ROSIE: I’d like to volunteer and help you problem-solve the issue of your son’s wearing Axe deodorant body spray…you might think about a citric acid-based laundry odor rinse. Unsolicited advice.
CHRISTINE: Bringing it in around!
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin, and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CHRISTINE: This episode is called The Art of Stain Removal Part 2
ROSIE: Hi guys.
CHRISTINE: Hey there.
CAIRA: Hi.
ROSIE: We’re back with part two of the stain series, which sounds really gross, but it’s actually I think hugely informative.
CHRISTINE: Absolutely.
ROSIE: Listener questions for Detective Andrea Barnes of basically how to get rid of the toughest stains on your clothes. So we hung out with her last week. She told the people about battling ChapStick, sunscreen, cooking grease and vodka soaked gummy bears.
CAIRA: Crowd favorite.
ROSIE: Shout out to Rory from Adelaide.
CHRISTINE: Bless. So last week, we talked with Andrea about the five basic things you need to think about when you’re preparing to attack a stain. So those are identify the stains. So you need to know what you’re fighting, basically to be able to get it out. Blot or scrape the stain, so if there’s some food or something, some gunk on your clothing, you need to kind of scrape it off. You can do that with the back of a butter knife. The next thing is to pick a stain remover, and that’s kind of the trickiest part, and we would recommend going back and listening to the first episode so you can be better prepared for that. Pre-treat or soak, and that means just basically putting some detergent on your clothing or soaking in water and detergent. And then the last step is to wash and air dry. And air drying is really important with stains because you don’t want the stain to set with heat or anything in the dryer, and so you want to let them air dry first.
CAIRA: And you have to be prepared to do this more than once, unfortunately. Sometimes it takes multiple cycles for you to really get that stain out. Then of course, there’s also this like dissolves like rule that Andrea told us, and the shorthand is that that should help you remember how to match stains with the right treatment. So that’s fat and oil stains like butter or grease, use a liquid laundry detergent and warm water. For protein stains like dairy, eggs or grass or starches like baby food or chocolate, use liquid detergent or Zout in cold water. And then for dyes and pigments like wine, coffee, and turmeric, you can use oxygen bleach on cold.
CHRISTINE: All right, so now we’re ready to get to more listener questions.
CAIRA: Yeah.
CHRISTINE: We’ll be right back with Andrea Barnes.
CAIRA: Welcome back. Andrea Barnes is back again. She’s Wirecutter’s laundry expert. She’s been here before. You all know her by now. She knows a ton about detergents, stain removers and washing machines, and she is our resident stain doctor.
CHRISTINE: Hi, Andrea. Welcome back.
ANDREA: Hi. Thanks for having me again.
ROSIE: You all, I feel like I am growing in confidence.
CHRISTINE: That’s right. You’re just going to approach this next laundry day with…
ROSIE: I’m feeling pretty good. But no, I genuinely love hearing the voice messages from our listeners both because it’s a joy to hear from people around the world, but also because the questions that they’ve submitted are all incredibly thoughtful and relatable. So let’s get back into it.
LISTENER: Hello, Wirecutter. This is Lucia calling from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year I got a couple lines of ballpoint pen ink on my comforter. The comforter is a hundred percent cotton and the ink is a refill that is supposed to be archival quality. I did some research on removing the stain and tried isopropyl alcohol. That didn’t work. I tried treating it with Dawn, with laundry detergent, with a paste of vinegar and baking soda and dish soap. I went to war against this stain. It persisted. I called a local dry cleaner and he said, “Don’t try.” At that point, I kind of gave up and brought it to the laundromat to wash the whole thing. After everything I did, the stain faded a bit, but it’s still there taunting me every time I see it. This is definitely the worst stain I’ve ever encountered.
CAIRA: Is it ever advisable to attack a stain with alcohol?
ANDREA: Sure, yeah. Alcohol can be great for some specific stains, and it does work on some inks. Basically what you would do is you would take the stain and put it over a cup and use an eyedropper to put alcohol through it. If you start to see the ink bleed, that means it’ll work, but it’s really, really exhausting. I would say in the case of this, and this might be a lost cause, I can’t say for sure without seeing the stain, but in testing, we used Amodex, which is recommended by pen companies for ink removal. We tested it. We were able to remove both ballpoint ink and Sharpie from silk and cotton with this stain remover. However, part of it is the art of actually removing the stain, right?
