What goes around ...

I have a slice of memory from when I was very small. Mom is standing in front of the dryer of the rickety old house we were renting at that time. She is holding a pair of my pants out, showing them to me. There are black streaks all over them, as well as over several other items I can see that are still in the dryer.

It seems I left a crayon in my pocket. It's melted all over my clothes. Mom is so not happy with me.

I do remember that she forgave me (in fact, I got off pretty easily.) I don't remember what happened to the pants or the other clothes, if the dryer was in bad shape, or what she did to try to clean everything up.

But I will never forget the moment of standing there, staring at my crayon coated pocket.

Yesterday, as I went to get a load of laundry out of the dryer, I noticed red splotches everywhere. You got it. A red crayon somehow got into the laundry.

Luckily, nothing really important was in there. I did have a load of the husband's work clothes in the washer, needing to be dried, but the load that was ruined was mostly small girl pajamas, towels and a tablecloth I don't like anyway.

The real problem was the dryer, which was fairly evenly coated with red. I did some frantic searching online (I love the internet, yes I do, it is the best encyclopedia ever invented) and found that WD-40 is a great way to clean up the inside of your dryer in such a situation. It's also good for cleaning up the clothes.

What I wound up doing with the clothes is rewashing them in hot water, with three scoops of Oxiclean (love that stuff, too) and rather more detergent than I normally would. I let it agitate for a while, then stopped the cycle and waited until the water had cooled somewhat. It got most of the red out. I'm going to do it again today and see how it goes.

The dryer is still faintly pink inside, but I wetted down two white towels and threw them in for a cycle. They came out still dry, so I felt safe finishing the husband's clothes.

And my mother is avenged for the crayon.