My toddler's clothes are stained and greasy - help!

[tortoiseonthehalfshell]

She's 15 mo, and crawls more than she walks. She eats with a combination of fingers and cutlery, and while she uses a bib some always ends up on her pants or sleeves. She likes crawling around outdoors in the dirt, and I don't want to restrict her playing for mess reasons.

I try and keep her in 'home' clothes when we're home; t-shirts and comfy pants, mostly, and save the fancier clothes for going out. By fancy I just mean fine cotton tops, or a nice pair of jeans, nothing too delicate.

BUT. I cannot for the life of me get her clothes clean and I need some help. All her tops have orange stains around the neck and sleeves (tomato, I'm guessing), or grease spots on the torso and back (butter, meat juice, who knows what else). All her pants have ground in dirt down the fronts. I ironed a stack yesterday and not one of her 10 tops was adequately clean, including a couple that she's only worn 2 or 3 times ever. Blue jeans that she's owned for three months are visibly dirty.

I soak everything white or pastel in Napisan (Biotex equiv, "not as good" says my Mum but what can you do) before washing. I spray things with fabric cleaner. I use a warm wash cycle, I put things through on the longest cycle there is, I hang them up as soon as they're done.

But my kid's clothes are always filthy.

What am I doing wrong?

Nothing wrong. If anything your just worrying too much. She's 15 months old. Shes going to get dirty. At this time of year my kids always have coats on when out so no-one sees a stain or two.

My kids are 3 and 5 and if they're not mucky by lunch time then they're not having fun.

I have, on occasion, put the kids in a new shirt just to have them covered in tomato/bolognese sauce by the end of the day and downheartedly binned them, not even bothering to wash because i knew there wasnt much point.(dried in)

You could try adding some soda crystals (found in the cleaning products section of the supermarket) to the wash, it handles blood, grease and dirt stains and it's relatively cheap. I also use it in my mop bucket for cleaning the floors.

Also, biological washing powder seems to work too sometimes. This is a non-bio household for allergies but sometimes they just need a dose of bio to bring them up clean again. But mind the wash isn't too hot as this can lock in the stains too!

I remember when my two where 15mo, I'd not care about walking out of the house with yoghurt stains on me "what?? I have a young kid, I'm not changing clothes every time I get food on me" LOL

Youre doing the right thing, i too have "good" clothes for making them look ok when going out of the house. And at 15mo she'll not be using them for that long anyway

Stop fretting, having stained tops is allowed (on kids anyway). And all those "perfect" mothers down the local playgroup are the biggest bunch of lying posers! All kids are like this and i'm still waiting for mine to get out of this phase

Thanks! I'm not at all worried about her having mucky clothes on during the day. I do get annoyed that they're stained, though. There I am, trying to iron her nice fancy tops, and there's grease spots on them.

When she was born, a good friend who has one daughter and one son and isn't having any more, gave me a whole first year's worth of handmedowns. And they were all perfectly clean and stain free. Maybe she'd chucked a few manky things out, but there was a lot of nice clean clothes there.

Three months in my possession and I had to chuck them.

where do you live? there is a soap bar called 'bomber soap' or 'jamaican blue soap' i swear it gets rid of anything! but i've never seen it sold outside of a very multiracial area

Hehe, I've passed on clothes that looked pristine too but in reality they were ones a)not to my taste/fiddly
B) were always at the bottom of the pile of clean clothes on her shelf and I forgot about them until clearing out small clothes to make way for proper fitting ones
C) clothes that they just refused to wear, even as babies.
So I passed them on as there was nothing wrong with them.

You'd think I'd learn but there are still things like that, found a peppa pig dungeree/dress set last week that DD is far to big for now and I don't even think she wore it once! And I only need to buy the kids a new wardrobe once a year now, you'd think I'd know not to buy so much that she ends up not wearing some.

Just because they were clean doesn't mean they got worn everyday.
I must admit, I went bonkers buying clothes for DS when he was a baby and had tons of stuff he just never wore :S that's how'd I'd explain your friend.

Susie, I'm in Australia, so I don't think that'll work (but thanks).

Interesting, Joe. I feel like she's got so many clothes, and yet none that are in good condition.

Also, I am feeling less eager about this ironing lark; if the bloody things aren't even clean what's the point of making them flat?

I use vanish oxi-action if there are visible stains on clothes, the powder one, I just add a small scoop to the tablet drawer. It gets the stains out every time.

Like you I have "going out clothes" for DS who has just turned 3. I would never dream of sending him to nursery in these. He had a long sleve t-shirt on yest and I forgot the sleeves were white. You can imagine, dirt, paint, sauce but this will come out no problem with some vanish. Also, I only use non bio powder never bio and it seems to work fine with this.

HTH

Have you tried using those bibs with sleeves? Won't help with the trousers but will perhaps protect the sleeves a bit.

Maybe you could also go with darker clothes so the dirt doesn't show up so much!

I don't like to restrict play for the sake of being neat and tidy either, so I think you are doing the right thing.

do you use biological powder , that will cut through grease (but not months old grease)

pure sunshine is fab for tomato stains i had this with my ds when younger we actually had eating t shirt or no top while eating as all his clothes were stained if people give you clean clothes its because they never wore them to eat and probably hardly wore them ones at all the only way even now my ds is 5 we have a spag bol t shirt / pasta messy food t shirt

sun bleaches stains out of white clothes better if the clothes are white bleach them and just leave them in sun the sun fades the stains down lovely

also for grease you can use corn flour or talc and the dab with paper towel but think the stain needs to be fresh for that

but i always carried old t shirt out and popped it over ds at meal times to save his clothes

I don't know what the difference between bio and nonbio powder is, does it say it on the packet?

It's some organic earth friendly liquid. Maybe I need to go with something tougher.

Eating clothes is genius.

bio washing powder is better at getting grease out of clothes i think the enzymes in it, break food stains down (i could be wrong on the science!) and drying in sunshine helps to bleach out food stains.

non-bio is for delicate skin types as its not as harsh (usually labrelled for babies/children/ handwash)

had a particularly bad pasta tomato sauce and white t-shirt incident last week and that combination has cleared the shirt.

ocassionally i have spot treated a stain with washing up liquid and a quick scrub, before putting in the washing machine. that helps too.