Laundry Time

In our zeal for caution over allergies and big red welts on our infants, all parents buy a container of baby laundry detergent. Once it's empty you can probably switch to the regular detergent the rest of the family uses, which will clean better and streamline the laundry process since you won't have to do baby-only loads. Wash one baby outfit in the real stuff to make sure your child's skin can tolerate it. All babies live in a world of stains. Perfectly clean baby clothes is not necessarily a sign of perfect parenting.

Somewhere between raising a baby catalog cover and a stain-ridden "frumpkin," you'll make your peace with how pristine your child must look. Zout, Era detergent (applied directly) and Oxi-Clean are three popular stain removers for infant clothes and baby clothes. Parents who routinely attack stains with an Oxi-Clean/Shout paste and then rinse in boiling water, should instead treat their own obsessive-compulsions using white wine, a hot bath and a trashy magazine.

4/1/2008 10:15:17 AM