Tag Archives: clothing

Graffiti on my coat: the solution!

A number of weeks ago I tossed up a short post telling you all the sad story of how, the previous morning, I had unwittingly leaned up against some wet graffiti on my train ride into work. I have one warm winter coat that fulfills all my needs, and since I was determined that some punk graffiti artist was not going to coerce me into buying new winterwear by means of his moist silver tag, I could either figure out how to clean it or live with the streaks and splotches forevah-evah. Here is the coat in question:

And here is the damage on the sleeve . . .

. . . and on the side, towards the bottom.

Not huge marks–but definitely noticeable. And annoying.

Two days after getting the graffiti on my coat, I was at a women’s breakfast/brunch that Traci (our pastor’s wife) was hosting. During the course of conversation, she and another mom were talking about occasions their kids had drawn all over stuff–walls, upholstery, etc. And then Traci mentioned how she had removed ink stains from their beige couch with her Tide magic marker. I perked up. A magic stain-removing marker? I rushed out of the room, grabbed my coat and shoved it towards Traci. “What about this?? Will the magic marker get this graffiti out??”

Traci genially applied her magic Tide marker. And it started working.

Needless to say, I bought my own at the grocery store that same afternoon and went to work on the coat.

I worked on the stain on and off for a couple weeks, carrying the marker around in the pocket of my coat so that I could pull it out whenever I had time to sit and rub at the paint with vigor. And after some time and diligence, it is mostly gone, with only a shadow left where the original stains were. Want to see the maker in action?

Here’s a small part of the stain up close . . .

Now let’s apply the magic.

Scrubbity dubbity dub . . .

. . . three men in a tub . . . the butcher, the baker . . . Huh? Three men in a tub? What’s this nursery rhyme about, anyway?

Moving on.

See how quickly it faded the silver? I’ll show you the ‘erased’ spot in contrast with the larger stain.

It’s still a little wet from the Tide liquid, but you get the idea.

And I have to say for any Doubting Daisies–this is no paid product endorsement or any such thing. This is simply a product I pounced on when Traci mentioned it because I was desperate to reclaim my winter coat from whatever gang tried to destroy it.

I also heard from Shalice (at the same women’s gathering) that a little Hydrogen Peroxide takes care of most blood stains. Well, I happen to have this nagging little blood stain on a perfectly great dress that I haven’t been able to remove even after repeated applications of Lestoil.

So I grabbed the peroxide . . .

. . . and thus endeth the story.

Because unfortunately, the peroxide was old and had lost all its bubbles, impeding me from carrying forth with the experiment. But I will resume this topic once I get a new bottle at the grocery store!

Color-coordinating my closet

Hello, my name is Jenna. This is my closet.

Oh wait–that’s the futon covered in a mess of clothes.

Wait a sec . . .

. . . let’s see . . .

. . . okay, here’s my closet!

Yes. My achy-breaky closet. There is no rhyme or reason to it. When I first moved my apparel into it two years ago, I had a plan: skirts were on the left. Then came pants. Shirts and sweaters to the right, and dresses to the far right. But as time progressed, the organization became haphazard. One might say it came under the Rule of Misrule. Here’s the left side:

(love that grey sweater with the cable pattern down the sleeve, by the way–one of my finds at Plato’s last year that’s been a faithful staple)

And here’s the right side:

Skirt? Flowers? Stripes? Sweater? Orange! Electric blue! Whoop de doo!

Complete chaos, I’m telling you.

On a totally unrelated note, check out these shoes:

They’re from Target. They’re my favorite. After years pretending I hated pink, I finally matured and started admitting that I like pink. I’ve found new freedom in being a girl, and liking the things that sometimes girls like.

But shoes are not today’s topic!

So some things you may not know about me:

1) I really like clothes.

2) Clothes are pretty cool.

3) I like to wear them and not be naked.

4) I like to feel pretty when I’m wearing them and not being naked.

The problem is, if I happened to have a particular item in mind, I couldn’t aways find it in a timely fashion. So on one hapless Saturday when my husband was out of town, I decided to change my life. My sister Heidi had a lovely closet with all her clothes hung in an ordered rainbow of colors, which I had gazed up with wonder in Alaska–so why couldn’t I?

I started by flinging things around. That’s a good way to start any project. Hence the futon covered in stuff.

Yep, there it is again. Flinging things around makes one feel so dang productive, doesn’t it?

My next step was to start rehanging everything. I decided to start with black on the left, followed by grey and white, and kind of work my way into a spectrum of color.

This took about 2 1/2 hours. It would’ve taken much less, but I also used this time to purge (which requires trying something on 5 times before finally putting it in the discard pile), and to figure out how to combine my fall clothes. See, I forget how to layer in the June-September span and have to re-learn how to put everything together.

Down to the last few things . . .

It was fun. It was especially fun because no husband was around to enter the room and exclaim in horror “You have too many clothes! Burn the whole lot of ’em!” or something extreme like that.

We wouldn’t want that. Nope. Not that he would ever do or say that–but I don’t know if he realizes how much is actually in my closet.

Here’s the finished product!

A closer look at the black to white spectrum on the left side:

And a closer look at the more colorful spectrum on the right side:

Now when I open my closet I feel like I’m shopping in some kind of posh store. Opening the closet has become much more exciting. Finding that one dusty blue colored cardigan has become a cinch. I highly recommend this process.

Which brings me to this: what does your closet look like? If any of you are inspired to color-coordinate your closets and want to send me before and after pictures (or already have color-coordinated closets and want to share the beauty), I’ll put together a post with all the pics.

Hooray for organization! Hooray for clothes! Hooray for being a girl!