nothing has been more important to my being queer than when i went to my first pride parade, got seperated from my group, had a panic attack about it and was sitting on the side of the road holding a tiny genderfluid flag and freaking out. then this six foot five drag queen in four inch heels appeared from literally nowhere and sat down next to me. i, this scared-shitless trans bi kid at pride for the first time, very nervously told her she looked pretty and i told her my name and that i got lost and didn’t feel like i should be at pride and she held my hand and said “oh, honey, everybody deserves to be here, especially you. pride is for everybody who’s ever gotten lost, who’s been scared of who they are or where they are. you think we never been scared before? pride’s for you, honey, because you’re scared. you don’t have to be proud right now, but you’re gonna be one day, honey, i’m sure of it.”
i found my group soon after that and i never saw that queen again but to this day i am convinced i met an angel.
so yeah. pride is for you. pride is for all of us.
I recently discovered laundry stripping and yāall, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, youāre underestimating.
[image ID: a screenshot of the notes on this post, featuring several people indicating they want to know more. End ID.]
OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself ānecessaryā is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?
Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.
Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (Iāve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, thereās a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. Iāve been going for 12-24.
What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.
Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.
You will notice I didnāt suggest any further pretreatment, and thatās because 1) you donāt want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.
When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatmentā¦to deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to āwell, itās oldā dinginess. Iwasplanning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. āI need to reshape itā is nothing.
Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but weāve been trained to believe itās all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is ānormal wear and tearā and canāt be fixed.
Itās utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from āI keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasonsā to āI could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectableā! The pajama bottoms Iām wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!
I do not know how often youāre supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention itās way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I donāt wear white, so I canāt test the āit will make whites look almost-new as wellā claim, but Iāve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.
Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.
Go forth. Rejuvenate your clothing. Strip your laundry.
I have a question about the āset it aside to run again with a regular pretreatmentā bit: What is your regular pretreatment?
For grease: Dawn dish soap and a toothbrush. For blood: soak in peroxide, rinse, apply more peroxide. For ink: alcohol. Rubbing alcohol is best, vodka is an acceptable substitute. Do not use colored liquor like tequila or whiskey. Aerosol hairspray will work in a pinch. For red wine or grape juice: white wine. For āwhat the fuck is that, anyway?ā stains: OxyClean Max Force Gel Stick. For āoh shit, there was a red shirt in with my whitesā stains: Iām very sorry. Try bleach?
Spot-apply all of these. In other words donāt just toss your period panties into a sink full of peroxide, pour some peroxide over the crotch. Apply alcohol with a cotton facial pad or, failing that, a washcloth or kleenex.
Let it sit for five to fifteen minutes, then throw it in the wash. Try to use cold water; hot water will set stains.
me when ao3 is down so Iām forced to go to bed early and have a good 8 hours of sleep before going back to work tomorrow instead of burning my retina on my screen phone reading about the same guys falling in love over and over until 3 am
I have achieved joy, I feel positive feelings toward Tumblr, I want to engage, I want to stay, my eyeballs land on more ads, you make more money, everyone wins! š
Seeing the collapsed thread, you go like this:
š® ooh, thatās cool š ā16 centsā? yes, thatās literally what the pic shows, not sure why you felt the need to say that
There is no motivation for me to uncollapse the reblog chaināit looks like a boring conversation about the denominations of coins. And even if I do uncollapse it, youāve ruined the joke by showing me the punchline before the setup. I am sad, Tumblr is boring, I go elsewhere to entertain myself, I see less ads, you make less money, everyone loses. š„
Reblog chains are the best thing about Tumblr. They are your unique super power. They are the thing that makes people screenshot Tumblr and share it around. Why on earth would you kneecap them??
I donāt know exactly how you plan to implement this. Give people the option to keep them collapsed if there truly are people who are annoyed by how long they can get (you already have a version of this feature), but donāt collapse them for everyone or new users by default. Please. It will make Tumblr so much more boring.
