Remember the purple shampoo I mentioned in the last post? Well, it haunted me BIG time once we got to Chicago. Granted, almost everything non-clothing I own is purple (I tend to wear black and shades of heather gray when it comes to shirts and jeans as a general rule), so when my purple shampoo leaked in my purple toiletry bag (which is also purple, but I always bag it in a ziploc for just such reasons) inside my checked bag (you guessed it, purple), I wasn't too worried. The bag would dry and it was just shampoo right? WRONG!
Of course, that first night I wasn't conscious enough to grasp the situation of the spill and I didn't wash my hair, but I did the next morning and, because of the light-colored marble in the Hyatt bathroom, I was EXTRA careful to make sure that no purple shampoo remained in the shower so it didn't stain. What I didn't plan for was that my toiletry bag was still wet and that housekeeping would push my bag against the marble-tiled backs plash of the sink and it would leave stain marks on the back splash!
That second night, I noticed it right away and, thankfully, my Sister had Clorox wipes, but they didn't help. I tried hairspray, nail polish remover, and every chemical concoction I could think of to get the purple stain out of the marble, but NOTHING worked! So that night, when we made our Walgreens stop for sodas, I bought pure bleach and a scrubber.
This entire time of my trying to remove said stains, my Sister kept telling me not to worry about it. No one would notice. I was TERRIFIED she would get this MASSIVE bill from the Hyatt for replacing those marble tiles (it literally covered two tiles), so I was not about to let that happen.
On night three, I spent over an hour in the bathroom scrubbing, and scrubbing, and scrubbing those purple stains. The lighter ones FINALLY came off, the big one didn't. I decided that maybe the scrubber wasn't the best plan because I might damage the marble, so I switched to my toothbrush (yes, I finger-brushed the rest of the trip because I couldn't find a purple toothbrush at Walgreens). When that didn't work either, I decided NOT to use the hotels towels or rags, but instead one of my own socks...this would haunt me later (I was afraid that, if they got soaked in bleach, it would ruin their laundry and they would figure out I was up to something nefarious...paranoid much?). Still nada. The hotel had cotton balls in plastic, so the next day, I soaked cotton balls in bleach, placed them on the worst spots, locked them against the wall with my perfume bottle, and hoped for the best!
THANKFULLY, this last-ditched effort worked and the spots were all gone! But, because I had bleach sitting against the wall all day (with my bleach-soaked sock underneath), I had cleaning up to do that night. I made every attempt to make sure there was no pure bleach sitting anywhere and washed down every surface with water, but I did have to get hotel towels involved in the process. I stacked them all up to the side, dumped the remaining bleach down the sink, threw away the bleach bottle, my toothbrush, the scrubber, my sock (or so I thought), and my favorite toiletry bag just to keep it from getting purple everywhere else. But throwing away my toiletry bag meant I had to loose a lot of toiletries as well since I didn't have anywhere to keep them but in a ziploc. I also threw a bunch of other trash on top and hoped that housekeeping didn't go through it all down to the bleach bottle and got suspicious (although, since it was toiletry heaven, I'm sure they did).
My Sister laughed off the whole debacle and told me I was making a big deal out of nothing, but I was just scared about the stains and what they could charge her.
Note to all those who use purple shampoo for blonde hair...it STAINS! Now, remember the bleached sock...that will come up in a later story, but I do have one more bleach and marble story first, and this one is WAY off from this string!
Of course, that first night I wasn't conscious enough to grasp the situation of the spill and I didn't wash my hair, but I did the next morning and, because of the light-colored marble in the Hyatt bathroom, I was EXTRA careful to make sure that no purple shampoo remained in the shower so it didn't stain. What I didn't plan for was that my toiletry bag was still wet and that housekeeping would push my bag against the marble-tiled backs plash of the sink and it would leave stain marks on the back splash!
That second night, I noticed it right away and, thankfully, my Sister had Clorox wipes, but they didn't help. I tried hairspray, nail polish remover, and every chemical concoction I could think of to get the purple stain out of the marble, but NOTHING worked! So that night, when we made our Walgreens stop for sodas, I bought pure bleach and a scrubber.
This entire time of my trying to remove said stains, my Sister kept telling me not to worry about it. No one would notice. I was TERRIFIED she would get this MASSIVE bill from the Hyatt for replacing those marble tiles (it literally covered two tiles), so I was not about to let that happen.
On night three, I spent over an hour in the bathroom scrubbing, and scrubbing, and scrubbing those purple stains. The lighter ones FINALLY came off, the big one didn't. I decided that maybe the scrubber wasn't the best plan because I might damage the marble, so I switched to my toothbrush (yes, I finger-brushed the rest of the trip because I couldn't find a purple toothbrush at Walgreens). When that didn't work either, I decided NOT to use the hotels towels or rags, but instead one of my own socks...this would haunt me later (I was afraid that, if they got soaked in bleach, it would ruin their laundry and they would figure out I was up to something nefarious...paranoid much?). Still nada. The hotel had cotton balls in plastic, so the next day, I soaked cotton balls in bleach, placed them on the worst spots, locked them against the wall with my perfume bottle, and hoped for the best!
THANKFULLY, this last-ditched effort worked and the spots were all gone! But, because I had bleach sitting against the wall all day (with my bleach-soaked sock underneath), I had cleaning up to do that night. I made every attempt to make sure there was no pure bleach sitting anywhere and washed down every surface with water, but I did have to get hotel towels involved in the process. I stacked them all up to the side, dumped the remaining bleach down the sink, threw away the bleach bottle, my toothbrush, the scrubber, my sock (or so I thought), and my favorite toiletry bag just to keep it from getting purple everywhere else. But throwing away my toiletry bag meant I had to loose a lot of toiletries as well since I didn't have anywhere to keep them but in a ziploc. I also threw a bunch of other trash on top and hoped that housekeeping didn't go through it all down to the bleach bottle and got suspicious (although, since it was toiletry heaven, I'm sure they did).
My Sister laughed off the whole debacle and told me I was making a big deal out of nothing, but I was just scared about the stains and what they could charge her.
Note to all those who use purple shampoo for blonde hair...it STAINS! Now, remember the bleached sock...that will come up in a later story, but I do have one more bleach and marble story first, and this one is WAY off from this string!
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Linda