Having baby #2 wasn’t necessarily a surprise, however any time that you add another member to the tribe, it’s not without consequence. Especially when you’re accustomed to a girl and then your first boy drops in.
Ava (our first) was all flowers and bows with a touch of pink and glitter. The second, Charlie, was a different set of circumstances. Blowouts, spit-up and food everywhere. As he became a toddler he seemed to develop and demonstrate a special super power to attract any and all colorful stains to his clothes. If there was gum, he would sit in it. If there was axle grease in the diner parking lot, he would find it. He was like a magnet of sorts, but instead of attracting metal shavings and refrigerator doors, it was any object that retained pigments of stain. I only wish that I had known about Carbona before a few months ago.
Jen and I had planned for a large(r) family, and with that comes the amazing resource of HAND-ME-DOWNS. Held in the highest regard and treated like fabric from the heavens for the first or second kid, mom and dad started to run out of steam by the time these clothes had been recycled for the third and fourth time.
Being able to recycle clothes from kid to kid is one of the cost saving specialties of having more than one of the same gender. We were counting on these to help us with baby #3, who wound up being a boy as well.
As Charlie grew up, it became obvious that his nickname couldn’t be something like ‘buddy’ or ‘pal’, but rather ‘Pig-Pen’ or ‘Captain Filth’… always a stain, smear, or some type of dried food or craft item on his clothes and his blanket, his “me-me,” dragging behind him.
No matter what my wife and I did we couldn’t fight his need to wipe his hands on his pants and shirts in order to make sure his napkin didn’t get messy. Go figure.
As a now first grader, he’s turning into a full blown animal, and my wife and I are getting a real glimpse into his possible frat-house living: when he eats, he turns and wipes his mouth on his shoulder like he’s on a survival reality show.
More recently, we’ve used Carbona products to fight our dog and cat stains on upstairs carpeting (and I’m covering that in my next post) but were completely unaware that they had an entire line of laundry savers including a stain-specific line called Stain Devils.
Needless to say, we now stock the entire line.
And it’s perfect timing. Charlie now owns a [shudder] white tracksuit that he absolutely loves. It’s his favorite go-to wardrobe item. SO, when he came home from school with a questionable orangey-yellowy stain on his thigh, we immediately launched a full Carbona offensive:
We are clearly looking at Mike Rowe’s future replacement on Dirty Jobs. We can’t wait to gift him and his wife to-be (20 years from now) the entire product line as a wedding gift, because this kid is gonna need it. Stain Devils are specifically formulated to fight individual stains – which makes them more effective than your regular all-purpose stain remover. Did I mention that they come in these different categories:
- Nail Polish, Glue & Gum
- Chocolate, Ketchup & Mustard
- Ink, Markers & Crayons
- Fat & Cooking Oil
- Grass, Dirt & Makeup
- Motor Oil, Tar & Lubricant
- Coffee, Tea, Wine & Juice
- Rust & Perspiration
Next time you have a challenging stain, try these guys out—and don’t forget: not all stains are created equal.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was a sponsored post on behalf of Carbona and their #lifeunstained campaign, however, the cheesy stains are all ours. For more on Carbona and their amazing stain-lifting wizard powers, check them out HERE, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
[…] our last stain-fighting adventure, we talked extensively about my son, Charlie, the ‘Captain of Filth’. He is also known locally as The Stain Whisperer or sometimes The Commodore of Crud. His uncanny […]