So you aren’t just going to buy a bottle of Amodex, throw it on the stain and have it go away. It doesn’t work like that. What you have to do is wearing gloves, so you need a bottle of Amodex and either paper towels or some sort of rag, and you’re going to put Amodex on the ballpoint pen ink stain and work it in, massage it in, and then massage out the ink and blot it up. It’s going to take you a long time.
ROSIE: Heaven help us.
ANDREA: Yeah. It’s going to take you a long time.
CHRISTINE: How expensive is this item that you’re trying to clean? It’s her comforter.
ANDREA: Yeah. How much is your time worth? Yeah, I mean, I would do it and it can be done. Sometimes it takes not that long, but some of the stains that really get in there take a while to work out, and you have to be gentle too, because you don’t want to be putting so much friction on the stain that you start to wear it down. So that’s the difficulty with it.
CHRISTINE: You talked about Amodex in the last episode. It’s this soap-based stain remover. Can you buy this at a grocery store or where do you have buy it?
ANDREA: Actually, I think you can buy it at Lowe’s maybe. Mostly we would buy it online. You can buy it directly from them or you can…I think maybe they’re probably on Amazon too. What I would do is I would just keep working it out and at a certain point, if it’s no more inks coming out, then like you’re…That’s it.
CHRISTINE: Then it might be time for a comforter cover.
ROSIE: Wow. So it’s a really kind of delicate process.
ANDREA: It is. And it’s really easy to get really frustrated and annoyed when you want to stain to come out and go to town.
ROSIE: Yeah, that.
ANDREA: So I do have to say, just tell yourself it’s going to take a long time.
CAIRA: Right.
ANDREA: Like an hour.
CAIRA: Wow. She must love her comforter. Wow, comforters.
ROSIE: Good luck, Lucia.
CHRISTINE: If it’s driving you crazy…
ANDREA: It’s your blanket.
ROSIE: I know.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. All right. Next we have a question from Mary in Savannah, Georgia, asking about a topic I know is super hard and sometimes impossible to remove, cat pee. I’m going to read this note from Mary. She says: “I have a very sweet cat who’s elderly, but I love her so much, and every once in a while, seemingly for no reason at all, she’ll just pee on a pillow, comforter or couch cushions, anything sort of soft. I’ve talked to her about this and asked her to stop, –which by the way, I think is amazing because my cat would never do anything that I tell it to do.—
CAIRA: It sounds like this one doesn’t either.
CHRISTINE: “She does this once a month. I will always try to treat it as quickly as possible. I pour liquid detergent directly onto it. I put it in the washing machine, I run it on cold, and then I tend to run it on cold again, and most of the time the haunting smell of cat pee is gone but sometimes it’s not, and sometimes I’m not sure. I’m not sure if I’m just kidding myself, if it’s really there or if it’s gone.” Oh, I feel for Mary.
ROSIE: I’ve been there. I have two. Yeah.
CHRISTINE: Oh, man. You know, Andrea, I know from editing some of our pet gear guides that we often recommend an enzymatic pet stain remover, like Nature’s Miracle to clean pet beds and messes on carpets and upholstery. But the odor of cat pee is kind of a unique thing, and I know that it’s really, really hard to remove, especially from things like upholstery or carpets that you can’t just throw into the wash.
CAIRA: It never goes away.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. It seems like it’s a forever smell. So what do you advise here?
ANDREA: Buying a washable rug.
ROSIE: Asking her cat even more nicely.
ANDREA: Yeah. It actually sounds like Mary is doing everything correctly, and I have myself experienced washing something that, not a cat, but a dog has peed on, and it sometimes will take two washes. I do find that cold water is better for odor removal in this situation. For pillows, if it’s really bad, I might try soaking it with some sort of enzymatic or liquid laundry detergent or powder detergent. I will say for rugs or upholstery, I would recommend looking at our steam vacuum guide. We have the little green…
CHRISTINE: The upholstery cleaner?
ANDREA: Yeah. And those usually come with some sort of enzymatic-based cleaner, like Nature’s Miracle that work on pet stains, and it’s worked for me. That’s what I do.
CAIRA: Okay. Andrea, staying in the vein of stains that you might not necessarily see, but you can smell. We’ve got a message from a listener in Los Angeles.
