Q: How would you suggest I remove tough crude oil stains / smells from 100% cotton colored work shirts? Having a real solution to this question would be very beneficial to know for our Crude Oil Drivers & their families.

A: Boy, this a tough question, but one my sister in Texas has asked about before. The key is the crude oil definitely needs a good solubilizer/solvent to dissolve the oil stains, preferably before they are wet from the wash water. The more that's removed, the more the odor problem should be reduced.

The other potential issue is COLORED cotton. This means that any product should be checked for "compatibility" with the dyes and direct application will not cause dye removal/fading in the treated areas. Use our modified Bleachability Test:

• Apply a drop on a hidden color section area like inside seam, hemline or cuff.


• Wait 1 minute, rinse and then blot with towel.


• If no color change, it means it is safe to use the product on the item.

Here are some additional suggestions:

• Since grease and water don't mix, consider pretreating first. Apply a good liquid laundry detergent, like Liquid Tide, or even dishwashing detergent, like Dawn, or degreaser, like Stanley or Goo Gone. Rub into the stain and let sit 3-5 minutes. This helps solubilize the grease/oil/fluids and jumpstarts removal. The new 2X liquid detergents are more concentrated and so they probably will work well here. Hopefully, the stains are localized and not too big an area, which make pretreating much more labor intensive.


• Always wash in the HOTTEST water recommended on the care label. The hotter the water the better the removal.


• I would wash these items separate from other laundered items to eliminate the possibility of transfer/re-deposition onto other family member's clothes.


• Use at least the recommended amount of detergent, maybe a little extra. Remember you are trying to "pull" the grease/oil off the fabric and once it's removed you want it to stay in the wash water and NOT redeposit back onto the clothes. This is one of the jobs of the surfactants in these detergents. So don't scrimp!


• I might be tempted to extend the wash cycle time. With a top-loading washer, you can wait 6-8 minutes into the cycle, stop the washer and spin the dial back to start for another full 10-12 minutes.


• Finally, check for success at the end of the washcycle BEFORE the items go into the dryer. If not satisfactorily removed, you can retreat them. Put them in the dryer and you may be driving the oils into the fibers, which makes removal in the future very difficult/impossible.


• If this doesn't work, then the other alternative would be commercial dry cleaner where they use solvents as the basis for there cleaning.

Q: Is there a way to remove flower pollen stains from whites (yellow powder dust from Star Gazer Lillies)?

A: The best advice I've seen is to cut out the stamens before bringing the flowers into the house. Or, try using scotch tape to remove the pollen while dry. Any liquid/treatment only tends to make it worse. Direct sunlight also is reported to "bleach" out the spot.

Since it is white, I assume it's OK to use bleach. If so, try either washing in hot water with detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach. Or, pretreat with Clorox® Bleach Pen Gel before washing. Sometimes this doesn't solve the problem and all you are left with is a trip to the dry cleaners to ask if they can get it out. Hope this helps!

Q: I used Clorox Bleach on some new white men's briefs. They turned yellow. I have never had this to happen before. Do you know what may have caused this?

A: It would have been helpful if you indicated how the bleach was used to narrow down the possibilities for you, and whether the yellowing was spotted or more uniform Here's my best guesses.

First, I NEVER recommend using Clorox® Regular-Bleach full-strength on any item or surface. Hopefully you did not do this treating a specific area/stain. It should always be diluted because it is so strong. If unrinsed, it can actually cause little holes in the garment. That can happen if there is accidental liquid bleach spillage and someone brushes against the washer.

If you touched up a stained area, you could have destroyed the fabric whiteners in that area, which would be seen as a yellow spot. Not much you can do for this problem, but repeated washing may lessen the yellow appearance.

The most likely culprit is poor water quality with metals (iron or manganese) in the water or pipes. Summer is notorious for sudden changes in water quality and is more pronounced in rural or well water areas. These react with the sodium hypochlorite active in Clorox bleach, forming more colored materials that deposit on the clothes. After drying, the clothes are essentially dyed with the colored material. If all the items have a uniform discoloration, then this is the most likely cause.

Also, I assume this product did NOT have polyacrylate to help complex the metals. You may need to start using separate products to treat the wash water supply – here, we use IronOut – as sometimes the hot water heater can also have build-up. For the clothes, a separate product can be used to strip the discoloration away.

Greetings Stainers, Dr. Laundry here with a question for you. When was the last time you used bleach in the laundry? If it’s been a while, there’s a good chance your washing machine is emitting a musty or stale odor, especially if you have a High-Efficiency machine.

