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Recent laundry mishaps

Dee

Veteran

Just venting a bit here!

After a very long day this weekend, I was too tired to do much of anything but thought I could at least get some laundry done. Well, I managed to throw not just one but two summer favorites into the dryer - a grey linen tank and my grey summer workhorse dress. I must have thought they were DH's t-shirts or something. The dress might no longer be work-appropriate, length-wise, and the shirt looks cropped!

If you can commiserate, please feel free to share. And my advice for the rest of you: don't do laundry when exhausted!

General

23 replies

Latest reply was from Meow

donnat

Veteran

I hate laundry mishaps! That is the one I specialize in, tossing stuff in the dryer and shrinking it... achhh...

Suz

(website)

Veteran

Oh, no. I HATE laundry mishaps. For me, tees have been the worst affected. I lost my favourite j. crew print tee that way....

What is the fabrication of yours? Are they linen? If so, you can probably block them out like wool. Even cotton might be salvageable. Get them wet again and carefully stretch. See if it helps.

Janet

(website)

Veteran

I was going to suggest the same thing Suz mentions. I've inadvertently shrunk a few things in the dryer, and sometimes rewashing and reblocking can salvage them. Good luck!

Dee

Veteran

I was able to block out the linen tank, sort of. To get enough length back, it also stretched the armholes a bit more than I'd like. But I can wear it under a topper, at least.

The dress was a stretchy rayon knit, unfortunately, and no amount of blocking helped. So it's now a weekend-only dress.

Diana

Veteran

I was going to say you can fix the linen, but it looks like you already did! I'm sorry about the dress.

My recent laundry mishap was not exactly with clothes, but with my ongoing epic knitting project (a big modular colorwork blanket). I'm blocking the pieces as I finish them, and the blue yarn in the latest two bled all over the white parts. =( I'm currently awaiting some special detergent that may be able to take the bled color out. Fingers crossed.

Keix

Veteran

I recently read about a product called Unshrinkit, which began as a Kickstarter possibly but in any case is now available readily on Amazon. I haven't tried it but maybe worth attempting?

Dee

Veteran

Diana, oh no! I can't imagine how frustrating that is after all the work. I'll keep my fingers crossed that your detergent works.

KL, I hadn't heard of that. I will definitely look into it, thanks! I'm sure it's the kind of thing I will use more than once...

Maneera

(website)

Veteran

Ugh. This sucks. Somehow I've never had clothes shrink in the dryer, but then I've had color bleed onto other things....some whites too. That sucked big time! But I'm yet to wash a linen dress I love very much. We'll see what happens!

I agree - don't do laundry when exhausted! Not if you love your clothes!

Anonymous

Oh, no Dee! Yup, no laundry when tired.. (or probably not when drunk too :D).

I agree about the linen being able to be re-stretched. I did discover this recently in a minor laundry mishap, which was me taking a chance washing some fabric I think was supposed to be dry cleaned.

MsMaven

Veteran

Too often I do laundry in automatic mode without paying attention. Today I washed white jeans without checking for stains. So of course, when I pull them out I see that apparently a cat with dirty feet walked on my lap--or maybe I did it myself by not paying attention.

Many times I've tossed something into the dryer just to get the wrinkles out--for a couple of minutes--and then remembered 20 minutes later. So I'd add to your advice: don't do laundry when you are distracted.

rachylou

Veteran

Let's not talk about ALL my heattech tights from Uniqlo...

shedev

Veteran

Hedev left the wax pencil that he uses at work in a pocket and it melted all over his load in the dryer. He's done it a few times and I've had to scrub black marks out of my clothes. This time he really left a lot on his stuff.

Dee

Veteran

Maneera, good luck with your linen dress! Don't do what I did...

Diane, at least if I were drunk, I'd have a good excuse. I tend to push the envelope on "things that should probably be dry cleaned" but haven't gotten burned yet.

MsMaven, I am so impressed by people with pets or young kids who wear white jeans. I'd be a mess! And we will add your advice to the list: no laundry while exhausted, drunk, or distracted!

Rachy, tights are hard enough to get on when they do fit! Aw!