LISTENER: Hi, Wirecutter. This is Chenyi from Los Angeles, and I have a stubborn stain for you. I decided to host my own tinned fish dinner party. Unfortunately, one thing led to another and some of the tinned fish oil spilled on my chambray jumpsuit. I immediately soaked the stain in dish soap and ran it through the laundry. Luckily, the color of the stain came out, but the jumpsuit still smells like fish. I treated it again by soaking it in OxiClean and more laundry detergent, but the smell prevails. Wirecutter, how do I get rid of the fish smell?
CHRISTINE: Oh, stinky, stinky, stinky, stinky.
ROSIE: You can wear it at home only with your nearest and dearest people who don’t pass judgment.
CAIRA: I like a tinned fish dinner party.
ROSIE: You know, that’s cute.
CHRISTINE: That sounds fun.
CAIRA: Yeah. I usually just eat tinned fish standing at my counter.
ANDREA: Same. So without knowing what kind of laundry detergent was used, it’s hard to have a complete answer, but I would say you’ve got kind of two options here. One is I would, depending on how much something smells, I would soak it in water with a good laundry detergent for an hour or two before washing it. The other thing I would try is I would try using an odor rinse. There are a few on the market. They’re mostly acid-based, so citric acid or vinegar-based. They tend to be, we’ve tested one by Sonett, which is a more “natural” laundry company, but we’ve also tested Downy Rinse and Refresh, I believe it’s called, which is just, it looks almost like water in a bottle, and you put it in the fabric softener dispenser. At the end of the cycle, it rinses and removes odor.
I was kind of a naysayer and didn’t believe in them for a while, but having tested a few of them now, they work really well. And they also have the added bonus of, they basically clean your machine too, because most washing machine cleaners have citric acid in them. The citric acid can break down leftover detergent and everything else. So it’s the same thing.
CHRISTINE: Oh, nice.
CAIRA: Hot tips.
ROSIE: So a reminder to not use fabric softener. Don’t do it.
ANDREA: Don’t do it.
ROSIE: But this odor removal stuff goes in the fabric softener compartment.
ANDREA: Yeah. I think that it’s become really popular now that we’re switching so much to cold washing. There’s so many more synthetic fabrics on the market, especially for workout gear, that there’s become this new need for extra odor removal.
CHRISTINE: Right. Because workout gear really should be cleaned on colds.
ANDREA: Yes.
CHRISTINE: It’s kind of delicate and it should be air-dried.
ANDREA: Yes. And it tends to grow a lot more bacteria, which means not being able to wash with warm is hard.
ROSIE: Yeah. You recommended washing with a really good detergent. Does it need to be powder or can it be liquid in this case? Because I know tinned fish tends to be oily.
ANDREA: Yeah. That’s what’s difficult because I would say liquid laundry detergent because of the oil. However, powder detergent is really good for odor removal, like really good.
ROSIE: Could you do it once with the liquid and then once with the powder?
ANDREA: Yeah. You could. Also, it seems like she did say that the oil came out. Right?
CHRISTINE: Right. It says the oil came out.
CAIRA: Yeah. Just not the smell.
ANDREA: So if it’s just for the smell, I would say powder detergent, and then trying one of these odor removers.
ROSIE: It’s an art, not a science.
CHRISTINE: Okay. We’re going to switch gears to a different type of stain culprit, paint. This question is from Rain in Virginia.
LISTENER: I’m a painter and I have a really hard time getting acrylic paint that’s already dried out of my clothing. The only way I know how to get it out is to catch it while it’s still wet and scrub it underwater. But I can’t get dried paint out. I’ve tried scratching it. I’ve tried OxiClean. I’ve tried all sorts of different weird Pinterest methods. I used a toothbrush and soap. I don’t know what to do. Can you please help me out? Thank you.
ANDREA: Okay. I’m sorry to say that almost any book you’ll read about laundry and stain removal, they’re not very optimistic about paint stains. I’ve had some success with acrylic paint using rubbing alcohol, and actually Dawn Powerwash, which is different than Dawn soap, it’s that spray-on. That’s great.
ROSIE: I love it.
ANDREA: Yeah, and me too. It’s great for paint stains. Oftentimes, particularly with acrylic paint stains. But again, without knowing exactly what pigments are in there, exactly what the formula was, it’s hard for me to say what’s going on. So I would try some rubbing alcohol with Dawn Powerwash and putting it through a spin on cold, but it might not work.
