Crayons: The Clean Up and The Irony of It All

Thank you to all of you who offered answers to our crayon disaster. After much researching on the net, I decided to go the easiest route first, then work my way to the more labor intensive methods.

Method 1:
Tide, Shout and Oxyclean on a hot/cold cycle.
I didn't have much faith in this concoction but a lot of posts from other desperate parents in the same situation swore by it. And to tell you the truth... this worked surprisingly well. You run a hot/cold wash and dump all three ingredients in the wash. It took about 95% of the crayon off. It about knocked me on my ass -- I was so surprised. I ran it again, hoping to get the rest of the blue off, but no luck. Upon closer inspection, I realized that what was remaining was the color stain. So I'd have to move on to Method 2.

Method 2:
Toothbrush and WD-40. Per Crayola's website.
I can't tell you how this went as I haven't done it yet. I'm too lazy. I barely remember to wipe down the kitchen counters and they expect me to haul out a toothbrush to scrub blue spots?! Yeah, sure.

The Irony of It All:
So I told you all this accident happened to our laundry. I keep the kids' laundry separate from Truong's and my laundry. It just happened this one time Truong threw in a couple of pieces of her stuff to fill it up, so Kael's clothes weren't affected all. After deploying Method 1, all of Malia's clothing came out sparkling clean. It's like nothing happened to it. So the person who started this mess got away 100% clean. Truong had a few articles of clothing that were essentially 98% clean. You almost can't tell unless you look. So the person who didn't check the laundry before tossing it on the dryer and thus cementing the blue crayon in the clothing got away pretty clean. And then there's me. The innocent bystander, the cleaner-upper, the one Truong expects to haul out the toothbrush and the can of WD-40 to clean his windbreaker, spot by spot (what year does he think this is -- the 1950's?!). My clothes are trashed. I don't think any came off using Method 1, and if it did it was so minimal that I couldn't even tell. There's still so much crayon on them that it's not worth even trying Method 2. I had only 2 tops in that load and somehow, magically, magnetically even, it attracted essentially all the crayon.

How's that for irony?