Clearing Clutter

Two years now being married to a dairy farmer and I still haven’t figured out the trick to make his work clothes look clean after I was them!  Maybe there is no trick; maybe those white shirts will forever be spotted up with the shadowy reminders of splashes of cow manure.

Often I’ve been led to believe you can find the answer to anything on the Internet.  So off to Google I went.  Searching “remove cow manure stain laundry” it led me to about 56,900 results.  Surely one of these tens of thousands of pages could tell me how to bless my husband with clean clothes.  Hmm, or maybe not.  T-shirts made from 100% cow manure?  No thank you.  I already have t-shirts that look like they are made from at least 50% cow manure.

At last I was led to a website called Homeabc.net:  Home & Garden Questions & Answers.  The question:

husband works with cattle on our farm and never fails to get splattered. Regular detergent doesn’t do it for some reason. any other farm wives out there?

A ha.  I am not the only one with this problem.  A quick scan of the “Answers” showed very few.  “Ask your husband to be more careful at work.”  Are you serious?  Someone even took/wasted their time to respond with “Wash them.”  Brilliant!  Why hadn’t I thought of that?

Now seriously, there were three answers that I would consider trying.  First, a man calling himself “an old farm grandpa” mentions using 20 Mule Team Borax with your laundry soap.  An old farm granpa should know his stuff, right?  So my next trip to town included Borax on the shopping list.  I tried it, but it didn’t give me the results I’d hoped for.  They looked a little cleaner, but nothing amazing.

Another answerer says was in hot water with Tide with Bleach for colors powder detergent and Oxyclean.  Okay I can try that.  I’ve never used powder detergent before.  Don’t know why, just haven’t.  So next time I do the “barn clothes” as they’re called, I wash with the powder Tide and Oxyclean.  Just okay results with this too.  Then I tried the powder Tide and the Borax together.  With this combo I got the best results.  The clothes seem cleaner and softer.  I can not believe the difference in the softness, even when I line dry them.

The other option listed on Homeabc.net was to soak them in Pine-Sol.  I haven’t tried that, but I probably will.  I’ll post my results when I do.  If anyone has another suggestion I’d be more than happy to consider it.  Just leave me a comment.

There was one more answer on that website, but it was not one that I thought I’d even do.  I’ll end by just quoting them:

Don’t laugh but you have to pour pee on it (fresh urine) and let it soak then spray windex on it and it will break apart with a gentle rub with a towel.