My mother is the queen of stain removal. Seriously, there isn’t a stain out there that hasn’t met its match with my mother. I suppose, doing laundry for six people, including four guys, for nearly 20 years will get you the experience needed to become a member of stain removal royalty.
Those who doubted my mother’s stain removal status were silenced shortly after I got into a serious car accident. About a decade ago, my car got t-boned and I suffered a head injury that required 28 stitches and subsequent plastic surgery. The night of my accident I was wearing a blue and white Esprit sundress. Needless to say, by the time I got to the hospital you could barely tell the garment’s natural color. The dress was drenched in blood. The stains were so bad you could hardly recognize that it had a mini floral pattern. It was one of my very favorite articles of clothing and I was devastated when I saw it in a plastic hospital bag. I had all but written it off, but two days into my recovery period, here comes my mom holding up my pretty sundress in pristine condition. The dress recovered from the accident better than I did.
When I asked my mom how she was able to restore my dress to its original color, she replied: “Patience.” I figured she was going to tell me that she whipped up a magical solution by mixing commercial stain removers, such as Goo Gone, Shout, and OxiClean, which are known for removing stubborn stains from garments. As it turns out, she let the dress soak in diluted Shout overnight before washing it in double the recommended amount of OxiClean. However, instead of letting the dress go through the normal wash cycles in her machine, my mom stopped it during the soak cycle and let the dress sit in the OxiClean, Tide and water combo overnight.
In the case of the bloodied cotton sundress, the stain remover combo worked. It may or may not work for you. Though, I will add that regardless of what type of commercial stain remover you use, it is a good idea to test it out on a swatch of fabric before you saturate your favorite dress in it.