WFMW: Getting Grass Stains Out of White Baseball Pants

Rocks in My Dryer is hosting Works for Me Wednesday.

As I mentioned earlier, I had some stained baseball pants to deal with.

And I lamented that fact on the blog. Because that's what I do. I preach, post book reviews, and then post something that confirms that I'm a little nutty.

I put bleach gel on the pants, then Tide, put bleach in the bleach dispenser, and set my trusty washer to the "autoclave" setting. You could almost watch the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice in the time this cycle takes, so I had a while to wait. During the wait, the phone rang. When I answered it, it was my sister. She had four words for me:

Soak them in Cascade.

That's all she said. And the fact that I knew exactly what she was talking about shows that we share quite a bit of DNA.

Because Theodore still hasn't quite gotten used to how I launch into a conversation as soon as he answers the phone.

Theodore also isn't familiar with the music of Ray Stevens. I spent years trying to explain why I found opening phone conversations with, "It's me again, Margaret," so amusing, before I finally gave up.

But I still think it to myself.

ANYway, Sister #2 has spent a number of years washing baseball pants, and it seems soaking them in Cascade is the thing to do.

And when she asked me if I remembered that she did that, it made me love her even more. You see, I haven't lived close enough to her to be in on any baseball pant cleaning since I was eighteen, and the fact that she chooses to forget that I was so self-centered at eighteen that I wasn't paying attention to anything that didn't have to do with a) boys or b) my hair just proves that she wants to think well of me.

By the time we got of the phone it was apparent that my bleach and Tide concoction had failed. She said she soaked the pants in a solution of Cascade and water, but time was of the essence at this point, so I made a paste and washed them.

I can't say that the stain came out completely, but it was barely perceptible. For a five-year-old stain, that's not too shabby.

And for the record, I did wash the pants before I put them in storage. I just didn't properly deal with the stain. Lesson learned.