Yes, faking can lead to success.

So life here in Northern Orange county can be as busy as anyone desires.  For me its a combination of many things that includes hockey, camps, school, social functions, working out, you name it I have no trouble keeping busy if I do desire to be busy.  It seems like every day  I can find something to productively or non productively spend my time. Recently, its been the Summer camps list I am working so hard to bring to this blog and hopefully by this weekend the list will be comprehensive enough to bring to you, the reader. Other things have kept me busy in a different way, and one way has lead to an accidental discovery.  While the discovery probably is more widely known to other people, this discovery well means telling a story of how I uncovered it for myself.

 While I don't consider myself a wonder woman or domestic executive, I do consider myself rather good at appearing good at both and many times unintentionally. I generally appear to have all the answers when my kids need them and things look pretty organized and easy going from the outside.  Earlier this week I was faced with a problem that lead to both appearing to be wonder woman and powerful domestic executive.  It starts one thing that every one deals with, LAUNDRY.  We all have it, and I haven't met one person who actively loves the details of moving this task along, stain removal, folding technique, or the mundane sorting....(okay maybe a 3 year old who's just discovered the difference between colors and dark).  In general laundry is all done the same in my house, its washed  as one load in warm water with some sort of natural Laundry detergent. Even the stains, should any show up are often ignored and might get pre-treated should the notion strike me.  Sometimes, I get extra inspired or disgusted (haven't really pin pointed this yet) by the dingy whites and I might turn the washer to Hot water, and add a Cup of Clorox to the wash. 
Enough, about how I actually do laundry lets get to that discovery I made about laundry, and my ability to appear rather wonder woman like.  My Step daughter came to me this past weekend distraught. Her favorite flannel pajama pants and hoodie she'd borrowed from a friend at school had gum on them. She said and I quote "Some how a piece of gum got into my bed, and I don't know how."  I'll stop the discussion on my discovery for this topic. Chances are her obsessive teenage girl gum chewing is the reason gum mysteriously got into her bed and ended up all over her clothes.  Now being the mother figure of the house (did mention in all of this that she's responsible for washing and folding 90% of the laundry in the house) she comes to me wanting me to remove the gum because somehow laundry care is an inate trait a woman gains once given birth to childern.  Of course not knowing the first thing about how to get rid of the gum from her clothes, I play on past experiences from my life when I was child (not motherhood).   I immediately think of the morning when I was 5 years old.  I woke up one morning before school with bubble gum stuck all over me.  I had gum in my long (and I mean waist length hair) to boot. My mother rubbed by hair with Peanut butter, and my hair was peanut butter free in no time. A little White Rain shampoo, and Viola! I was ready for school. 
That previous experience, not that innate trait giving to me because of labor pains,  led me to instructing my step daughter to get the peanut butter. She was upset and the idea of doing this herself was too much, so I "tabled" the clothes for a later time, like when I might be willing to test this past experience idea on these beloved clothes.  Tabling the clothes also has an added and unintended benefit.  These happen to be those favorite clothes that her father and I get tired of seeing her wear.  So for me, I wouldn't have to hear her dad and her go rounds over the "dirty pants and disgusting hoodie."  
Monday, I put the peanut butter on the gum, and well the results were: nothing happened immediately or at least I couldn't tell it was working.  The gum wasn't coming off simply because I'd spread on peanut butter, and that left me a bit stressed. Lord knows I cannot tell a 14 year old girl that I had failed miserably at removing gum, one item being her favorite and the second, something that belong to someone else.  She was depending on me to work some sort of womanly miracle  In that moment I thought to myself "I'll have to let this sit a while, until I figure out what to do."  That same day my step daughter came to me and asked "How's the gum removal going." I did what any caring mother would do for a child..I told her the truth. "It has to sit a while."   You darn right it had to sit awhile! I has no idea how the heck that gum was going to come out of those clothes.  The only thing I could keep thinking was she was going to be upset and I'd have to pick that gum fiber by fiber out her clothes (okay not really, I don't have that much time on my SAHM while kids are in school hands.)  However, that's just what those clothes did. They sat a top the washer while I thought of something else to do until yesterday. When I realized I hadn't thought of anything. Actually, I had not  thought of dealing with clothes at all on Tuesday, and here it was Wednesday. Those clothes now not only had gum on them but they now had crusted Smart Balance Peanut butter on them too.  Considering, I wash just about everything in the house the same, and those clothes at this point were ruined, I put them in the washer.  What else was I supposed to do! Hand wash them and pick gum out of the fibers? Today, I returned to the washer and it was like Christmas morning. I wanted to see what I had gotten. I got a huge and wonderful surprise, those clothes were clean. Even more remarkable than them being free of gum after the wash, there are no visible grease spots from the peanut butter.
Personally, I am impressed with what I found. Secondly, only today have I read about methods to remove gum.  A little late for research?  Perhaps. Did it matter? Only if the gum hadn't come out in the first place? For the purposes of this blog however,  I found some links to other gum removal methods.  Thrifyfun  Wikihow . None of the suggestions include just peanut butter and waiting nearly 2 days to wash the clothing. In fact, everything I have read seems pretty labor intensive, even for someone who has extra time on their hands, and wants to appear to be able to solve world hunger. 
What have a learned from all of this. I discovered a rather passive and labor less way of removing gum from clothing. My Step Daughter will be thrilled that she can once again wear her PJ pants until they take on some sort of life of their own and walk around by themselves. The hoodie will be returned to its rightful owner, not only free of gum by with the light smell of lavender and a bit of added softness. Finally, my faking the ability to be a wonder woman of laundry lead to success!

