How To Get Stains Out Of Your Clothes

No matter how careful we are, what could have been avoided sometimes just happens. We get food spilled on our clothes while cooking or eating, our men soak their shirts with sweat when they go to the gym, our kids get too rowdy and play in the dirt even if they are told to stay clean, and guests can leave marks on the pristine upholstery of the living room furniture. Yes, stains happen even when we least expect it.

Taking stains out of clothes and household fabrics can be tricky and time-consuming, not to mention test our patience. But nonetheless, there are ways of doing it effectively, without damaging our fabrics. Here are ways how:

1. Remove stains while they are still fresh. It becomes tougher to clean stains when they have already dried or set into the fabric. Wash them immediately, and if the clothes require dry cleaning, take them to the cleaners as soon as possible.

2. There are clothes and fabrics that come with special instructions as to how they are to be washed and how the stains should be removed from them. If your stained clothes have special instructions like these, it would be best to follow these instructions to the letter.

3. Before applying your stain remover to the stain itself, test how it works in an inner seam or on a part of your garment that is not easily visible. In this way, you would be able to see how your clothes would react to the chemicals of the stain remover, whether or not it would change the color of the fabric.

4. Treat the stain from the back of the cloth. If it is treated from the outer side, where the stain actually is, rather than from the inner side, the stain might pass through the other side of the garment.

5. If you are using dry-cleaning solvents on your fabric, take care to rinse the solvents off completely before throwing the fabric into the washing machine. Or better yet, wash that fabric manually and air-dry it. Dry-cleaning solvents contain chemicals that may prove to be fire hazards when put in a washing machine.

6. Be careful in using bleach. Using bleach on just the stained spot may result in an uneven appearance in the color of the stained garment.

7. Different stain removal products have different components in them. So, just stick to one product in cleaning the stains off a particular garment, or else it will only end up ruining the fabric. And whatever product you have used, remember to wash it off thoroughly, so the products residue will not be a stain itself.

The most important thing to remember in cleaning out stains is that you should be patient when doing it. It can get frustrating, especially if the stain is too hard to take off, but that is just that. Sometimes, a stain can only be removed after repeating the process several times. There will also be a time when a stain will not come off no matter how hard you try. In that case, just accept the fact that your favorite dress or shirt is now ruined. Worry not; at least you tried.