Secret Weapons: The War on Stains, Part 1

This is what my shirt collar looks like now.  I should have taken before-and-after pictures for this entry, but I didn't really think the "after" picture would look any different from the "before."

There were these mystery stains on the face of the collars on my two favorite blue dress shirts.  Stains on the part of the collar touching my neck made sense--all that nasty skin oil day in and day out.  But there were these white deposits on a part of the collar that never touched my neck.

I went to my dry cleaners and asked them to work on it, what with their strange, powerful, loud steam-cleaning implements.  They were not optimistic, and their not-optimism proved founded.  (N.B. My dry cleaners are comically bad at times, but they're very sweet and extremely convenient.)  Rather than Goodwill the shirts after far too few wearings, I thought I would try the Spray-n-Wash stain stick which I keep in the laundry closet.  I put a generous helping on the collars, threw the shirts in the wash, and Hey Presto! see above.  The stains are gone.

$0.10 worth of a $5 laundry product available at the grocery store rescued $80 in shirtings from certain loss.  And thus did it earn the honor of being designated a Secret Weapon.