Fabric Care: Laundry Pt. 3 – Stains & Delicates
STAINS
There is no shortage of marketing folks at Proctor & Gamble that would love to tell you that you must spend $7.99 on their latest spray or gel to be a clean person. I would like to suggest that most stains can be removed for 99¢. Maybe $1.99 if you’re feeling flush with cash.
My first suggestion is 70-99% isopropyl alcohol. I prefer 99% and to dilute it when I must. If you can’t find 99%, often they’ll have it behind the counter at your local pharmacy. I rarely spend more than a dollar.
I first discovered my love for isopropyl alcohol after I over-spray-basted a baby quilt and had glue-gunk everywhere. I tried everything to get rid of it. Nothing worked. Then I remembered my theatre-pro friend’s advice: They use alcohol on everything. To deodorize costumes between sets, to remove gunk and oil spills, to refresh and clean, you name it.
I’ve since used isopropyl alcohol to clean bikes, restore vintage sewing machines, remove set-in oil stains on clothes, and daily with lavender essential oil as a linen & room spray. I don’t spend more than pennies a year. I’ve tested it on various fabrics from cotton to minky, and it evaporates long before it ruins any fabric. Just use an old toothbrush, poor a bit out in a non-reactive cup, and scrub. Be sure to put the lid back on your alcohol bottle because it does evaporate quickly.
My second favorite is generic hydrogen peroxide. The easiest sofa I had during toddler years was one with a white slipcover and a white wool rug in front. Spilled juice? Pour hydrogen peroxide on it. Wine? Blood? Chocolate milk? Unidentifiable? Hydrogen Peroxide would always get rid of it.
Between these two drug market bottles, I can remove 99% of all stains.
For anything else, vinegar, baking soda and a bottle of Bio-Kleen Bac-Out will do the rest. I’ve had the same bottle of Bac-Out for 5 years and it’s still pretty full. It’s great for bio fluids & smells like vomit, cat/dog/baby mystery scents and fluids, etc. Bac-Out will clean that mystery funk. While Bac-Out lists at $11+ on Amazon and is the priciest per oz item in my basket, it lasts so long you could split a bottle with a friend.
DELICATES
As we mentioned in Part 1 regarding wools, I keep my delicates care very basic as well.
I use Soak no-rinse wash and a salad spinner. It’s so easy to just put items in the bowl with cold water with a couple drops of Soak and go about your day.
At the end of the day, just lift the colander portion out, dump the water. Do a quick spin, then lay out or hang to dry. With no-rinse and the spin-mechanism doing the work, you don’t risk felting precious fibers or catching bra hooks on other fabrics.
This is not a sponsored post, I’m just really partial to their products. Fig is my favorite scent, but unscented is available if you’re sensitive to fragrance. One large bottle lasts me a few years, but I don’t knit so my delicates may be fewer than yours.
This concludes our laundry series and we hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to sign up for emails from the Sewing Studio to get the weekly sale discount codes and remnant sale emails. If you have suggestions for future blog posts, please email Karleen here.
Guest Author Series
Becky Jo’s Laundry Resume: I’ve done a LOT of laundry. Growing up poor in a rural area with younger siblings, I was washing cloth diapers and hanging them on the line to dry from the age of 8. I have 4 children of my own, also mostly cloth diapered for environmental reasons (this will be relevant later when we get to the detergents & stains parts of the series.) My career has spanned working in my parents’ bowling alley washing kitchen towels & grease rags to suits-required-corporate jobs with the dry cleaning bills to match. You might say I’m something of a laundry savant.
This blog was originally posted on September 4, 2023.
