errands.
- Check laundry again.
- Do a “Who Da Mom?????” dance in the cramped laundry room.
- Throw it all in the dryer and go about your merry way.
So there ya go. My amazement knows no bounds. I figured I’d be bound to the washing machine all day. Learn from me, my children, and check pockets. But if you miss a stick of waxy fun, I have found the solution! Yay me. 
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Glad it worked!
wow, that’s great. A friend just had a marker debacle in her bathroom, I was going to point her to that crayola link.
Sheesh, you put me to shame. I did no research when Lex left the pen in his pocket. I just yelled, screamed, swore at him, then tried to soak the things I really wanted to save in OxyClean for a day or two, and tried washing them again. They’re still stained, but not as bad. Next time (shit, there’d better not BE a next time!!) I’m asking you what to do!!! Glad it worked out for you.
I think you should email the Goop people and link them to this post!
You rock! But fyi…it this happends at my house, I’m mailing the load of laundry to you. cheers!
oh goodness that was so funny BUT I am happy that you were able to exorcise the load of laundry!
Glad it worked! lol!
Oooh, I’m happy for you! I’d be dancing in the laundry room too. Great post!
OMG Goop — my dad used to wash his hands with that nastiness (and a generous sprinkling of scouring powder on top) when he worked on the cars… I love the smell (it’s nasty, but it’s one of those happy memory smells)… um, where the heck do you even buy goop now — the auto store? the hardware store? I haven’t seen a can in a gazillion years… I’m buying some, just to have it around, I want me some Goop, I’ll find a mess to clean with it.
boys = crayons in the dryer
girls = lip balm in the dryer