As many of you may have already experienced, a common problem with some HE machines is the build-up of odor-causing residues, which can leave your laundry smelling much less than fresh. After a few wash cycles, water that has not completely drained out of your HE machine can be left behind, resulting in an ideal location for creating bad (not-so-pleasant) odors.

One simple solution – do one white load a week with Clorox® Plus™ High Efficiency Bleach, which is specially formulated for HE machines and is effective in helping eliminate those bad odors. Think of it as mouthwash for your HE washing machine. You'll like the extra thickness that makes it easy to pour into those small HE dispensers plus it has special ingredients to give you the whitest whites and it helps protect the internal metal parts of your expensive HE washer from further damage. WOW!! That's a lot of great reasons for you to start using Clorox® Plus™ High Efficiency Bleach.

Q: Is it possible to get Silicone stains off from denim and cotton?

A: It would be helpful to know the source of the silicone. I worked on ArmorAll and we used a lot of silicone for our protectant and tire products. The important thing here is to use a good product with lots of surfactants like liquid detergent to pretreat prior to washing (apply; rub into stain; wait 5-10 minutes) in HOT water using liquid detergent.

The good news is these are cotton fabrics here rather than a poly/cotton blend, which would hold the silicone much more tightly than cotton.

Don't forget to check for success before drying as it will make any un-removed silicone much more difficult/impossible to remove. If there is still silicone remaining you can retreat fabrics again.

Q: How do I remove perspiration stains from cotton and mixed blend shirts?

A: I hear this question a lot – how do I get rid of the dreaded "pit" stains. The stain is simply a build-up of the underarm deodorant/antiperspirant that has not been removed wash-after-wash-after-wash. It can get almost "crunchy" and that is uncomfortable. This can be complicated by the choice of antiperspirant. Aluminum-based ones are usually reported as the worst for changing colors, and there also seems to be some impact of diet in producing colored components.

Think about what has happened. You take a solid underarm product and apply it to a warm body where it melts. Now, it can more easily transfer to anything that the underarm touches (T-shirt, etc). Add to this the volume of liquid (sweat) that acts as a collection and transfer agent for anything it has collected from the armpit (deodorant, salt, bacteria, body oil, etc) and you can better understand how this generates such a problem.

So what can we do?? For the current problem, you need to do something to "re-melt" the build-up. I have seen mention of a couple of approaches:

• One says to use boiling water poured directly over/through the stained area (be careful of spillage).


• Then, follow with a paste of (1:1:1 – baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and water), which is applied after the hot water and rubbed (probably should wear rubber gloves here to protect your hands from the heat) aggressively into the stain.


• Rinse again with hot water. It may take more than one application, but this definitely should do the trick.


• It may also require a good pretreatment with a liquid detergent or solvent.


• Remember to wash in the hottest water recommended on the care label and use 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular- Bleach to help kill the odor-causing bacteria.

This should work for both the cotton and mixed blend shirts.

Or the easy solution is simply cut out the affected area and he has a new set of muscle shirts (just kidding!)

For the future, I would check the brand of antiperspirant and see if you can find one without aluminum active. Also if new t-shirts are purchased, you might try applying the liquid detergent to the pit area when they are first removed or at least before washing to keep the build-up under control. Of course, ALWAYS wash in hot water with detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach.

Q: My husband likes to use a white washcloth in the shower on a daily basis. After a few launderings, the washcloth soon turns gray. I periodically bleach the cloths in hot water and Clorox Bleach, but, after a time, this no longer works. What is the best way to keep these washcloths looking clean and bright longer?

A: First off, make sure you’re using a good detergent. If you have hard water, you might consider moving to a powdered detergent. This type of detergent contains ingredients called builders that make the water softer when faced with complex water. Interestingly, better cleaning happens in soft water. Also, you might want to add a little extra detergent to make sure you're in a good cleaning environment. This helps if you have a heavy soil load. It also helps prevent re-deposition of removed soil back onto the "cleaned" cloth.

Here are a few additional suggestions to consider:

• Don't over-pack the washer – too much laundry means the detergent can't get to all the stains/soils to remove them.


• ALWAYS wash whites in HOT water. The hotter the water the better the removal.
  
• I am a strong believer in adding bleach to EVERY white load − Wash EVERY white load in hot water with detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular- Bleach to help finish the job.

Q: I made the mistake of washing a new red shirt with my other shirts with light colors. The red colored shirt bled and the light colored shirts have red stains all over. Could you help me get the stains off?

