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Ah, the wonders of hiking in GA…


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I was just wondering if anyone could tell me how the heck to get orange clay out of clothes? No matter when or where I go hiking I always end up falling and my clothes are starting to turn orange (my old hiking boots are permanently dyed orange!) even my jeans are starting to get stained. Thanks!

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I have lived in GA for 9 years now. When I moved here everyone told me to just get used to orange clothes because you can't get the clay stain out. Well I proved them wrong. I use Clorox strain remover. Not sure about the correct name but it is Clorox. It comes in a blue spray bottle. Be sure to spray your clothes really well as soon as you take them off and if possible, wash them within a few hours. Good luck.

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Ahhhh yessssss, that's one reason blue carpet just doesn't work well in the South. And white is out of the question. So my answer is that I keep a set of clothes that have no fashion relevance. It's called my entire wardrobe.;)

Seriously, you're better off learning to live with it. If you ever go to the tropics you'll contend with it there as well. So I tend to wear a lot of dark colors, black lately, and people constantly ask if I'm from Seattle or something. :) I guess it also indicates a rather dark frame of mind. ;)

 

The Clorox approach might help if your clothes are 100% synthetic. But if they contain cellulose (cotton) you must be very careful. Strong Clorox is a powerful oxidizer and it will bleach your jeans and in stronger doses, it will eat holes if they're cotton. Skin too, so be careful. We use Clorox to digest biological tissues, for example. Works really well. You can test this by just briefly touching some Clorox and then feeling it as you rub your fingertips together under the faucet. It feels slick and soapy. That's because it just ate some of your skin and the oils reacted with the strong base to form...soap. Be careful. (is is also for this reason that I advise the boys in this unit to wear swim goggles in chlorinated swimming pools, but that goes back to another thread a long, long, time ago, in a galaxy far, far away)

 

Edited part: Flowerchild (nice name, BTW), I think the product you mentioned might be Clorox Cleanup. Check to see if I'm right about this. If so, it's a diluted form of Clorox with some detergent added. It will also get the 'red' out of many garments whose color is 'dye' rather than red clay. I have demonstrated this empirically on several sad occasions.;)(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

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As a life long Georgian, my advice is learn to live with it. If it can't be washed with bleach (and lots of it) it will be red clay colored. Red, orange, and brown don't show it as bad as light colors. Every year, I watch the boys go home from summer camp with orange tinted light blue, yellow or grey camp shirts.

 

If you look in lots of the state park stores and other "tourist" stores, you will see "official red GA clay" tee shirts.

 

By the way, when my son went to Jambo, he took pictures of the dirt, because it was black and not red.

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