Beating it on a Rock

This morning I was in my laundry room and it got me thinking, how easy laundry is to do. I have a laundry room equipped with an automatic washer and dryer. There's but a few modern American homes that lack such equipment. I also have an ironing board with my iron ready to go.
There was a time not so far in the distant past when Laundry was a chore. Our earliest ancestors merely beat their clothes out on a rock. Then came along soaps and the wash board. From what I understand the Wash board was a modern marvel of its time. Imagine you could take your laundry somewhere else other than the local river. Many women were out in the back yard a few times a week hunched over a wash tub and a good wash board. There she washed her families laundry.
Now at some point some one came up with the idea of the ringer to removed the water from clothes. This must have been a marvelous invention as well. I mean could you imagine hand ringing heavy cotton linen. Its not like the family was wearing T-shirts and polyester pants.
With the common use of electricity came the electric ringer washer. These early models were no more than an electric agitator, the laundry still had to be manually put into the ringer. I can assure this was no easy task. Just as an example have you ever tried to smash a large ball of play dough through one of those dough machines. Imagine doing that with your favorite dress or your husbands dungarees.
But alas a wonderful man came along and solved the problems of the ringer, he made it electric. For some reason I think this idea seemed better than it was. Two rolling barrels there to put your clothes through and possibly your fingers. Nice try but I like my pointer finger.
So then came along the SPIN cycle. Oh! what a wonderful day that was in the homes of Domestic Engineers everywhere? For once you could put on a load of laundry and come back to it when it was done. No longer did we have to stand by the washer waiting for the water to drain and then squeezing the water from our laundry.
As you have noticed I made no mention of the electric clothes dryer. That's because that was another task women were destine to do on laundry day. The clothes be it 2000 BC or 1920 had to be hung up to dry. I am sure when the marvels of Natural gas were making its way into Victorian age homes there must have been a gas clothes dryer. However, I doubt they were no more than luxury at that point. As you can imagine Rain, Sleet, and Snow were a damper on laundry day. I know this for myself as I have lived without a dryer before. I have had tons of laundry drying all around my home because it was raining or worse, they would get frozen. The electric clothes dryer became popular and with good reason. No longer did you have to wait the entire day for laundry to dry. There weren't as many wrinkles so ironing could be skipped and the weather wasn't going to stop a domestic engineer from doing more housework.
I mentioned Ironing before. We live in a remarkable time in the history of laundry. In less than 2 hours it can be folded and put away without blinking and eye. There was a time when Ironing HAD to be done. Nearly everything was made from 100% cotton. In this day and age I run from cotton linen like the plague. It wrinkles if its breath on the wrong way. Yet the domestic Engineers of our past had no choice. They had to iron to everything, table cloth, the shirts, the jackets, the petticoats. And ironing wasn't as easy as heating up the Black and Decker iron you got for your wedding present either. First the iron was made of solid cast iron and had to be heated by a fire. The ironess had to wear a mitten over her hand so she wouldn't get burned. There was no spray corn starch in those days, so you guessed it, the laundry had to be soaked in the starch before ironing. Another step in the laundry process long forgotten. With her heavy iron the domestic engineer set out to press every stitch of the clothing in the home.
Now some remarkable things happened in the 20th century that has saved the Domestic Engineer from ironing every stitch of the clothing. Those things are the electric clothes dryer and polyester. Polyester freed women in that it doesn't wrinkle. I have heard whispers from Domestic Engineers of this era that looked at polyester clothing for her family as a way to get out of ones duties. I look at as something I don't have to iron. Ironing also became easier with the advent of the electric iron and spray starch. I love spray starch for making collars look nice, but I could never imagine having to soak the collar in the just the right amount of starch to keep it from getting too shiny or so hard it could stand up and walk by itself. Starching clothes in of its self must have been a true art form. In this day and age an ironed shirt is a luxury. A true luxury if one is able to starch it to perfection.
Though women no longer find themselves beating clothes on a rock, or ironing their clothes with 20lbs cast iron clothing iron we still cannot seem to do the laundry and we most certainly don't enjoy it. Well that's some of us, knowing our history and how far we have come with doing laundry I can happily say I LOVE laundry. I wash clothes several times a week and its as easy as taking the clothes basket to the laundry room, turning on the washer and adding detergent. I then move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. As soon as the dry is finished or after I fluffed it for the 10th time I will fold the clothes. I use the top of my dry er to fold clothes. I have found putting my freshly dried clothes in a laundry basket only lets them pile up in unfolded masses..usually destine to be rewashed again. IF a shirt needs to be ironed I plug in my iron and give the shirt a quick pressing. With all of my convinces I still have a load of towels that have been in dryer for nearly two days and a set of bath mats in the washers that's been finished since 10AM this morning. :)