Posts from — January 2008

The winner of the recent Miss South Florida Fair pagent was confronted with a real dilemma when she discovered that her $3,400 light-blue evening gown had been vandalized backstage, with streaks of bright red lipsitck down the back side of the dress. Frantically trying to erase the lipstick stain with spot cleaners, rubbing alcohol and finally liquid hand-soap, nothing worked to lift the red streaks. She had no other choice but to wear the dress, stains and all. The dress was quickly soaked and dried with a blow dryer to remove the water rings left by their attempts to remove the stains.

So how do your remove lipstick stains from clothing? There are several laundry tips you can try, depending on the type of fabric. In the case of the beauty pagent dress, the fabric was made of some sort of satin and the lipstick was a dark red metallic color. So the combination of a hard to clean fabric combined with whatever ingredients were in that lipstick would have made it impossible to quickly remove the stain.

First – Read the care label on the garment. If it is dry clean only – get it to the dry cleaners right away. Trying to lift the stain yourself may only make their job more difficult.

Second – Never rub the stain – you could end up grinding the grease further into the fabric.

Third – Lipstick is a grease-based cosmetic, so you should stick to stain removers that fight oil and grease. Dawn dishwashing liquid is a popular choice. Try a few drops in water and dab on the stain until the bulk of it is removed. Rinse and repeat, you should see a definite improvement.

Lipstick on your collar? No dishsoap handy? Try using a clean white cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol, and dab the stain (no, it didn’t work on that dress, but it usually works on shirts). Follow up with dishwashing detergent or your favorite stain remover as soon as possible.

Products known to work well on greasy lipstick stains include

and

It seems that many people out there are dealing with red wine stains – it is one of the most widely searched terms in the stain category!

I guess with all of the publicity about the health benefits of drinking red wine, consumption of my favorite drink has exploded, and so follows the stains! So, I decided to post a little red wine cheat sheet for quick laundry help:

Clothing – Blot immediately with white paper towel – do not let the stain dry! – keep re-wetting the stain with cold water if necessary, until you are ready to treat. If the stain is small, rubbing an ice cube will sometimes help to dilute the stain and remove a good bit of it at the same time. As soon as possible, soak the garment in a solution of the hottest water allowable according to the care label and oxygen based stain remover. Another trick that has worked on white synthetics like rayon, is soaking the stained portion in milk (but that can take an hour or more until it is gone completely).

Red Wine on Tablecloths – Pour a mound of salt or baking soda onto the wine to absorb as much as possible. After dinner, put the tablecloth into cold water and soak it for about 20 minutes. Then pour liquid enzyme detergent directly onto the area and soak it in the hottest water that’s safe for the fabric for about 30 minutes. Launder as usual. Air dry.

 Wine on Sofa – Pour club soda on stain then blot with white paper towels.Then take a little woolite laundry detergent and work it into the remaining stain, ‘rinse’ with cold water again and continue blotting dry.

Carpet – My first choice is , If you have none, then try this: First, soak up as much as possible with a white towel, then mix 1 tablespoon of plain or lemon scented ammonia in 1 cup of warm water. Saturate the stain and then absorb most of the liquid with a towel. Follow up by putting white vinegar on the stain, let it set for a couple of minutes. Absorb again with towel. Yet another method: If the stain still wet, pour salt over the stain and let it absorb the wine (if you can wait overnight) and vacuum.

Being a red wine drinker for many years and having to deal with those stains on a number of surfaces, I can honestly say that if you handle the stain immediately, there are really no extraordinary measures necessary. If it is something that can be thrown in the wash, then do it right away! In these situations, my success rate has been 100%.

If you keep a bottle of wine away or resolve around, it usually works for most items from clothing to carpet. The only hard to save items are dry-clean only - blot up as much as you can right away and get to the dry cleaner. If you are willing to take a chance (possibly ruining the garment) blot up as much as possible, dab some Dawn dishwashing detergent or Woolite on the stain, and run some cold water through it, blotting dry right away. I’ve done it, but do not recommend it if you really love the garment.

RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS (that I have personally used) -

#1No more whining over spilled wine! Our remarkable red wine stain remover works on carpets & fabrics, including silk, linen, wool, & rayon. Made from fruit & vegetable extracts, citrus scented formula is powerful enough to tackle set-in or old wine stains. Also, cleans tough stains from grape juice & fruit punch. Item #1780U Just click on the picture to order!

#2 Most people immediately dab or rub their clothes with a wet napkin, which often makes the stain worse. Instead of rubbing the stain in, get the stain out instantly with OxiClean® Spray-A-Way™. You may have seen stain remover pens that claim to remove stains. But these pens can actually transfer a stain from one piece of clothing to another and they often dry out and lose their effectiveness.OxiClean® Spray-A-Way™ prevents these problems and packs incredible instant stain removal power into a tiny spray bottle. It’s just as portable as the pen, and even more effective at removing stains in an instant. OxiClean® Spray-A-Way™ is the only instant stain remover spray that contains the power of OxiClean. Simply spray, and watch tough stains disappear. Just click on the picture to order!

#3