Success StoryTackling Your Laundry



Tackling Your Laundry

Author: Crystal Osborne

Planning Unit: Family and Consumer Sciences

Major Program: Promoting Healthy Homes and Communities (general)

Plan of Work: Family Resource Management & Healthy Homes

Outcome: Intermediate Outcome

With the ever-changing world of laundry detergents, machine choices, stain removal products and general laundry care and safe laundry practices to consider, the need to educate consumers to make the safest, most efficient choice is needed. Every 45 minutes, a poison control center in the U.S. receives a call about a child who has been exposed to laundry detergent chemicals. (Center for Injury Research and Policy at National Children’s Hospital) The Lee and Owsley County Family & Consumer Sciences Agents travelled to eight counties in the Quicksand Area to present, “Tackling Your Laundry.” Sixty-two Kentucky Extension Homemaker Association (KEHA) leaders participated in the lesson and prepared to replicate the lesson to other members of KEHA. They have children and grandchildren in their homes so safety is important to them as well as getting the most use of clothing as they manage their budgets.  During the program, KEHA leaders discussed ways to create a safe laundry room to protect their families, matched laundry products for the right jobs, identified ways to remove common stains that tend to ruin garments and differentiated between traditional and high efficiency washing machines. The leaders were surveyed three months following the lesson. 96% indicated that they had made changes to their laundry area such as storing laundry products in a safe location, 88% indicated that they now wash their laundry on appropriate cycles and at the correct temperature to extend the wear of garments, and 96% indicated that they understand garment labels better and read them prior to laundering. 






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