A Laundry Disastrophe

It all started with the table.

It was our first dining room table, bought in Chicago in the 1970's.  It has leaves that pull out from each end, making it perfect for small gatherings and seders, too.  It retained its original glory until Big Cuter began eating at the table.  I'd prop his sassy seat at one end and shovel food into his mouth with reckless abandon.

Once he began to feed himself, table manners were the last things on my mind.  He was happy spreading his oatmeal or spaghetti around on the table before finding his mouth.  Place mats were just one more thing to wash; they were easy to do without.

Then, one day, I looked at the table.  Half of it was shiny and bright.  The other half was distressed.  We'd finished the finish.

With the legs taken off, the table sat in storage for years and years.  TBG periodically asking me why we were keeping it did nothing to make me want to give it away.  Far from it.  It made me love the thing even more.  So, when The Cornell crew came for brunch last month, it seemed appropriate to drag it out and open it up on the patio.

Covered with a tablecloth, it looked just fine.  But then I found the unopened container of Johnson's Paste Wax and decided to remedy years of neglect.  I took two small microfiber rags and went wax on/wax off along the grain.

Then I washed the rags.  I put them in with clothes.

Do not do that.  It is a really bad idea.  

According to the interwebs, the only way to keep the rags from smelling up the house after using them for that purpose is to put them in a plastic bag.  No one mentions cleansing the rags.  My guess is that they are one use and dispose of items.  I wish I had thought of that before I put them in with my favorite t shirts and towels.

I washed and dried them and tried to fold them but the stink was overwhelming.  I put them back in the washer.  And back in the washer.  And back in the washer several more times.  Sometimes on hot, sometimes on cold, sometimes using the Sanitizing setting just because it was there.  There was no change.  

I filled a bathtub with detergent and baking soda and vinegar and swooshed them around for a while in that solution.  The stink now had an unmistakable salad dressing vibe along with the wax.

Drying them didn't work, either.  It didn't seem to set the smell any more, but it didn't make it go away.  One quick sniff told me that.

Back to the interwebs, after the fact, I found that no one in the recorded history of electronic sharing of information has ever asked that question before.  How to get paste wax smell out of clothes is just something no one but I seems to wonder about.

I began reading related articles, the ones with clothes in the search description.  SOmeone had smelly shiny cabinetry; the problem solver suggested sunlight to help degass  them.  FQE Chemicals says  “(d)egassing,” a term frequently used in the petroleum processing and production industries, is the process of evacuating hazardous vapors from the interior of processing vessels and piping.

I was unsure if cloth and processing vessels were similar enough, but I was out of options. I loaded into the laundry cart and draped them across the lawn furniture.

After spending time adjusting them for full effect, and picking up the ones that blew off, I am happy to report that the experiment was a success.  Sunlight was the answer. 

I've been sniffing them and they smell fine, but I'm going to let them soak up the rays for the rest of the afternoon.  I want them thoroughly degassed.

I love it when nature solves my problems.  I'm not so thrilled with myself for getting into this situation in the first place.  I have no answer to TBG's plaintive query: Why would you do that??