There comes a point in your life when you feel like you’ve done something so many times, that you must be considered an expert by this point.  I had this realization the other day when Harrison’s daycare sent me a picture of him creating a masterpiece art project using a pinecone as a brush, and he was covered from head to toe in purple paint.  Clothes still on – purple paint.  And I didn’t even have a moment of panic about how the clothes were likely ruined, as I looked at the intense concentration of my son’s face creating said masterpiece.

It’s become part of my routine every evening after putting Harrison to bed.  I spend some quality time with the clothes he wore that day getting the stains out from whatever adventures he engaged in and food he ate that day.  I think some of this just comes with the territory – being a parent of a toddler seems to require spending quality time at the sink and with your favorite stain stick.

Here’s what I’ve learned about dealing with stains:

• Stain treat clothes as soon as possible. I’m not saying that you have to yank the clothes off the kid as soon as he walks in the door.  What I am saying is that letting those stain ridden clothes sit in a laundry basket all week is going to make the task harder once you finally get around to laundry.  It’s why I stain treat clothes literally every night.

• Always always always always always use cold water during stain treating.  Cold water doesn’t set stains.  Hot water does.  I also always wash clothes on cold as well for the same reason – if I have a stained item that I’m concerned didn’t fully come out before I put it in the wash, I check it before throwing it in the dryer to see if I need to do additional stain treating.  Because I said earlier – Hot sets stains.  That includes the dryer.

Here are my steps for stain treating clothes:

‘1. Find yourself a good stain remover spray. I’ve tried so many – Shout, Arm and Hammer, Oxy Clean regular – my favorite is Oxy Clean Max.  Yes – that’s different than Oxy Clean regular stain remover.  Yes it’s a smaller bottle and yes, it costs more, but it works exponentially better, in my opinion. Spray stain and work through under cold water.

If it doesn’t fully come out, move to step 2.

2. Let it soak.  Overnight.  Fill up that sink with a bit of cold water, throw in some powdered Oxy Clean, and let that sucker soak all night.  Step 1 & Step 2 removes a solid 75% of the stains we deal with over here.

If it doesn’t fully come out, repeat step 1 and add Step 3…

3. Let the sun help.  Ya’ll.  Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but until I had a toddler, I had no idea how helpful this was in stain treatment.  Let the sun help you remove that stain – put that pasta stained pair of pants out in the sun for the afternoon, and watch the stains disappear.

The above steps works for almost everything, except for oil type stains, pollen, and serious marker stains (permanent marker, dry erase marker.) But so this solves almost all of our common toddler stains.