Wednesday Whine

I am so grateful for the occasional husband's help with doing laundry.  However, it is rather disheartening to find an entire load of laundry that has gone through the dryer with a ink pen melted all over the whole batch!  Of course, just having had a baby and very limited clothes fitting me right now, all my "fat" clothes happened to be in that sorry batch.  Here is what i tried and what I learned:  First, if the pen is permanent ink there is little to no chance of getting anything out even with something as harsh on the fabric as using the last resort of mineral spirits.  Second, if the ink is not permanent and it has been dried...there is still little to no chance of getting anything out.  However, there are a few tricks to make it significantly lighter if you are willing to take a little time. I had the most success using hairspray and scrubbing over and over again and then spraying with spot remover and washing on a hot cycle.  I read that some people have also tried rubbing alcohol and had success in place of hairspray.  Obviously, the key to getting pen out of clothes it to catch it before it hits the dryer.  Unfortunately, in most cases of hidden pens in pants pockets, it doesn't actually get all over the clothes until it hits the hot dryer and the dryer melts the stopper in the pen.  If anyone has had better results some other way after it is dried, please share.  The good news for me is...looks like I will be going shopping some time soon!