Spring has (finally) sprung! And with the nicer weather comes outdoor recess at your child’s school, summer sports and just general outdoor fun.

Another common byproduct of the spring season is green, luscious grass. When it comes to kids playing outdoors and green grass, it’s not always a great combination – at least as far as laundry is concerned.

The good news is that you don’t have to dress your child in his/her grubby pants every time they go to play outside. Grass stains are fairly easy to remove from pants, so long as you follow a couple of simple steps. Here’s a look:

1. Pre-treatment: If you throw your child’s pants into a normal wash cycle with detergent, there’s a good chance that the grass stains won’t come out of the fabric. That’s why applying a pre-treatment stain remover is so important. Apply the remover only to the affected areas on the pants and then let it sit for 10-15 minutes so it can soak thoroughly into the fabric and work its magic. While you can purchase stain removers from the store, vinegar works great for such purposes too.
2. Gently agitate the stains: After the pre-treatment has soaked into the fabric, we recommend taking a toothbrush, rag or similar object to lightly go over the affected areas. Even gentle agitation can help lift stains out of the fabric.
3. Launder as usual: After you have completed the previous two steps, then you’re good to wash the pants as normal with your standard detergent. Combined with the pre-treatment, a normal wash cycle should be more than enough to lift the stains out of the fabric so that your child’s pants come out of the wash looking good as new.