Removing Difficult Stains From Clothing Without Special Products

Often, simple household ingredients are sufficient to remove difficult stains from clothing. Find out which ones they are!

Who does not know difficult stains such as red wine, mayonnaise, machine oil and other problem cases that are difficult to remove from textiles during washing. But if you know which household products are suitable for which stains, you don’t need expensive special products!

Categorize difficult spots

There are many different difficult stains that will present you with laundry care challenges. Roughly speaking, there are only a few categories to which the spots can be assigned :

• Grease stains (oil, grease, edible fats, …)
• Organic discoloration (grass stains, red wine, carrots, …)
• Synthetic discoloration (oil paints, varnishes, resins, etc.)
• Foreign particles (chewing gum etc.)

To successfully remove difficult stains from textiles, you should first determine which category the stain belongs to. Then you will also know which home remedies to use to remove difficult stains in this category. You should test the following home remedies:

Hydrogen peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide is behind product names such as “ mild bleaching without chlorine ” or “Oxykraft”. “With active oxygen” is often advertised in the trade. This “active oxygen” in cleaning agents is nothing other than hydrogen peroxide.

The hydrogen peroxide that you can buy is heavily diluted with water and mixed with a stabilizer so that it does not break down into its components water and oxygen when it comes into contact with metal. In the pharmacy you can buy this product in (almost) any concentration.

Hydrogen peroxide is an excellent bleaching agent for stubborn stains and discoloration, mainly those of “organic” origin, so no paints, varnishes or lubricating oils.

However, you should only use it on light-colored laundry, for example to rid white curtains, white towels or bed linen of gray sneaks.

Washing soda

Washing soda is highly fat-dissolving and is suitable for difficult stains of a greasy nature, such as butter, oils, mayonnaise and similar stains.

Washing soda only works in warm water. The hotter the water, the greater the effect. Therefore, please do not use washing soda if the textiles can only tolerate delicate or hand washing or low washing temperatures!

You can get washing soda in the drugstore. Use gloves as it dries out the skin very much due to its high fat dissolving power!

Dissolve the washing soda in hot water according to the label and soak the affected textiles in it. Rub and rub the stains or use a washing brush.

Once the water has cooled down, you can put the clothes dripping wet in the washing machine and start a normal wash cycle.

Washing-up liquid

Some difficult stains are very easy to remove by rubbing them with a thin layer of dishwashing detergent. This works particularly well on greasy stains, for example shirt collars, kitchen aprons and work clothes.

Put the detergent directly on the stain and rub it well into the fabric from the back as well. After leaving it to act for about 30 minutes, wash the textile in the washing machine as usual.

Please do not use too much washing-up liquid, as this will lead to extreme foam development!

Acetic / citric acid

Sweat stains don’t like acid. Therefore, vinegar or citric acid is the first choice if you want to remove difficult stains from sweat.

Make sure that you use white wine vinegar or – even better – vinegar essence, because these are colorless and do not distort the result!

Vinegar essence is available in small bottles from discount grocery stores or as branded goods in supermarkets. You can get citric acid as a powder in every supermarket.

Soak the affected garment in a strong vinegar or lemon solution for at least overnight and then rub out the stains.

Then put the dripping wet piece in the washing machine as usual and wash it with your usual detergent. The vinegar smell disappears when washing and then drying!

You can also treat stubborn stains directly with vinegar essence or citric acid. To do this, soak the stain directly with the vinegar essence or a paste made from citric acid and water and leave it on overnight.

As a preventive measure, we recommend wetting fresh sweat stains with vinegar essence before each wash!

ice

Chewing gum or tree resin on your pants is very annoying. It is even more annoying when no really satisfactory result is visible after washing. The first aid against chewing gum and resins on clothing is cold.

Either you freeze the affected textile in the freezer, or you use ice cubes to cool it to a temperature below freezing point. This makes chewing gum and co. Hard and crumbly, so that you can simply scrape it off or break it off.

Orange oil

Orange terpenes from orange peel have an extremely high fat dissolving power and act like solvents. Obtain pure orange oil to take advantage of the orange terpenes. A bottle costs around 9 € and is quite expensive, but you can not only remove the following stains from clothing with it:

• Lacquers
• Colours
• Resins
• Fats
• Lubricating oils
• Adhesives
• chewing gum

And more! The high fat dissolving power also makes orange oil a perfect household cleaner in the kitchen. Difficult stains on textiles completely lose their horror. Try it out, it’s worth it!