CAIRA: Rubbing alcohol first, like you dab it on there.
ANDREA: Yeah. So basically the rubbing alcohol can loosen the stain, or loosen the paint, and you’ll sort of see it like we talked about with the ink. You’ll see it sort of start to bleed out, and then you can put the Dawn Powerwash on it. So I’m working on it. I’ve been able to get a number of paint stains out that way.
CAIRA: Oh, well, hopefully that works.
CHRISTINE: So while we’re on this paint topic, we have another question. This time from Rayann on the Upper West side of Manhattan. She told us about going to the Pride Parade in the West Village last summer, and how she accidentally leaned up against a freshly painted subway railing.
LISTENER: I leaned up on the railing that surrounds the entrance to the subway, which is covered in this very distinctive green paint, and in the heat and the humidity, that paint started to melt. And I now have a nice stripe of green paint on my orange cotton dress. I tried a Tide stain remover, and then I tried the Amodex stain remover that Wirecutter recommends, and then I tried 100% acetone because someone on the internet said it was a good idea, and none of those things have worked. So I’m about to throw this dress in the bin, but if you have any other ideas, I’d love to try them.
ROSIE: Someone on the internet said it was a good idea. That’s a tattoo I have on me.
ANDREA: Actually, this happened to my sister. One of the first times she visited me in New York when I had moved, she had this Supergirl shirt that she loved, and she did the same thing. She leaned on a pole and we were never able to get it out. I started suspecting that this paint must be oil-based, and I actually reached out to the MTA and they confirmed this. So oil-based paint, if you’re really serious about removing the stain, what I would do is go out. I would not recommend this every day. This would be something you really, really love and want to hold onto and go get a bottle of mineral spirits.
ROSIE: What is a mineral spirit?
ANDREA: It’s called Klean Strip, but it’s specifically for getting oil-based paints out but…
CAIRA: Clothing or just out of surfaces?
ANDREA: It’s actually for surfaces but you could, if it’s already a lost cause, you could do this, but you want to do this with a mask, with gloves, not around any young children.
CHRISTINE: Well-ventilated area.
ANDREA: Yes, exactly. With a window open.
CAIRA: So it’s like acid.
ANDREA: It’s like a byproduct of petroleum distillation.
CAIRA: Oh, cool. So like, we’ll just put…
ROSIE: Like a poison.
CHRISTINE: It’s just really stinky.
ANDREA: Yeah, it’s stinky and this would work, but it could also, it’s just a lot to play with.
CAIRA: Will there be any dress left after that?
ANDREA: Yeah, I mean, at this point, does it matter?
ROSIE: That’s right. If it’s going to go in the bin anyway.
ANDREA: Yeah, you might try it. And this actually, the MTA also said that this is what removes the paint.
CAIRA: And, just for anyone who doesn’t know, the MTA is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority – which runs new york city’s subway system.
ANDREA: Yes
ROSIE: That’s amazing concierge service. Andrea goes out to the MTA.
ANDREA: They got back to me like in 10 minutes. I was like, “Wow.”
CHRISTINE: I’m kind of shocked that the MTA responded in 10 minutes.
ANDREA: I know. I know. It’s like…
CAIRA: They were like, “Oh my God. Nobody’s asking us about the trains. Take your call. Take your call.”
ROSIE: Good luck, Rayann. Keep us posted on this.
CHRISTINE: All right, we’re going to take a quick break, and when we’re back, we will take more of your toughest stain questions. Plus, Andrea, you’re going to reveal why stains sometimes don’t show up until after you wash your clothes. We’ll be right back.
CAIRA: Welcome back. We’re here with our laundry and stain expert, Andrea Barnes, taking all of our best listener questions.
ROSIE: So Andrea, when you were here with us back in August, you told us about your harrowing method for testing the removal of blood stains on clothing, which was, I believe, buying pig’s blood in bulk from a butcher in Brooklyn and soaking it into clothes, which is absolutely horrifying.
CAIRA: Some might say dedicated, though.
ROSIE: It’s terrifying.
ANDREA: I’m never going to live that down.
ROSIE: No. Nor should you. Nor should you, to be honest. But our next question from Leah isn’t quite as dramatic as the end of Carrie, but she does have a blood stain-related issue. So one of her kids gets bloody noses and got blood on a ghost spider hoodie, which is such a bummer. She managed to get some of it out using detergent and oxygen bleach, soaking then washing in cold. But what remained were these teardrop grayish marks? Any thoughts on how she can restore the hoodie and get rid of those strange marks?