A: I probably don't have much good news for you. New dark colors are notorious for bleeding for a few washes and should always be washed with similar dark colors. That's why I always recommend sorting at least whites, lights and darks to avoid the problem in the future.

Depending on how extensive the red spots are and the type of fibers (cotton, poly/cotton, etc) of the remaining shirts, I would try the following:

To have a better chance at red dye removal you will need to kick it up a notch on the bleach scale hopefully to liquid bleach like Clorox® Regular-Bleach. So we need to know if the lighter colored items can stand to be bleached.

• Just do the simple Bleachability Test on any colored portion in a hidden part of the shirts (2 tsp liquid Clorox® Regular-Bleach in 1/4 cup water; apply a drop on a hidden color section area like 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).


• Then follow the recommended presoak procedure (1/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach in gallon of warm water for 5-10 minutes before laundering). Wash in the hottest water recommended on the care label with detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach


• If the colors are not bleachable, then I would presoaking/applying Liquid Clorox2® for Colors Color Safe Bleach (Apply; rub in; wait ~ 5 minutes; then wash immediately with detergent and recommended amount of Liquid Clorox2® for Colors Color Safe Bleach


• Check for success and retreat if needed BEFORE drying
  Also remember that washing in hotter water will SLOWLY remove additional dye over time; this will usually be barely perceptible wash-to-wash.

Q: I had a stain on a 100% cotton golf shirt. It had been washed a few times when I finally saw the stain. I took a Q-tip and dipped it into Clorox Bleach and rubbed it on the stain. I have done this before on white clothing and the stain came right out. This time, everywhere I used the bleach on the shirt, it turned yellow. Unless I can get these stains out, it's ruined. Please help!

A: First, I NEVER recommend using Clorox® Regular-Bleach full-strength on any item or surface. It should always be diluted because it is so strong and if unrinsed, can actually cause little holes in the garment. That's what happens when there is accidental liquid bleach spillage while pouring into the machine and someone brushes against the washer. Next time they pick up the garment it either has "bleached out" the colors and/or small holes are present.
I suspect that you have bleached some of the dye out of the shirt and the yellow spots are the result. Unfortunately, this is irreversible.

In the future, if you notice a stain after drying, I would first try pretreating it with liquid detergent (apply; rub in; let set 3-5 minutes before washing) and then immediately wash in the hottest water recommended on the care label using detergent and either 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach, if white or Liquid Clorox2® for Colors Color Safe Bleach, if colored. Always check for success after washing and retreat the item if needed before drying.

Q: My husband wears cotton white T-shirts. I use Clorox in hot water each time I launder them and rinse them twice. They are fairly new (Christmas) and they have developed stiffness in the under arms. He has asked me to buy him new ones. But that is not going to resolve the problem. What can I do? Please help.

A: I hear this question a lot; how do I get rid of the dreaded "pit" stains. The stiffness is simply a build-up of the underarm deodorant/antiperspirant that has not been removed wash-after-wash-after-wash. It can get almost "crunchy" and that is uncomfortable. This can be complicated by the choice of antiperspirant, with aluminum-based ones usually reported as worse for changing colors, and there also seems to be some impact of diet in producing colored components.

Think about what has happened. You take a solid underarm product and apply it to a warm body where it melts. Now, it can more easily transfer to anything that the underarm touches (T-shirt, etc). Add to this the volume of liquid (sweat) that acts as a collection and transfer agent for anything it has collected from the armpit (deodorant, salt, bacteria, body oil, etc) and you can better understand how this generates such a problem.

So what can we do? For the current problem, you need to do something to "re-melt" the build-up. I have seen mention of a couple of approaches: One says to use boiling water poured directly over/through the stained area (be careful of spillage). Then, follow with a paste of 1:1:1 baking soda: hydrogen peroxide: water which is applied after the hot water and rubbed (probably should wear rubber gloves hereto protect your hands from the heat) aggressively into the stain. Rinse again with hot water. It may take more than one application, but this definitely should do the trick. It may also require a good pretreatment with a liquid detergent or solvent. Remember to wash in the hottest water recommended on the care label and use 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular-Bleach to help kill the odor-causing bacteria. Or the easy solution is simply cut out the affected area and he has a new set of muscle shirts.

For the future, I would check the brand of antiperspirant and see if you can find one without aluminum active. Also if new t-shirts are purchased, you might try applying the liquid detergent to the pit area when they are first removed or at least before washing to keep the build-up under control. Of course, ALWAYS wash in hot water with detergent and 3/4 cup Clorox® Regular- Bleach.