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OxiClean

How to Preserve Your Most Precious Memories

by Deborah Cruz 2016/07/08

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by the Maker of OxiClean™ through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about their Versatile Stain Remover, all opinions are my own.

Every May, our neighborhood has an annual garage sale, and every single year, I say I am NOT going to participate. Yet, once again, here I am sifting through tubs and memories; feeling all the feelings.

It’s hard selling your memories, especially of your children. I just have a problem with it people trying to haggle with me over things that are so precious to me. It’s like every time someone offers me a dollar for my daughter’s newborn rompers or her tiny shoes, I want to shake them and ask, “Don’t you know who wore this? MY baby, that’s who!” I know, I’m so dramatic when it comes to letting go. I fully realize I have a problem.

But I always say, if you are going to do something, do it all the way. So, if I’m going to sell my daughters’ belongings, they need to be at their best. That means clothes and bedding need to be stain free and freshly laundered. I mean, who is going to want to buy clothes that are dirty or look worn? I want them to look fresh.

This year, I took all the linens and bedroom sets and washed them in OxiClean™.

It helps to give them that new, fresh look. OxiClean™ does a great job of restoring vibrancy to all the household items that I might want to sell at my garage sale, like the kids’ uniforms they’ve outgrown, princess bedding and even those precious baby clothes.

As I was going through the bins, my heartstrings were being tugged at pretty hard and I know, for a fact, that my ovaries were about to explode. You forget how tiny your babies once were until you are holding those tiny clothes in your hands while looking at the 5-foot, 3-inch 11-year-old she’s become. That’ll make you just want to stop time in that instant.

One problem that I am running into is that I packed clean clothes away and as I am struggling to go through the bins and distinguish which clothes are worthy of keeping for my future imaginary grandchildren and which ones are deserving to go on living their gently used lives elsewhere, I keep finding clothes with magical baby stains. It’s not food. It looks like stains have appeared where saliva once was but I don’t understand it because they’ve been washed.

Oxiclean can help you hold on to the things you love.

Here I am torn because on one hand these clothes are so precious to me but on the other hand, they are completely useless because they are stained. They are no good to anyone stained. I’m not putting my precious; someday-imaginary granddaughters in stained clothing even if their moms wore them, and you certainly can’t sell stained clothing. This garage sale is huge and I’ve made a name for myself as the place to go to get awesome little girls’ clothing. Stains will ruin all of that.

What am I supposed to do? Then I decided to try something different. In the past, I just considered it a wash and either threw the clothes out or put them back in the bins from whence they came because I couldn’t bear to throw them out. Seriously, I have a baby clothes hoarding problem. I just can’t get enough of that new baby smell. Also, every time I touch a piece of their baby clothes, I am transported back in time and I can see them in that piece of clothing and then how can I be expected to throw anything out?

Today, I decided to try something different and pretreat those gently loved pieces with a little OxiClean™ soak to see if I could get some of those magically appearing, after-the-fact stains out of those precious baby clothes. You know, the ones that touched my precious babies once upon a time?

Guess what?

Oxiclean worked!

Now, once again, I’m faced with that red wire, blue wire dilemma; do I hoard all the baby clothes for my imaginary, someday, maybe granddaughters or do I sell them? With these stains gone, they look brand new, but I think it may be time to let some of these clothes go on to be loved by someone else’s precious little girls.

2016/07/08 0 comments

Parenting

How to Help Your Child Realize Her Dreams

by Deborah Cruz 2016/06/30

written by Deborah Cruz

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by OxiClean™ through their partnership with POPSUGAR. While I was compensated by POPSUGAR to write a post about OxiClean™ all opinions about how to keep clothes looking like new are my own.

Laundry is not my favorite thing to do. Not even close. I think it’s probably every parent’s least favorite chore. It’s time consuming and if you have girls, like I do, their clothes seem to multiply in the hamper. It seems like everyone wants to buy them clothes for every occasion because they love fashion and it is a lot of fun to buy clothes for girls. But one look in their closets, in their drawers and on their floors and you will see that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

As my girls get older and become more involved in their different activities they need higher quality clothing to hold up to the grueling classes, practices and rehearsals. When you pay a little more for things, it makes sense that you want to take a little better care of them. As the girls get older, they take more pride in how they present themselves and how their things look. They know that how they present themselves is a reflection of who they are to the world.

That meant that I had to figure out how to keep clothes looking like new.

As they enter the tween years, dingy leotards and faded uniforms are no longer acceptable. Cheer uniforms have to be bright and bold. Gymnastics and ballet leotards have to be crisp, clean, bright and fresh smelling and school uniforms have to pop. This is not a dress rehearsal; this is real life.

