Thursday, January 31, 2008

Laundry Lunacy

So, I was doing some laundry last night and my daughter had put her favorite sweatshirt in the hamper to be washed. Now, this isn't some regular ole' ho hum sweatshirt, it's a Calvin Klein with a fur lined hood! Check it out:



Isn't that cute? Darlin' just adores wearing this sweatshirt, so I 'm sure it took a lot of strength for her to part with it temporarily. Knowing how much she loves this garment, I knew that I had to take great care not to destroy it in the laundry process. I was mostly concerned with the fur in the hood, as fur never seems to look as good as it does beforehand. So, I thought I'd check the tag for cleaning instructions.

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!

Nothing on the tag but more authentication that it is indeed a Calvin Klein product. Which I might add was quite obvious with the name emblazoned across the front and the $68.00 price tag dangling from the sleeve! Now, hopefully you are asking the same question I did (otherwise I may be concerned for your sanity) "Who in their right mind even considers paying $68.00 for a kid's sweatshirt?!" Fortunately, I know that this "Aunt" never pays full price, but I can't believe she managed to get this for anything under 30 bucks! So it was quite a generous gift along with the adorable purse and jeans to go with it - one of Darlin's favorite ensembles now. But I digress. Back to my frustration with clothing labels. . .

After being bitterly disappointed with the label on the back - it didn't even tell me to "see side for care" - I began my all to usual search for cleaning instructions. Why is there more than one tag anyhow? I just need one! Eventually, I found this:

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!

Being an American who can read, I found this quite confusing. First of all, I am no friend of the metric system, so Celsius just eludes me (those of you in Europe, go ahead and take a minute to have a good laugh on me). Is 30 C considered cold, warm or hot??????!!!!! After consulting hubby, who can answer all things scientific and into which category I place the Celsius scale, I decided to wash it in warm.

OK, moving on. Can anyone shed any light on what the other symbols are supposed to mean? Some vague triangle with lines, reminiscent of cuneiform markings from the city of Ur . . . not helpful. (See, I may have skipped science and math, but I did take archeology!)

The remaining heirogliphics resemble a camera and an opened padlock (at least that's what hubby thought!) I did inform him that it was an iron and I'm assuming that the previous one is a dryer. I just never paid attention to these laundry symbols before, I always read the instructions that usually accompanied them!

Here is my plea: To anyone out there in the clothing industry, please keep English on the tag somewhere, because, yes, I'll admit it, I'm a stupid American. I speak one language, I don't grasp the metric system, and I prefer one clothing label that I do not have to decrypt!

Well, for the 2 of you who may still be reading this sorry saga, I did successfully wash her hoodie as you can see in the picture at the top. Washed warm, tumble dried low for 10 minutes to fluff the fur and then line dried. Maybe I should write that on the tag . . . .

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6 comments:

heidi @ ggip said...

I don't know what many of those symbols mean either. SO, I just looked them up

http://www.textileaffairs.com/c-common.htm

I knew that they stood for Wash, Bleach, Dry, Iron, but certainly didn't know what the dots in them and stuff meant.

I agree that writing it out isn't that hard.

Musings of a Housewife said...

LOL! LOL! Hilarious. And I so agree.

Mid-Life Mother said...

Thanks Heidi for the link! Hard to believe there are that many variations of these laundry symbols to decipher :)

Unknown said...

ROFL!! I have no idea, but I applaud your ability to work cuneiform into a sentence! :)

Anonymous said...

Love the sweatshirt! Laura would like that too!

Crystal said...

*giggle*

I don't know what those symbols mean either. I'm so bad and wash everything on warm and dry everything in the dryer on low.

So far no disasters! Maybe I'm just lucky.