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!