This $5 Made-in-Canada Stain Stick Saved My Clothes—And My Sanity

I have a six-month-old, which means I also have a pile of never-ending laundry. It’s not unusual for him to go through multiple outfits in a day, and my wife and I sometimes do, too (I’ve quickly learned that purées will inevitably wind up on your white shirts no matter how hard you try). And that’s led to a lot of time spent scrubbing out stains.

Before my maternity leave, Chatelaine senior editor Andréanne Dion gifted me two Buncha Farmers stain remover sticks. The gravity of my forthcoming laundry woes had not yet hit me, but Andréanne said: trust me. 

These incredible little sticks are made (in the Greater Toronto Area!) without any artificial dyes or chemicals—just coconut, canola and vegetable oils, and borax to help with stain removal. And they’re incredibly cheap at just $5.50 a bar. 

I was initially not convinced that a stain stick without any heavy-duty cleaning chemicals could tackle the many stains my little one creates, but I was quickly proven very wrong. Just wet the stick and rub it over the stain, and watch it magically disappear. In half a year, I have removed stains from everything from tomato sauce, red wine, coffee, oil to various fruit and vegetable purées and, yes, a lot of baby poop. Best of all, it has made all of those loads of laundry much, much easier to tackle.

Buncha Farmers Stain Remover, $5.50