During the winter I walk through that messy mixture of slush, mud, salt and road sand that leaves your clothes covered with splash spots. I just cannot get the stains out of my beige and khaki pants, no matter what stain treating products I use or how much I bleach them. What is there that I can use to get the stains out?

Since I haven't had to deal with this problem in California, I'll give you some suggestions to try based on similar problems:

It would seem that the removal difficulty should be tied to the type of fiber/color and composition of the slush. My guess is that all the salt should wash out and any remaining problem is probably due to the dirt, mud, and sand. These generally are small, fine particles that can "seep" into porous fibers like cotton and when dried become very difficult to extract. Synthetic fibers like polyester tend to be easier to clean since they are round and don't have open spaces for the particles to get trapped. The lighter the garment color, the more obvious any remaining soil/stain becomes.

So a couple of things you may want to try;

• After exposure and before they dry out, try a presoak using a good powder detergent (add 1/3 cup to a couple of gallons of warm water—and make sure to get all the powder dissolved before adding the clothes. Soak the items for 30 minutes to 1 hour, then wash in the warmest water recommended on the care label). Powder detergents have ingredients called builders that are useful in softening water and can help "pull" small particles out of the fibers, thus keeping them suspended so they don't redeposit back onto the clothes. You might also make a paste of the powder and water and rub it into the soiled spot(s) before soaking. Always check a hidden area like cuff or seam with the paste before using to insure it won't damage the color (apply paste; let sit 2-3 minutes; rinse and look for any change in appearance).


• If the items have dried, try re-wetting them with cool water before they are washed. You might try using a soft bristle brush to work in some liquid detergent into the spots before washing. Again the warmer the wash water the better the overall cleaning/removal.


• Consider using the appropriate bleach along with the detergent. I would need to find out if these items can safely be bleached. I recommend consumers do the quick Bleachability Test (2 tspn Clorox^® Regular-Bleach in 1/4 cup water; apply a drop on a hidden area like an inside seam, hemline or cuff; wait 1 minute and then blot with towel); no color change means it is safe to use bleach on the item. Any color change could also show you the amount of change in color that likely will occur if you proceed with the liquid bleach usage. Wash immediately in hot water using detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox^® Regular-Bleach (or ½ cup Concentrated Clorox Bleach). Check before drying to insure complete removal. It might require multiple treatments to get the desired result.

If you can't bleach the items, then try washing in the hottest water recommended on the care labels using detergent and an oxygen bleach like our Clorox2^® Stain Fighter and Color Booster. Finally, always check for success before drying. Especially in this case, it might require multiple treatments to get the desired result. Also, a simple procedure and homemade antidote often rids vehicle carpeting of road-salt stains:

1. Brush away snow and slush. Vacuum remaining residue.


2. If stains remain, remove with a carefully applied saltwater solution: 1 cup of table salt to 1 quart of water.


3. Use a soft bristle brush or cloth to work the salt solution into the stained area. Brush outward from the stain's center to avoid leaving a ring in the carpeting.


4. With stain removed, shampoo the stain area and adjacent carpeting.

How do I get a stubborn sticker off my shirt?

This question reminds me of the time I wore a nice rain jacket to a skating birthday party and the host slapped a sticker on it. When I pulled the sticker off, the finish on the jacket went with it! I would try soaking the shirt with liquid Clorox 2^® Stain Fighter & Color Booster: add a capful to 2 gallons of water, and fully submerge the shirt for up to an hour if it is colored, or overnight if it is white. This should dissolve the adhesive that is holding the sticker. If it is only partially removed, then you may need to try Goo Gone^® or De-Solve-it^®, which you can find at hardware stores. Just be sure to test the shirt for colorfastness.

I am potty training and my children seem to have accidents. It can stink pretty bad and is hard to get the smell out in the laundry. It's not just in the underwear but in the blue jeans or pants they are wearing as well. I don't have an issue bleaching the underwear, but obviously don't want to bleach jeans or colored pants. What can I do to get rid of the smell?

Oh the memories… I noticed from your question that you said you are potty training children, so it sounds like you may have twins—it was a big enough challenge for me training one child at a time! I have some good news for you—more often than not, denim blue jeans can be safely laundered with Clorox^® Regular-Bleach. You can use the bleachability test to check first. Just add 2 teaspoons Clorox^® Regular-Bleach (or if you are using New Concentrated Clorox^® Regular-Bleach use 1 ½ teaspoons bleach) to ¼ cup water and apply a drop of that solution to a hidden part of the blue jeans (like inside the pocket facing, or the inside hem). Wait one minute then blot dry—no color change means you can safely bleach the blue jeans! You may also find that if the jeans fade slightly where the drop of test solution was applied, the color change is minimal and something you can live with. You can also use this test to confirm bleachability of the other colored pants—just don’t bother testing leggings or other pants that have spandex in them (check the care label) since spandex will yellow when bleached. Surprisingly, khaki pants are also often bleachable, just be sure to check first because it varies from brand to brand.