ANDREA: It’s hard to say. It sounds like the dye may have actually faded in some way, which unfortunately there’s not much you can do to fix that. But just to try and see if you could save it, I would try pre-treating leftover marks with a really good liquid laundry detergent or a stain remover with oxygen bleach. But I would go with the liquid laundry detergent first, since it sounds like she already did try oxygen bleach.
ROSIE: So again, it’s just putting a little bit of liquid laundry detergent on these stains, letting it sit for a few minutes and then washing on cold.
ANDREA: Yes, though I will say this sounds to me like the oxygen bleach may have been left on the blood stains a little bit long, and that’s actually the discoloration that is being seen.
ROSIE: And you’re like…So discoloration is a little bit like lost cause.
ANDREA: Yeah. Can’t really fix that.
ROSIE: Man. Oh, man. What about hydrogen peroxide? What is that used for?
ANDREA: So hydrogen peroxide is actually basically liquid oxygen bleach. So it’s great for blood stains. One of our favorite stain removers for removing old blood stains is Clorox 2, and the main ingredient is hydrogen peroxide. So it’s basically liquid oxygen bleach, just another non-chlorine bleach.
CAIRA: Okay. Andrea, I want to hit another category of stains. Tannins. This could be red wine, dark chocolate, coffee, and in the case of our next caller, black tea.
LISTENER: Hello, I’m Cheryl from Chicago. The stain that got the best of me was black tea on a high pile off white fleece vest. Unfortunately, the tea was hot and the item was not able to be washed right away. I tried everything from oxy to vinegar to baking soda. I soaked it overnight many, many times in different solutions. The stain did get lighter but was never fully gone. I’d love to hear your ideas.
ANDREA: So assuming that this fleece is like a synthetic polyester material, I would try either pre-treating with an oxygen bleach paste or a hydrogen peroxide-based stain remover because both of those work really well on dye stains or tannin stains. In this case, you could try either Tide Ultra OXI or Clorox 2, both of which worked really well. Since you’re not having any success with soaking, I would try directly pre-treating and see from there what happens. You can usually tell if it’s going to work because you’ll actually see the stain physically change in appearance as you apply these stain removers.
ROSIE: Even if for an older stain?
ANDREA: Yeah, sure.
CHRISTINE: Now, if this fleece that she has were not synthetic. If it were say, a wool fleece, what would the treatment be then?
ANDREA: The dry cleaner.
CHRISTINE: The dry cleaner. Because you should not use bleach on wool, right?
ANDREA: You should not. We have recommendations for hand washing, but in this case I would just take it to the dry cleaner.
CHRISTINE: Just take it to the dry cleaner. Yeah.
CHRISTINE: They’ll work their magic.
ROSIE: When you use something like a hydrogen peroxide, how do you apply it?
ANDREA: The hydrogen peroxide product, we recommend Clorox 2. The reason I say to leave this for the last resort is because it’s one of the trickier stain removers because it is so potent, you can accidentally leave it on too long and that can cause problems. So when you pre-treat with that hydrogen peroxide product, Clorox 2, it’s the same pre-treating for anything else, right? You put it directly on the stain, either with a brush or with a gloved hand, and the only difference is you need to wash it within eight minutes.
ROSIE: Oh. You set a timer?
ANDREA: Yeah, the clock is ticking.
ROSIE: Oh, dear.
ANDREA: Yeah.
ROSIE: And why would you use a specific product like Clorox 2 that has hydrogen peroxide in it versus just getting that classic brown bottle?
ANDREA: The brown bottle.
ROSIE: And pouring that right on it.
ANDREA: Because it has other things that are…
ROSIE: That are helpful.
ANDREA: Yeah, and also there are ingredients in it built to make it more fabric safe.
ROSIE: Got it.
ANDREA: So you can be…Look, I’ve directly put hydrogen peroxide on laundry before, and I still do it sometimes if that’s what I have on hand. That’s why I try to say what’s in it and then also the product.
ROSIE: Got it.
ANDREA: But in this case, I would go with Clorox 2 because it’s formulated to remove stains from clothes.
ROSIE: Got it. Erring on the side of caution.
CHRISTINE: All right, the next two questions we got are specifically about deodorant and antiperspirant stains. This is Dina from Portland, Oregon and Matt from Los Angeles.
