Solutions to stains

Motherhood taught me many a thing, one of which is that I must absolutely know how to get rid of stains because somehow, it seems like stains is a daily thing nowadays...Indeed, little ones come from school with uniforms tainted with paint that is, apparently, washable but will not wash off when you pop in the machine along with the rest of the laundry. At tea time, you can be sure something will miss the mouth and will land on the dress or the leggings, so you better be prepared just in case it results in one of those stubborn stains that just won't budge. I have had to deal with cherry stains, chewing gum and blueberry juice on my daughter's clothes and to my own astonishment I managed to get them off the clothes and they looked as good as new after.
How easily to you get cherry stains off the clothes will depend on how fast you deal with the stain. You will have guessed it, the faster you try and get it off, the better! First place the garment in the sink and pour boiling water from the kettle directly on the stain. It should wash the most of the stain away and if it doesn't, then get some lemon or lime juice and some baking soda. Dab some baking soda on the stain and saturate with lime or lemon juice. Let this duo work its magic for a few minutes then again with the boiling water. If that was not enough, pour some concentrated washing up liquid on the stain and leave to stand for a further few minutes and wash off, preferably with hot water. That should really do the trick and should leave your garment stain-free.
As for chewing gum stuck to clothes. You know the ice cube trick, don't you? It just involves taking an ice cube and rubbing it on the chewing gum to make it hard and easier to scrape off. Sometimes not all of the chewing gum will come off that way and one thing that will get it off completeley and utterly is salt and washing up liquid. That's how you proceed: cover the chewing gum area in washing up liquid and liberally sprinkle salt on it. Rub the salt in with your finger and the chewing gum should start to leave the fibres of the garment. You can then wash the garment as you normally would.