For pants that can’t be safely laundered with Clorox Regular-Bleach, unfortunately there isn’t an alternative product that sanitizes any and all colored laundry. To get the pants as clean as possible, first rinse away the solids prior to laundering. Select a hot wash temperature, and be sure to add the recommended amount of a good detergent. Adding Clorox2^® Stain Fighter and Color Booster along with your detergent will further improve cleaning. Finally, consider washing the pants alone to limit germ transfer to other items in the load. You may also want to try presoaking with Clorox2^®—fill the cap to line 1 and add to 2 gallons hot water. After rinsing away any solids, fully submerge the pants in the soaking solution and let soak for 1 hour. Drain the soaking solution, and then wash in hot water using detergent and Clorox2^®.

Of course you can also limit your kids to wearing only bleachable pants until they are potty trained!

How can I remove pine tar from my cotton sweatshirt?

Pitch, tree sap, pine tar—whatever you call it, this is a very challenging stain to get out. Try treating the stain directly with DeSolvIt or Goo Gone, which you can find at hardware stores. You should first test for colorfastness (apply a drop to a hidden part of the garments, rinse, and blot dry) if you want to be sure the product is safe for the sweatshirt. If there is no color change, rub a little into the sap/pitch and then wash with detergent in the hottest water allowed (check the care label). Allow to air dry and then check for success. You may need to repeat the treatment to remove the stain fully, so it's very important to keep the item out of a hot dryer to avoid heat-setting any residual stain that would otherwise come out with a second treatment. If you want to lengthen the time you pre-treat the stains before washing, you may want to check colorfastness again with a longer contact time—just don’t let the product dry on the fabric. Pine tar is difficult to remove but it is worth a shot!

I am washing a nylon American flag (Yes, washing the flag is OK!). The white stripes are a bit gray.  Is it safe to use Clorox2^® for this? Also, should I wash in hot, warm or cold water?

What an interesting project! Yes, you can use Clorox2^® to whiten the stripes on your flag—an important consideration is to prevent the red (or blue, as well) from bleeding onto the white stripes and stars while the flag is washing or soaking and drying. Here’s how I would proceed:

1.   Wash the flag using a gentle cycle with warm water and detergent + Clorox2^® Stain Fighter and Color Booster.

2.   Periodically check during the wash cycle to see if the red stripes are discharging color into the wash cycle. This can happen pretty easily when colored fabric is sewn onto white fabric and the dye wasn’t properly fixed.  If the water is turning red, immediately stop the wash cycle and rinse the flag.

3.   Air dry the flag—just be sure it can dry quickly. That’s because your damp flag may still be at risk of the colored sections bleeding into the white parts.  It's hard to predict--nylon shouldn't have this problem but it's good to be cautious.

If the stripes don’t whiten as much as you’d like, you could try a little more aggressive approach with hotter water. Keep in mind that this is more likely to cause the colored stripes to bleed--if you saw any color coming off with the warm water wash then don't increase the water temperature. But if your flag doesn’t bleed, then you could try presoaking with Clorox2^®—add a capful to 2 gallons of hot water and fully submerge the flag for 1 hour. Drain the soaking solution, and then wash as described above using hot water. I would actually recommend against pretreating the stripes with undiluted product because you need to limit the contact time to 3-5 minutes, and with such a large area to treat there is a good chance the product will stay on the fabric too long, leaving behind a permanent blue spot.

I just bought new dark towels and they turned blotchy and orange after the first wash. I only used detergent and fabric softener. What could have happened?

What an unfortunate situation! I can’t be sure what went wrong, but I’d like to address a few possibilities and tips about washing towels to make sure this does not happen in the future.

First, it's important to note that towels should not be washed with fabric softener. The thin coating that softener leaves behind to impart a softer hand feel also makes the yarn loops on towels less absorbent.  It's hard to say whether or not softener would also negatively interact with the dye on the towels—I actually wouldn't expect that, but it is always possible.

