If there’s one thing that I can count on as a mom of two young boys, it’s washing plenty of laundry. And most of the time, that laundry is incredibly dirty or covered in stains. Now I have to admit, when my boys were younger, I didn’t worry about stained clothing all that much. Things like “pre-treating” and “dry-clean only” were almost foreign concepts to a mid-twenties mother that had only had to wash her own clothes before. Until one day, and one stain, changed the way I looked at laundry forever.

I had taken Zackary to the library for preschool story time. He was just a toddler and the craft that particular day was finger-painting. Of course, it was also the day I had decided to wear my favourite white Capri pants. As my excited son finished his finger-painting, he turned, grabbed my pants with a paint-covered hand and said, “Look Mom! It’s a rainbow!”

The left thigh of my pants was covered in a beautiful red, yellow and blue abstract design, but I didn’t panic. “Oh well!” I said to myself. “It’s washable paint!” With that comforting thought in my head, I calmly praised my son, took him home, hung up his picture and tossed my pants into the laundry basket…where they sat for the next week. [Read more…]