What color is your bandana?

I am currently over night nannying for a family that I had their daughter in my Kindergarten class this past year and her older brother (4th grade). It's a pretty simple gig actually. It started Tuesday afternoon. The kids both go to camp all day so I had to go pick up the boy (C) from his camp and his friend and drive them back to the house. K, the girl, was being picked up at her camp by a friend and going to a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. We came home, had dinner, relaxed, showers, and then bed - lights out between 8-8:30. I spent the night, awoke at 6:00 (C is on a tight schedule), breakfast, lunches, bags packed, off to camp for the day. I picked them both up from camp, dinner at the country club, ice cream, showers, lights out, and here I sit waiting for the mom to get home around 11:30. Easy right? Totally! Except..... when I had to wash the clothes for camp.

C's camp has a required "uniform" - a tshirt and a colored bandana based on which team he is on. The tshirt is orange, his bandana is white. I have to wash the tshirt and bandana each night because they get so gross and sweaty from being outside for 9 hours in the 100 degree weather! When K got home last night her clothes were all wet from her bathing suit and towel and smelled mildewy so I just opted to throw everything in together. Now, mind you I LOVE doing laundry and have never... ever... made a mistake with my laundry. I separate the clothes, wash most on cold to prevent bleeding, don't throw new clothes in the dryer for at least a couple months to prevent shrinking... etc. So to help everything smell fresh and clean I threw everything into the washer together, put it on cold, cold, and off it went. 35 minutes later I pulled everything from the wash and noticed that the white bandana now had a beautiful blue tint to it. The jeans.... They were NEW!!! I never thought about it but I always wash out brand new jeans separately and I didn't even think. Eeeeek! Okay... no big deal... maybe it's supposed to be blue and I just looked at it wrong. So, I went to C and asked him "what color is your bandana?" ... "white"... "really, you sure? it looks blue (yes, I tried to trick at 4th grader)" .. "nope, it's white for sure, there's a different blue team".... UGH!

Okay... for the record here I deeply wanted to call my mom and wake her up to ask her what to do... but I DIDN'T! Look who is growing up here:) Instead, I called Derrick. He laughed and offered to go out to buy a new white bandana but wouldn't you know the bandana has the camp's emblem on it. So, I filled up the kitchen sink with burning hot water, poured in a ton of bleach, scrubbed and soaked it, threw it back into the wash, and out it popped looking ... white. Definitely not noticeable if you didn't know it was blue previously and luckily the next morning C didn't even notice!! Whoo hoo! Needless to say the wash tonight consisted of everything getting washed minute the jeans, then a separate load JUST FOR THE BANDANA. Oh the joys :)