If you are a parent, you know stains are inevitable. From grass stains to ketchup, sometimes nothing can wash out the grimiest of grimiest. When my son was born, I was so fanatical about getting every last piece of dirt off of his clothes. I would religiously scrub out the stains each day with a bar of white soap. It didn’t matter what brand, any white bar soap seem to take out those set in stains like a charm before I washed them. But when the twins came along, I didn’t have the time or energy to scrub all day. It seemed my girls were harder on their clothes and a whole lot messier than my son was, or maybe I just became more relaxed about not using bibs because I was so tired.
Over the past few years I have gone back and forth from Spray ‘n Wash and Shout and think I have got it down now. I do not like Spray ‘n Wash regular formula. I don’t feel it got the stains out at all. I even tried the formula with Resolve in it, and still not very good at cleaning. I was pretty happy with Shout, but of course there are always a few darker stains that it just didn’t beat. I finally decided to try Spray ‘n Wash Dual Power. I had received a bottle from a friend as part of a baby shower game when I had my twins. I was a little skeptical at first because the bottle is split in two and you have to squeeze both sides of the bottle to make sure the two formulas come out at the same time and work together to set in the stains.
I was hooked when I squirted it on one of my son’s white shirts that had older stains from a while back that never came out. The shirt had been washed and dried countless times, but the stains never washed out. I couldn’t believe it when they came out after applying the Dual Power formula! I started using it in large quantities on everything and anything. Good things eventually come to and it, or at least with this product, when I began to discover a lot of the clothes had white blotches all over them. I finally realized it was because of the Spray ‘n Wash Dual Power. I finally got around to reading the fine print on the back of that bottle, which pretty much says you shouldn’t put on certain color fabrics. You should also never let it dry on a fabric because it can cause fading. I was crushed.
Like most moms, after my children stain a piece of clothing, I apply the stain remover and throw it down the laundry shoot. I don’t always get to it right away, so it dries on the item of clothing. And in this case, the Spray ‘n Wash Dual Power caused blotching. I called the company and told them about the dozens of clothes that had been ruined. They recommend using their stain stick product if I am not able to wash it right away. I didn’t like the idea of a stain stick and decided to go back to Shout.
There was a new product out by Shout called Shout Advanced Gel. It is in a smaller bottle, but I thought I would give it a try. It doesn’t cause the same discoloration as Spray ‘n Wash Dual Power, but it doesn’t get out as much of the stains as Dual Power either. After much trial and error, I have decided to stick with the regular Shout for most of the stains, and use the Spray ‘n Wash Dual Power for the harder, set in stains. I just make sure I wash those items right away.
