Stain Fighting Magic!

I've never really been any good at doing laundry.  I have been trying to get myself back into the habit of separating my whites, colors and towels because for years I was only doing my laundry and I never had enough of each to make full loads so I just threw everything together.  Now that I am doing laundry for my husband and son, I've been trying to separate things again.  I'd noticed my whites were turning gray from throwing everything together.

Lately I have been spending HOURS looking around this website, reading about all sorts of DIY projects and tips for cleaning, laundry, and beauty.  I have found many things I would like to try such as making my own hand soap and mason jar dispensers, making my own laundry detergent, etc.  I like the idea of making my own products, especially if it means saving a little money and keeping unwanted chemicals out of the house.  I love her blog and I especially love the additional ideas I find in the comments section.  Well, on her blog I found a page talking about whitening your clothes.  She tried it out on her mattress pad and wow!  What a difference.  I decided that I was going to try it out but with color safe bleach so I could try it on some of my sons terribly stained shirts.

 This shirt was stained while in the washing machine!  Even after washing several times, the stain wouldn't go away.

 My son's very stained shirt.

  Another of my son's but not too bad.

So I grabbed a few of our shirts, grabbed all the materials and was ready to (hopefully) see some magic!

 After soaking all night and most of the day, I finally threw everything in the washing machine and this is how they turned out.

Since all three shirts had been washed and dried many times with the stains in them, I didn't really expect much but it did help, especially on my husbands shirt!  I think that I may have put too many things into my little bucket and that the solution wasn't able to get to everything evenly because some things looked the same as before, but other things looked not perfect, but a lot better.  I will definitely be trying this again!  And I know, I'm on my journey to become a chemically free house and the first thing I go out and buy is chemicals!  So I'm not as committed to the idea as I thought, but if it means cleaner laundry, I'm all about breaking my new rule. I'll make up for it when I start making other products.  :)