Nothing spoils Sunday brunch faster than having a pound of butter fall onto your lap. Okay, it wasn’t an entire pound of butter, but last week my 6-year-old accidently dumped two mounds of butter that were carefully placed on her Perkins’ pancakes onto my new khakis.
Fortunately, getting the half-melted greasy butter blobs off my pants wasn’t too hard. As with any stain, the best line of defense is quick thinking. The faster you can treat the stain the better the chance you have of returning your garments to their original stain-free appearance.
In my case I blotted off the excess melted butter, though if the butter is dry you could easily scrape it off with dull knife or spoon. Next, I pretreated the stain with Shout Liquid Laundry Stain Remover. The bottle recommends you let the product sit for a few minutes prior to washing. I let it sit for about five minutes before putting the pants into the washing machine. However, before I threw it in, I blotted the stained area. Shout’s bottle doesn’t say to do so, but I wanted to make sure that the stain remover was working. In cases when Shout doesn’t immediately start working I place the soiled item stain side down on an absorbent towel and apply liquid laundry detergent through the back of the stain and blot with another clean towel, and then launder per normal.
If you use powder laundry detergent, and want to use the aforementioned technique, then you need to make a paste from the dry laundry soap and some water and apply it directly to the grease stain. Let it sit for half an hour before placing it in the washing machine and laundering as usual.
In the end, my khakis came out stain-free, but I know the success in removing the grease stain can be attributed to how quickly we got home from the restaurant. I didn’t waste any time getting into the house and pretreating the stain.