LISTENER: I have three sons who are all in their twenties now, but this started when they were teenagers and living at home. They all wear Axe deodorant. And one of my sons, he has a white film that shows up in his armpit area after he’s worn the T-shirt several times and he ends up throwing away a lot of dark T-shirts. So I was hoping that you would have a solution so I can let him know how to save his T-shirts.
LISTENER: I am begging for your help in getting antiperspirant stains out of the armpits of my shirts. I have tried everything, pre-soaking them in laundry detergent, stain remover sprays, boiling water, soaking, baking soda and vinegar, oxygen-based stain removers, lemon juice. I’ve read that meat tenderizer might work, but I haven’t tried that because I’m more than a piece of meat. If there’s any way you can help me avoid having to buy new shirts every time this happens, I will be forever grateful. Thank you so much.
ANDREA: So it sounds like Dina and Matt have two separate issues, so I’m going to answer each one differently. Dina, I would try pre-treating those white deodorant stains with a paste of either baking soda and water or powder detergent and water. And basically you want to take a tablespoon of baking soda and slowly add water to it and make a paste and then directly apply it to the deodorant stains. I would wait about 20, 30 minutes and then scrape the powder off over like a sink and then rinse it with cold water.
That should remove the deodorant stains if that’s what the stain is. And then you would just wash it as you normally would. If that doesn’t work, it means that that’s not deodorant residue. I actually feel like you should give me a follow-up and let me know if it does work or it doesn’t, and then we can keep problem-solving from there. In the case of Matt, it sounds like you’re talking about pit stains, in which case I would pre-treat with a good liquid laundry detergent and wash on warm if the T-shirts are white, with laundry detergent that contains oxygen bleach, so a powder laundry detergent like Tide Ultra OXI.
ROSIE: Dina, I’d like to volunteer and help you problem-solve the issue of your son’s wearing Axe deodorant body spray, and that that might be a smell that’s permeating all of your laundry, in which case, you might think about a citric acid-based laundry odor rinse. Unsolicited advice.
CHRISTINE: Bringing it in around.
CHRISTINE: All right, so Andrea, last question of the day. This one is also about getting whites back to white, particularly when they are soiled over and over again. This is Olivia from Georgia.
LISTENER: My stubborn stain laundry question is, how do you get white baseball pants looking somewhat new game after game? My son’s team has them wear white, and the red clay that we have in Georgia is so difficult to get out. I am team gray, team dark jerseys to hide those stains, but unfortunately that is not what the team colors are. And so any advice you have on how to make those pants and uniforms look somewhat clean and new game after game would be very helpful. Absolutely love the show. Thank you so much.
ANDREA: Thanks, Olivia. So this is actually one of my favorite questions and I actually get this a lot, baseball pants. This is a really simple fix, soak in water with powder detergent. Powder detergent is great for getting clay and mud stains out. It doesn’t really matter what powder detergent, whatever one you can find is the one I would use.
CHRISTINE: So it doesn’t need to have oxy in it.
ANDREA: It doesn’t need to. If they’re really stubborn, you might want to get something that has oxy in it. But I would start with powder detergent.
CHRISTINE: All right, Andrea, we have had a lot of questions about oil stains, about how to get white sweater and how to remove really tough stains like ink and paint. So we’ve covered all of that, but I want to throw you one last question. Are there any other stains that people commonly ask you about that we haven’t covered?
ANDREA: Yes. I would say invisible stains.
CHRISTINE: Oh, what’s that?
ANDREA: So those are stains that show up after you’ve done your laundry. Let’s say you throw your clothes in, you check to make sure that there were no stains to pre-treat. There were none. And then when you take your T-shirt out, there is a mysterious dark mark.
CAIRA: That happens to be all the time.
ANDREA: Does it?
CAIRA: Yeah.
ANDREA: Do you drink a lot of champagne?
CAIRA: Yes. Wait, how did you know that? Does that mean I’m just too drunk to notice?
