Read the stain stories MNers shared with Tesco F&F

[EllieMumsnet]

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"Urgh. What is that on you?" They're home from school, nursery or the holiday playscheme you booked them into and the story of the day is written on their clothes. There's a bit of pink chalk on their shirt (a hopscotch grid in the playground at morning break), a custard dribble on their collar (the chocolate pudding was drenched in it) and mud on their ankles ...at least you hope it's mud.

So what stains have your kids come home from school or nursery with? Are they easily identifiable? Do the stories behind the stains give you a glimpse into your child’s life away from you? Share your pictures and stain stories with Tesco F&F and be in with the chance to win a £300 Tesco voucher. We’ll create a tongue-in-cheek quiz "Name that stain" from them in the near future.

Here’s what Tesco F&F have to say: "All kids come home with stains - it's the sign of an active day. But thanks to Tesco school uniforms special stain-repel technology and 100 day guarantee you can be rest assured that your kids will look as good on the first day everyday."

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

Mud, pen, lunch. Everyday, in various proportions. At school there is a tshirt pinned to the wall with all the various stains your child may come home with and explanations as to why they've got them and what your child has been doing to get them!

Today he is covered in cherry tomato sauce. I quite like it though. Shows he's had fun.

Broken red biro on a pale green sofa. That was the worst. Nothing worked. There was a family side to that cushion and a guest side for many years.

The worst one here was when dd accidentally sat on some slime she had made whilst wearing her super fluffy onesie. It took some serious scraping out and about six washes for it to begin to fade and there is still a faint pink splodge where it was!
Also the black paw prints all over their bedding then they swear blind they have definitely not allowed the muddy dog to jump on their bed!! Hmmmmmm!

Whoops - just re-read the brief and it it for school stains!! Sorry. Would say worst school one was painted cardigan when dd and her friend decided to paint each other!!

Grass stains on cricket kit are the worst. How can you get so dirty from a sport that seems to involve standing around for hours at a time?!?

And how can it be possible that cricket kit gets dirtier than rugby kit?

Pleased to report that fairy liquid got the beetroot dressing out of my white top. You’d never know I was so careless!

This thread has reminded me of the time DD had her first school roast dinner - so aged 4 - and told us when she came home that she didn’t like the stuffing ball. DH, without thinking, declared his love of stuffing balls and asked her to bring one home for him next time. You can see where this is going....

Predictably the following Wednesday she proudly came home wearing her still new white polo shirt with a sage & onion ball in the pocket, covered, as was the once white top, in gravy.

Sadly, That stain didn’t disappear.

At the moment I'm plagued by blackberry stains. They seem impossible to get out. My daughter comes home from nursery covered in a fine layer of muddy dust each day from the mud kitchen, some clothes it washes from, others it seems to become ingrained in the fabric!

Always mud and food on the schools tops with the occasional paint stain too. Ive got a foundation stain on a white top that happened the firstctime i wore that nothing has shifted!

Many stains from my son's hobbies, Rugby and Martial Arts.

Definitely grass stains in knees of trousers - knee slides in the park on light brown trousers have been near impossible to remove, even on school trousers you can see the dark knees - I have found that hairspray onto the knees left overnight and washed the next morning seems to lift the majority of the stain first time.

Sun cream is a right pain, it makes all the collars, cuffs and shorts hems go a greasy shiny slightly darker version of their colour.

Pen marks. Why are they using felt tips at school that don't actually come out of fabrics?

Mind you, my main bugbear is WHY DO SCHOOL SHIRTS HAVE TO BE WHITE IN THE FIRST PLACE? I mean, if you asked every adult on the planet which colour is the most practical for small children to wear for 6 hours a day while they play in mud kitchens, paint, use biros, eat dinners with their mouths open while chatting with their friends and play football on muddy fields, and then has to be made lovely and clean every weekend, would ANY of them say "white"?

My children’s school always ypuse felt tips that won’t wash out!
I’ve tried everything and in the end I have to bin them, really frustrating and expensive.

Oh I have lost count of the amount of stains that will not shift despite my best efforts: tomato pasta sauce, charcoal toothpaste, biro, hair dye (the joy of teenagers).

I find I am mostly able to remove things with washing up liquid and rubbing. The only thing needing more than that are blasted tomato sauce stains on fabrics that can't be bleached (colourful, patterned). Those tend to stick, especially if you don't remove them completely, and when they are fairly fresh, before bunging them in washing machine.

Tomato, turmeric,felt tip pen.... and the kind of general grub that white polos turn into.

My 10 yr old son comes home wearing half his lunch on his clothes. This is one of the reasons I never put yogurt pouches in his lunch bag anymore. Squeezing the pouch causes the yogurt to arch nicely all over top AND trousers.

Black white board pen in bane of my life. My kids use it at school, they also seem to find it fun to draw on each others jumpers or my 5 year old chews his pen leaving weird lines down his jumper.

Stupidly I tried to get pen out of a brand new red school jumper by using a bar of stain remover, stain remover spray and stuff you put in the washing machine - all at the same time. Also forget about it in washer and didn't put it on for 20mins or so and yep I ended up with tie dye looming school jumper that was only a week old.

My daughter had held a red marker against her top for so long, I thought she was bleeding when I collected her! Thank god it was just pen!!

Food stains from every meal with my 1 year old might as well not bother with a bib makes no difference. Tomato stains are the worst

Generally, if you know what the stain is there's a pretty good chance of being able to get it out. I find that it's the unidentifiable oh-it-just-mysteriously-appeared-mum ones that are the worst.

Not child or school related but i remember a friend buying some vintage flares from a shop callsd Sonic Bang near us in the 90s. She got them home only to discover...drumroll.....A period in the crotch Not envy.

massive ink stain spillage in my son's school shirt pocket because "oops i forgot to put the lid on my pen".

My daughter - it's always spagetti bolog stains - "mummy how did you guess what i had for lunch today?" - well her school dress says it all!

And the worst...when their teacher encouraged them to do jackson pollock style painting and most of the paint ended up on the kids!!!!

Omg my daughter was a stain magnet anything and everything down her clothes proper nightmare, I had washed her school uniform only to find she had left a pen in her pocket ( which she says she checked the pockets of) the pen leaked all over her shirts it seam to just be in a few big blobs, A friend as always told me that toothpaste gets any stain out, well I Had nothing to lose so I started scrubbing with tooth paste and raising it off each time the pen was coming away slowly. (Tooth paste even gets pen of walls) Now I always check the pockets of everything myself before washing.

My son (reception) arrived home from school. His red polo shirt practically saturated in mud. Turns out he had got stuck in a barrel at playtime and had to be pulled out by his legs. Another day in our crazy life.

Needless to say, a new polo shirt was purchased.