The girls are no longer dressing up as princesses and make-believe characters. This is not imagination play. They are no longer those tiny toddlers who were obsessed with wearing the same princess dress, every day until it was tattered and torn. They are growing into young ladies and want their appearance to reflect the effort they put into becoming these young ladies. A quality product is not only going to last longer and hold up better, it’s an investment into the quality of your life.

All of this has led me to a point in my life where I’m taking better care of the things we own, including our clothes. I’ve always used OxiClean™ to get stubborn stains out of my favorite clothes. After all, it is America’s #1 stain-fighting brand because it’s powerful but safe for those favorite pieces you love. There’s nothing worse than trying to keep your favorite shirt bright and white, but instead the detergent destroys it by being too strong. That’s the absolute worst. OxiClean™ won’t do that.

Now OxiClean™ has a new product, OxiClean™ HD™ Laundry Detergent. It’s a higher quality laundry detergent that removes tough stains, reveals vibrant colors, and restores whites powered by the effective (but safe for your clothes) OxiClean™ stain-fighter technology.

That’s fantastic news for me because the girls have joined the ballet’s youth company and each year I make a large investment in ballet leotards. They are not super expensive, but when your daughters are in ballet 6 days a week, you have to invest in professional quality leotards and you definitely need more than one per child.

Per requirement of the ballet, those leotards must be pristine at all times. They need to be crisp, clean, and free from stains to meet the standards of the ballet school. Per my daughters, these leotards have to be proper and worthy of the harsh lights of the stage and the scrutiny of an audience. I’m using the OxiClean™ HD™ Detergent to keep them looking new and to withstand multiple washes. The girls both have sensitive skin so for their leotards I use the OxiClean™ HD™ Laundry Detergent Perfume and Dye free. For the Big Guy and I, we love the fresh scent.

What’s it worth to you to keep those special pieces in your wardrobe looking like brand new? Is there anything you wouldn’t do to give your child the tools to take pride in themselves and have the confidence to chase after their dreams?

2016/06/30 0 comments

Home

How to Remove a Stain from Almost Anything

by Deborah Cruz 2015/08/31

written by Deborah Cruz

As a mother with young children, I am no stranger to stains — spit up, baby food, grass stains, coffee, and knocked-over wine, but my least favorite is blood. Not just because that means someone got hurt but also because it’s hard to get it out. It means extra work and time that I don’t have, precious time that I could be spending with my girls.

Both of my daughters are ballerinas. You might not think that would be a dangerous sport but if you add to it a hot, dry studio and a child prone to nose bleeds, you have a recipe for near-constant disaster. White cotton leotards and bloodstains go together like oil and water.

A bloody nose during ballet used to mean trashing the leotards, letting go, and buying a new one, but as the girls get older and the leotards get more expensive, that’s becoming less and less of an option. What’s a mom supposed to do?

Well, the solution is finally here. OxiClean™ Laundry Detergent is an all-in-one solution for all of your laundering* needs. It helps save time since it is the the best laundry stain remover and it helps you save money that you would have wasted on replacing stained items.

Blood is a protein-based stain that OxiClean™ Laundry detergent can help remove. As with all stains, the faster you can treat the stain, the better the results will be. I rinse the bloodstained leotard immediately and let it fully soak in cold water. Then I use a little bit of OxiClean™ laundry detergent to pretreat the stain, wait 10-15 minutes and then wash with OxiClean™ laundry detergent. Then, before drying the leotard, I double check to make sure the stain is completely gone.

The OxiClean™power we’ve all come to know and love is now available in a liquid laundry detergent.

It’s powered by three color-safe OxiClean™ stain-fighters that penetrate fabrics to get them really clean while removing a wide range of tough stains. It’s available in a Fresh Scent or Perfume and Dye Free.

OxiClean™ laundry detergent helps remove those stains that all of us moms struggle with: grass, blood, fruit juices, fruits, wine, chocolate ice cream, ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and barbecue sauce. It helps me to be less uptight and just let my kids play and enjoy their childhood without worrying whether or not they are going to ruin their “good clothes” every time they wear them. Clothes are made to be worn, and life is made to be lived.

When I see my daughters dancing on stage, I don’t want to worry about whether or not their leotards are blood-stained. I know all the blood, sweat, tears, and years of dedication it took to get there. I want them to look clean, fresh, and ethereal when they dance, and OxiClean™ laundry detergent has the “wow factor” that allows my ballerinas to have the confidence to shine on stage, uncompromised by the limitations of bloody noses or anything else.

*Please follow manufacturer directions for your garments. For best results, pretreat stains with laundry detergent, wait 5-10 minutes and then wash.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by OxiClean™ through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about OxiClean™ n Laundry, all opinions are my own.

2015/08/31 0 comments