Halloween Is Coming! Are You Ready To Handle The Cleaning Challenge?

Halloween is just around the corner! Soon, kids will begin pestering their parents about costumes—and yes the annual Halloween party that you hold for the neighborhood’s kids and their parents. It will be fun! What is there not to like about Halloween? Except perhaps the cleaning you have to do after the frolicking, apple bobbing and trick or treating has finished—at least for another year.

Have you, in all these years, placed much thought about cleaning your kid’s (or your) costumes? Think about it!

Halloween Is A Holiday of Trick or Treating, Candy and Sticky Fingers

Kids are kids. They eat chocolate and smear their dirty fingers over the costume. They will smear face paint on the sleeves. Whether it’s an expensive store purchased costume or a relatively cheap DIY one, taking care of the fabric will let your child wear it year after year!

Important Note for Parents:

Apply all cleaning agents that you will use at home to clean the costume, first on an inconspicuous area of the fabric to check for color loss or fabric damage. Also dry the costume only after making sure that the stain has been completely removed.

Not all stains will be easy removable at home, even by the best commercial cleaning solutions. The following stains should be treated by a commercial laundry service:

Face Paint and Makeup

Both face paint and makeup can contain oil pigments or a form of wax that can cause fabric to stain if left for even a short period of time. Additionally, this type of stain is incredibly stubborn to clean by anything less than professional laundry methods.

Glow Stick Liquid

These sticks are the most popular equipment that kids are seen with on Halloween. Basic glow sticks are essentially hollow plastic tubes that contain a thinner and smaller glass tube within them. Two chemicals (responsible for the glow) are kept separate with help from the glass tube, until it is broken. The basic concoction of a glow stick is hydrogen peroxide (a mild form of bleach), phenyl oxalate ester, and a fluorescent dye. Usually green, red, or blue in color, the dyes can stain if dropped on fabric.

Chocolate

Considered as a two-way stain by parents, chocolate contains part oil and part tannin which makes it the hardest stain to remove. Often chocolate works deep into a fabric (fibers) that don’t go away even with the most rigorous home cleaning.

Why throw away your kid’s costume that took hours to make, just because of a few stains? Extra attention and care is needed that can only come from professional laundry wash! In Washington DC? Send us this year’s costumes to clean in time for Halloween!