ANDREA: No. So champagne has sugar in it and the sugar can caramelize in warm water or under heat. So that’s why I was asking. That’s one of the more common “invisible stains.” Another really common one that I get a lot of questions on is actually, and I don’t know what’s in it, but the residue from blowing bubbles, like the liquid bubbles. I get a lot of parents writing in that their kids clothes look clean and then when they wash them, they come out with these weird spots. And most of them, their kids were blowing bubbles that day. I don’t know what is reacting, but whenever I’ve talked to the parents or I write back, they all wash their clothes in warm water. So I will say the best way to avoid invisible stains is to wash on cold and dry on the lowest heat setting that you can. Unless I knew what caused the invisible stain and couldn’t necessarily tell you how to get that new stain out. But soaking in laundry detergent or oxygen bleach usually works.
CHRISTINE: Are there any other things that cause invisible stains?
ANDREA: Yes. Other invisible stains tend to be sunscreen, which you throw your T-shirt in the wash, it looks fine and it can come out looking pink. These are stains that you have no way of knowing they’re going to happen. You just need to know how to solve them. Fortunately, sunscreen stains are a pretty easy fix because you know when you get them because they’re pink.
CHRISTINE: Right. Okay. So if you are wearing a lot of sunscreen, you might want to be washing your clothes.
ANDREA: Yeah.
CAIRA: Okay. Andrea, we’re going to ask you our final question, but we’re going to put a little spin on it. What is your holy grail laundry product?
ANDREA: I’m going to come out, I’m sure you’re all going to be stunned to hear that it’s Tide Ultra OXI.
CAIRA: Shocking.
ANDREA: I would be so excited if perhaps they made a fragrance-free version of it one day.
ROSIE: Andrea, thank you so much for coming back, for pulling double duty. It’s our first miniseries. We appreciate you. You rock.
ANDREA: Thanks so much for having me. I always have a nice time here.
ROSIE: Andrea Barnes, back again, two straight weeks of stains. She’s amazing.
CHRISTINE: She is our most featured guest so far. I cannot wait to have her back actually.
ROSIE: So thinking back between last week’s episode and this week’s, what are you two taking away? There was a lot of information packed in here. A lot of good nuggets.
CAIRA: Yeah. It’s hard to even choose just a few, but mine will definitely be invisible stains. So now I know next time I have a boozy brunch or if I’m just generally around champagne or sunscreen or bubbles, then I should probably take a moment to just wash the clothes and let them air dry to see if there are any stains before I end up baking the stain in and making the problem worse.
ROSIE: How often are you around bubbles? Are you taking your bubble wand out in the world like on the subway?
CAIRA: And then putting it on my sunscreen and then making myself a mimosa.
ROSIE: Do you go to a lot of kids’ birthday parties?
CHRISTINE: It sounds like a morning rave to me. Is that what it is?
CAIRA: That’s the thing. I live near Bushwick.
ROSIE: My takeaway is stain removal is an art. It’s not necessarily a science, although there is science and chemistry involved. But one of the things to remember is that it might take a multiple step approach to get out any given stain. It might take multiple times soaking, putting stain remover on, washes. So try not to get too discouraged if it doesn’t come out the first time, it might need another again, as they say. And then my other takeaway is remember, if you’re going to soak a garment in oxygen bleach of any kind, be sure to read and follow the instructions because some of them like straight up OxiClean need to be dissolved entirely in warm water before you dunk your garment in for the soak. Some of them don’t, but some of them do. So just read and kind of follow along.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, always good to read the instructions. Never going to hurt.
ROSIE: And coming from me, that’s a big deal.
CHRISTINE: There were a lot of great tips in this episode, but the thing that was completely new to me is laundry rinse, using laundry rinse for smells.
ROSIE: Yeah, hadn’t heard of that either.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. This Downy Rinse and Refresh. So the next time I am kind of challenged with something like an odor that won’t come out, I think I’m going to try that because it seems pretty handy.
ROSIE: What’s cool about that too is it pulls double duty cleaning your drier.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I like that. It cleans your machine.
CAIRA: So nice.
ROSIE: Well, if you want to find out more about any of Andrea’s reporting, about Wirecutter’s coverage or if you want to check out the products that we recommended today, you can go to our website or find a link in the show notes as always. And if you feel so inclined, give The Wirecutter Show a follow wherever you like to listen to podcasts so you don’t miss an episode. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. That’s it for us. Talk to you soon.
CHRISTINE: See you. Bye.
ROSIE: Peace.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today’s episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop and Diane Wong. Wirecutter’s Deputy Publisher and General Manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s Editor-in-Chief.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.
Who are these parents whose main concern is invisible stains? All of the stains I deal with, they’re not invisible.