Second, I am curious about your clothes washer. Does your machine use dispensers to add the laundry products? And does it use a spray rinse? The splotches you describe could make sense if softener was sprayed onto the fabric. You could always test a little softener on the undamaged section of the towels to see if it causes discoloration. You may also want to test the detergent, especially if it is a powdered formulation that includes a bleach activator (check the label) and the clothes washer has a spray wash feature.

One other possibility is that the bleach dispenser on the clothes washer could have malfunctioned and dispensed left over bleach from the previous cycle into your dark load. You can check this too by applying a drop of a solution of 2 teaspoons bleach added to 1/4 cup water and see what type of color change you get. If that's the case, you may need to have a technician look at the clothes washer to be sure it is functioning properly.

I wouldn't let the towel manufacturer off the hook, either—it could be the towels were actually mistakes—that is, the original production color was not what the manufacturer wanted—and they were subsequently overdyed a darker color that is not very color fast. Since the towels are brand new, hopefully you can return them or exchange them.

I just noticed foundation all over my white dress. It has been there for more than a month. Can I still remove it?

Make-up stains typically have both a color and an oily component, and it’s good to work on the oily component first by pretreating stains with a little liquid dishwashing detergent (like Dawn). Apply a little directly to the stain and rub it in. Wait 5 minutes, and then wash the dress depending on the fiber content (check the care label) using one of the following methods:

1. For white bleachable fabric (avoid bleaching wool, silk, mohair, leather, and spandex), wash in hot water with detergent and  ¾ cup Clorox^® Regular-Bleach. Air dry the dress and check for success—you want to keep the dress out of the dryer so you don’t heat set heavy make-up stains that would come all the way out with a second treatment.


2. If your dress contains any spandex:  wash in hot water with detergent and Clorox2 Stain Fighter and Color Booster. Air dry and check for success—repeat the treatment if necessary for complete removal.

It’s hard to give generic advice without knowing more about the dress. I would hate to find out the white dress you are asking about is a silk wedding dress—for that I would recommend dry cleaning. If this is the case, when you take the dress to the cleaners show them the makeup stain so they can pretreat it.

I have a stain on my white shirt. Since it is just one shirt, how can I use Clorox to take out the stain without having to run a load of laundry?

This is a great question--a lot of times when people have a small stain on a white item, they make the mistake of dabbing a little undiluted bleach directly onto the stain--please don't do this! Bleach should always be diluted first before use, otherwise a permanent yellow stain (and eventually a hole) will be left behind where the full-strength bleach was applied to the fabric. To safely use Clorox^® Regular-Bleach to remove the stain on your shirt, try soaking the shirt in a solution of 1/4 cup Clorox^® Regular-Bleach per gallon of water (or if you are using new Concentrated Clorox^® Regular-Bleach, 3 tablespoons bleach per gallon of water). Fully submerge the shirt for 5 minutes, and then rinse and air dry.

Something else to consider is what type of stain you are trying to remove. The bleach soak works great for stains like coffee, ball point pen, and red wine, but for an oily food stain, prior to the bleach soak you should pretreat the stain with a little liquid dishwashing detergent. Apply a little to the stain and rub in, wait 5 minutes, and then rinse the stain. This helps break up the oil, making it easier for the bleach to completely remove the stain.

Is there a good way to get rid of underarm yellowing or do I just need to throw the shirt away? Is there any way to prevent that?

Underarm stains are highly individualized. Each person’s body chemistry, combined with her choice of deodorant, make for a truly unique stain. Pre-treating the stain by applying a little liquid laundry detergent directly to the arm pit area every time you wash a shirt is a great way to keep these stains under control. Applying Clorox^® Bleach Pen Gel immediately before washing in detergent + ¾ cup Clorox^® Regular-Bleach is also a great way to get the stains out. For some men and women, switching to a different brand of antiperspirant and starting over with new t-shirts, may be what it takes to get these stains under control. It really does vary from person to person!

What causes "ring around the collar"? How does one prevent/get rid of it?

Ring around the collar is a combination of sweat and body soil that rubs off the neck and onto the inside collar of a shirt, leaving that telltale dark line. On a white dress shirt, pre-treating is key, and we have a great product that makes this easy and convenient—Clorox^® Bleach Pen Gel. It has the same active as Clorox^® Regular-Bleach, but at a lower level, so it’s safe to apply directly to bleachable white fabrics. Apply a little gel directly to the stain, gently rub it in with the soft scrubber tip, and then wash the shirt immediately in hot water using detergent + ¾ cup Clorox^® Regular-Bleach. You can prevent the stain from building up by treating it each time you wash the shirt, and it is also good to only wear a shirt once before washing.