Category Archives: Tips & Tutorials

Does this work in an HE washer?ReplyCancel

I found red and yellow crayon all over a large load of whites today! I was so dismayed but joked to my friends I’d reached another Mommy milestone! Thank you so much for this post. It has saved our clothes and our dryer! 🙂ReplyCancel

I am so glad I found this! I had done a tremendous load of laundry with probably 3/4 of my sons clothes in it. After finding out what had happened and finding your advice I broke that giant load into two smaller loads to try the trick. The nylon clothes did great. The cotton clothes are on their third cycle. I’m not giving up yet, but I can say that the porous cotton is holding onto the crayon so much more than the nylon. Oh well at least it’s not a total loss. Thanks for the advice! So appreciative.ReplyCancel

I have a HE washer and when I try to pour the boiling water in to soak, the stupid washer automatically drains the excess. There is no soak setting. There is literally no way to have clothes submerged in water in this washer. Our bathtubs are out of the question, since I don’t want to carry boiling water up the stairs. So angry at my washer I could pull an Office Space on it! Never buy the HE washers!ReplyCancel

I’m crossing my fingers and praying (for my daughter’s sake) that this works! A few days ago my daughter wore her North Face fleece to “help” her grandfather work on a vehicle. She came home with it covered in grease. I kept my composure and told her to get the fleece and the shell (it was a NF jacket that the fleece liner unzips to make 2 jackets) and check the pockets before putting it in the washer. Well, she didn’t check the pockets and everything came out with blue crayon all over it. I have it in the washer on sanitize with the vinegar and Dawn right now and I’m praying this works.ReplyCancel

Do I HAVE to use white vinegar or will Apple cider work? I live about 15 miles from the nearest town and that’s all I have. My brand new (first time been washed) $100+ jeans have red crayon all over them! ReplyCancel

THANK YOU. 
I was doing a major bedding deep clean today, had even unzipped the covers off our Tempur-Pedic mattresses, and asked my son to change his little brothers sheet and toss it in with my last load of the evening. Fast forward and he was also tasked with putting that load into the dryer. He didn’t look and a red crayon was EVERYWHERE on the white pillowcases, the zip covers.. I was so upset. Google brought me to your site and I didn’t measure but dumped vinegar in my HE Washer’s tub, squeezed a bunch of blue Dawn, loaded the dispenser up with Tide, set it to sanitize with an extra prewash… and waited the 2.5 hours for the washer to do its thing.
At 1am it sang it’s song and I anxiously ran to see… BEAUTIFUL. One of my beloved white shams that has been piling was almost good as new (& now doesn’t match its twin, ha!).

Thank you thank you thank you.
My son thanks you too 😉 ReplyCancel

Thank you for this post!  I have a front load washer and used the instructions above and it worked!!!!!  HURRAY school uniforms saved 🙂 ReplyCancel

Thank you! These tips saved me yesterday and got out most of the orange crayon from my son’s clothes!ReplyCancel

This (plus OxyClean in the soak) worked for me in dealing with a nightmare red crayon dryer incident . 98% of the stains disappeared. Thank you!ReplyCancel

This saved us after a blue crayon landed in our kids clothes! We have a front load HE washer with no soak feature, so we made some adjustments, but it worked! We ran this on a sanitary load with oxiclean in the tub along with 1c vinegar and 1/4c (4Tbsp) dawn dish soap and tide ultra strength as detergent. This worked in one wash for clothes that were merely stained. But for the clothes that had thick chunks of wax, we needed more. So I filled my utility sink with super hot water and even added a few kettles full of boiling water to it and added some vinegar and dawn, then soaked the clothes for an hour and scrubbed the thick wax out. This took about 3 hours of scrubbing, but the wax was incredibly thick because these were fancy beeswax crayons a grandparent had given the kids (never again!). I just used a toothbrush and dawn for thin fabrics (onesies) and a dish scrub brush and dawn for thick fabrics (fleece, jeans). Then, once the wax was out, I soaked in oxiclean for an hour then ran the cycle again on sanitary with the vinegar and dawn as described and presto! The clothes look great; a few very light stains on a couple of items, but on play clothes, and they’ll probably come out in a few more regular washes. Anyway, if the regular method isn’t working for you, try the soak and scrub! And thank you for saving us from using wd-40!ReplyCancel

This worked! A red crayon was in a pocket and ruined a load of white clothes. I did 3 pots of boiling water, added a bunch of dish soap, the vinegar and detergent and the load came out crayon free. Thank you for sharing this!! ReplyCancel

This is EXACTLY what happened to me when I came searching on the internet for a solution, red crayon all over brand new school clothes! I am going to give this a shot, thank you! Do the clothes need any scrubbing though? Or just throw them back in the wash?ReplyCancel

Oh my goodness, this saved a large wash of clothes covered in magenta crayon. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I thought it was a total loss–only a couple of marks DIDN’T come out using this method.ReplyCancel

I followed the steps, but I didn’t have vinegar. I used dawn powerwash + dawn dish soap and baking soda, let me tell you even the white shirts look new!!ReplyCancel

Thank you for this post. When I opened the dryer this afternoon I discovered that my son had left a yellow crayon in his pocket. There were yellow smears all over everything including my favorite pants. I went through this process twice and it removed all of the crayon smears.ReplyCancel

This was a god send!!! My toddler accidentally got red crayon into my wash load of bamboo little sleepies pajamas, including a brand new white top that very much so turned pink. This process got ALL of it out!!!! Thank you so so much!ReplyCancel