Shedev, you win for worst laundry mishap. It happened more than once and wasn't even your fault!

celia

Veteran

Sorry to hear this. Sometimes I also put things I shouldn't on the dryer because I mix them up with DH clothes.

Joy

Veteran

I'm so sorry about your laundry mishap. I no longer put any of my clothes in the dryer except to toss them in a cool dryer to dewrinkle. Too many mistakes.
I've read that after soaking shrunken items in hair cream rinse, they can sometimes be stretched back into shape, but have not tried it.

Jeweled

Veteran

I ruined my all-time favorite, best-fitting olive colored jeans by throwing them in the dryer. They shrank beyond belief. I'd mistakenly thought they were a different pair of pants that belonged to someone else in my household. That was about 15 years ago, and I finally got over it by realizing that even if I hadn't shrunk those olive jeans by accident, they'd be too small for me now anyway. LOL

Summer

Veteran

Just commiserating here, Dee. My mishaps are mostly of the colour run variety, and usually involve favourite items - isn't it always the way?

Staysfit

Veteran

Oh yes, I hate that and have had it happen before also! We also had a slightly different laundry mishap in the Staysfit household. I washed two EF organic cotton tanks (white) on my hand wash setting and when I pulled them out of the machine they were covered with yellow splotches everywhere.

In distress I showed this to my DH who did some research about our machine and figured out it was one of two things: 1. Oil spots from some broken/worn parts. 2. Stains from accumulated residue in the machine. (We have a front loader).

We worked on the fixes for problem two first. It took a full day to figure out how to get to all the areas we needed to clean, then we ran the machine with the descaler, ( something I regularly do so it wasn't protection enough, so warning to anyone with a Kenmore front loader that is around 15 years old). We also ran it through with bleach and vinegar and then did a test wash with DH's new Hanes white cotton undershirt. Fortunately it worked. Having the machine repaired is expensive. We had to have the internal drum replaced once because DS doesn't empty his pockets of all the small odds and ends he collects throughout his day and one ended up cracking the drum. (I have steel drums but, they are encased internally with a plastic or maybe silicone piece and that's what cracked. In any case the entire inner workings of my machine were replaced. It's like an 8 year old machine but a 15 year old model). That's it for laundry mishaps, unless you count the time my DH washed my pregnancy clothes all together in one load and the whites turned pink because he mixed in reds. We couldn't afford to replace them so I wore streaky pink clothes.

Glory

Veteran

Oh yes I can commiserate. A few years ago my DS decided he would surprise me by doing all of the laundry one day while I was at a hockey tournament with my DD.

He did 4 loads in my extra capacity front loader (very very large loads). Washed dried folded all but one load by the time I got home. Sadly he had used liquid bleach in place of liquid detergent. Every single item of clothing was ruined beyond salvation. Most were tie died, some had holes, all stunk of bleach. He went heavy on the liquid to make sure everything was extra clean. This included a full load of my clothing as well.

I had to put everything in the bin.

AviaMariah

Veteran

I separate my clothing so that items that can't go in the dryer are in one laundry bin by themselves and I do smaller loads of those items and they all get hung. I hang dry a lot of clothes, even ones where it isn't required so these end up being medium sized loads.

Greyscale

Veteran

Oh no, Dee. I hate it when I ruin favorite clothes.

When I was 13 or so, my mother accidentally shrank my favorite cotton sweater. I was... not very gracious about it. From then on I was encouraged to do my own laundry, which was a fair solution, because I'd only have myself to blame for mistakes!

Dee

Veteran

I just want to thank everyone for sharing all your stories! And I'm so sorry for those of you with much worse mishaps than I had. Definitely provides a bit of perspective. Here's hoping we all go awhile without another one!

Meow

Veteran

I have had a ton of laundry mishaps so I can sympathize. I have 3 boys and do so much laundry that I tend to turn my mind off - that's when all the problems happen.
I just watched the first episode of Sienfield (again) as the series is now on HULU. Jerry is doing laundry and George is telling him he's going to "over dry" his clothes. Jerry says you can't over dry - like you can't shoot a dead guy and kill him. Once they're dead they're dead, once they're dry, they're dry.