Laundry disaster

[ilfaith]

Today I washed a load of mostly new and never been worn or washed dark items (most of my boys' new fall wardrobe), in cold water and with a color catcher sheet. Unfortunately, one of the items...a pair of DH's dark brown jeans bled all over everything in the wash. Now all the other medium to dark colored clothes look dingy and anything the had any light color in it (a light blue stripe in a darker rugby shirt, or the white sleeves of a layered tee) is now a streaky tan, as if they'd been stained with coffee or tea.

I've run the load through two more cycles (without the jeans), again with a new color catcher sheet but that hasn't helped get the dye out of the stained items.

I am so upset that some of our favorite things (including outfits from Gymboree and Janie and Jack) are ruined. It's only just cooled off enough this week to wear long sleeves and long pants.

Does anyone have any advice on what I might do to get some of the dye out of these clothes?

[hillview]

Hugs no advice but I feel your pain! Hope an expert can suggest something.
/hillary

[DrSally]

That's terrible! I'm sorry that happened. That brown must have really been "runny". I have no suggestions. You would think that color catcher sheet would have helped!

[ilfaith]

The jeans were obviously very color saturated...the color catcher I had in that first load was really dark when I took it out. I guess I should have washed the jeans separately...I just figured turning them inside out and using the color catcher while washing on cold would be safe. Live and learn.

[wildfire]

Maybe try soaking them in oxyclean before rewashing?

[Reyadawnbringer]

:hug:

This happened to me with a pair of red pants in a load of mostly white/light colors. There was pink all over everything... I was devastated. Since I figured the clothes were already ruined and I couldn't possibly harm them more than they already were I filled the washer with HOT water and some color safe stain treater, then I left all the affected clothes in the washer to soak overnight. When I woke up in the morning I pulled the clothes out, hand wrung them and let the washer empty. I then put stain treatment directly on some of the worse affected areas and then threw them back in the washer and washed them in hot water again.

When I pulled them out of the washer ALL of them were perfect again.

I don't know how you feel about doing something like this, but you basically have to decide how "ruined" you think they are now, and how you would feel if they came out of a stain treatment like the one I mentioned above looking worse (or not any better). As I mentioned above- my only option was to try what I did and hope it worked, or get rid of the clothes. At that point I figured it was ok to just try anything.

HTH