Household Tip O' The Day

A few weeks ago, we spent the day at my parents river cottage. Before we headed home, I bathed the kids, put them in their jammies, and shoved all of the dirty, damp clothes into a garbage bag. And then I promptly forgot about said clothing. A few days ago, I found the forgotten garbage bag and decided to clean its contents. Then I discovered Christopher's favorite shirt, one sleeve of which was covered in mildew. Now, considering that this was a bag filled with damp clothing that had been sitting for a rather long time, I figure I came out pretty lucky. Considering it had to be his favorite shirt . . . not so lucky.

So, I decided I had nothing to lose in trying to clean it. But everyone knows that mildew is incredibly hard to remove. In fact, when I looked up "removing mildew from fabric" in my favorite homemaker book it said "probably damaged beyond repair." Great.

But I remembered reading somewhere that hydrogen peroxide removes mildew (hey, it works for blood!). So I got out my giant bottle of peroxide, which it turned out had only about four drops left. I then found "Chlorox 2", which, it turns out, is mostly hydrogen peroxide anyway. I dumped the peroxide on the sleeve and then soaked it in the chlorox for about an hour. After a regular wash, the mildew is almost entirely gone! Hooray!