2026 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere

@alicef - you can freeze the strawberries as purée with a bit of lemon juice added, and then thaw it out when you want to make the ice cream.
Mum used to use the purée as a sauce to go over the ice cream too- absolutely gorgeous!

thriftmonster

I see Susan Crawford has released 2 more 20 kits today. Both sold out so well done @PipneyJane for getting one. Looking forward to reports

PipneyJane

@alicef I think it was the Annual that sold the kit to me. That was the deciding factor.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82047990#Comment_82047990

Thank you @thriftmonster. It won’t arrive before November, but I promise to post photos.

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alicef

I would love to see photos, @PipneyJane !

@Laura_Elsewhere oh I wish I was so organised to have pureed the strawberries - I cut off the tops, (am trying Nancy Birtwhistle's strawberry syrup from haulms trick), halved, portion weighed, bagged up and stuffed in the freezer. Sadly, the trick of sitting on one's luggage to close doesn't appear to work on a chest freezer.

I'm hoping to get organised enough to make ice-cream on Sunday as hopefully temps. will have dropped sufficiently to do this, plus meringues, as I will have to use up egg whites

PipneyJane

Is anyone watching the football tonight? I’m watching Norway vs France and am in total awe of whomever put together the Norwegian shirts. The colour matching is absolutely perfect between the stripes on the body and those on the sleeves.

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PipneyJane

Need to pick your collective brains, please. I was just folding the laundry, when I noticed that my husband’s white Wimbledon polo shirt has a stain/scorch mark on it. It is 100% cotton. Now, this is an item that has been previously dried outside in the sun, but not in the most recent wash. It’s usually washed in either cold water (by me) or 30C (by my DH), and always in non-bio powder. The most recent wash included a scoop of one of those peroxide powder additives.

What should I do to get the mark out? Given the placement, I’m thinking it got scorched by the sun, when drying outside on the airer.

Many thanks,

Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82049658#Comment_82049658

hmm…

My gut feeling is that it isn't a scorch mark (I have never seen laundry get scorched by being on a clothesline- is this something more common in Australia that we need to start thinking of, I wonder?).

But to me, that doesn't look like the scorch marks I'm familiar with, and it looks a lot like general body-oils marking that I am familiar with- and if he's wearing it against his skin and it's only ever getting cold-wash, 30° wash, and always in non-bio then I think it's highly likely- it's in just the right place too, where the skin is against the fabric especially when sitting down, and a part of the body that can produce a fair bit of oils and sweat.

I would go for soaking (well, yeah, you know me!!)- I'd give it 24 hours in plain cold tapwater, and then another overnight in Bio-Tex if you can, with hand-hot tapwater to dissolve the Bio-Tex in and start the soak, leaving it to go cold- keep stirring it round multiple times if you can.
After the Bio-Tex had had at least 12 hours, drain it, rinse in cold water and then I would wash it with biological detergent, and see how it is. If it's improved, then repeat the process.

The thing with anything against the body-skin is that it needs either hot water or biological detergent.
Washing at low temps with a non-bio won't actually do much cleaning. Which is fine for everything worn at a remove from skin, or worn on limbs rather than the body/torso, ie trousers or shorts, shirts worn over t-shirts, etc, but for anything against the main trunk of the body, it really needs either biological detergent that will work at 30° or else it needs 40° or even more.

That's my tuppence, anyway :) I could be wrong and it's a scorch mark, but it looks very like body-oils and sweat to me!

PipneyJane

@Laura_Elsewhere taking another look, I think you are correct that it isn’t a scorch mark. The distribution makes perfect sense that it is a stain from DH’s sweat from our day at the cricket last week. (Oval test match.) From where do i buy Bio-Tex?

I have some ancient biological washing powder in the cupboard. (10+years old.) It rarely gets used bcause DH suffers from eczema. Do you think that’d still be ok to use?

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Laura_Elsewhere

@PipneyJane - that sounds like the culprit! I'm not sure where you'd buy Bio-Tex, tbh. It's an enzyme soak, so there may be other brands that do the same job: dissolve it in warm water and leave clothes to soak, stirring well from time to time, and it breaks down biological stains such as body oils and sweat, blood, etc.

I suppose you could just use the biological detergent for the soak as well as for the wash? I think the Bio-Tex is generally cheaper, hence why both exist, but the biological detergent has some stain-breaking enzymes, hence its name!

As for the eczema… the dermatology consultant I used to be a guinea-pig for said that almost all the cases he saw of people reacting to certain textiles were actually them reacting to the detergents left in the clothes by modern laundry methods, and to fabric conditioner which of course stays in the textiles. So it could well be that which causes the problem, rather than the use of the biological detergent? After all, really there should be no trace of the detergent left after the wash- except for the odd obsession with having clothes smell of detergent!!
so he recommended a) using less detergent than they say, about half usually does the job; b) making sure not to overfill the machine; c) once it's finished, put it through an extra 'rinse' cycle, cold water is fine, just to get the last bits out.

And of course using white vinegar instead of fabric-softener will help rinse any excess away too :)

PipneyJane

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82049746#Comment_82049746

Apparently Unilever stopped selling Bio-Tex in the UK a decade ago. It’s only available here from a couple of Dutch expat sites. Next time I go to France, I’ll have a look for it in Carrefour… (along with white balsamic vinegar, and a dozen other things I stock up on when I’m there).

Meanwhile, at the same time you were writing your message, @Laura_Elsewhere, I decided to try a soak in the biological washing powder; 50-ish grams dissolved in an inch of hot water then diluted with cold until a third of the bucket was full. (Typical orange B&Q bucket.) It more than covers the polo shirt. I’ll leave it overnight, stirring occasionally, before washing and will let you know the outcome.

Thank you again for your wise words.

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