Valentine Mishap: How To Get an Oil Stain Out of a Shirt
- Image via Wikipedia
I was fortunate enough that the church my family attends decided to put on a nice, romantic family night for Valentine’s Day. We dressed up a bit, not too fancy, but I did put on a rather nice shirt. We arrived at the building and found the large activity hall to be decorated with lights, table cloths and fancy-ish place settings. Best part, they had a kids table where the kids could sit, eat, and color/play.
It hadn’t been but 10 minutes into the dinner that I dripped olive oil on the front of my shirt. My wife and her eagle eyes for anything fashionably amiss pointed it out almost immediately. “Not a problem, I’ll just throw it in the wash when I get home.” She chuckled and then informed me that oil doesn’t come out in the wash and I was probably doomed to have my shirt stained for the remainder of the shirts life.
What are My Options?
With stained clothing, there are only a few options:
- I can use it for something else, not a shirt. This would mean I would be out one shirt from my wardrobe.
- I could accept the stain, and wear the shirt around the house only. This was a nice shirt and even with the stain, too fancy for “just kicking it.”
- I could take it to the dry cleaners. It would cost about 4 dollars, which would be worth it compared to a new shirt… but there has to be a better way.
- I could try and get the stain out myself!
Getting it Clean!
Over the years I have collected a few books on frugal living and cutting costs. One book I found at an estate sale for $.50 was,Haley’s Cleaning Hints
).
I ran up to the bathroom and grab the rubbing alcohol and pour a bit on the stain, I also use a little hand soap and rinse out the spot. Now there was a big wet spot and I decided to let the shirt air dry incase the stain was still there. I didn’t want to set the stain by using a blow dryer.
When the water dried… the stain was gone!
A little rubbing alcohol and a little hand soap removed an olive oil stain from my shirt! Cost me an estimated $.02… so saved me about $3.98, plus time and all the hassle of dealing with a cleaner!
I would love to hear any tips you have on getting stains out of clothing… because I’m notorious for getting stuff all over me!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e92dbf80-44e6-4ac7-900f-5f00564df4b0)
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
There’s an awesome trick that works even better! It’s lacquer thinner. You have to be careful with it and you need to follow some careful steps, but it works better than any other method I’ve found. ESPECIALLY if the oil is dried.
There’s a post on it over here with more info:
One of the tricks I know about (especially if the oil has dried on if the clothes have gone through the dryer)… is to use lacquer thinners. It works every time because it is close to the same solvent that dry cleaners use.
There’s a whole page that talks about it here, and I have tried it and I can say it does work and costs just pennies:
http://www.everylastpenny.com/Household_Expenses/Save_On_Dry_Cleaning_-_Clean_Oil_Spots_From_Your_Clothes.html