Sodium percarbonate (nappy bleach) or lemon juice in your wash will help keep your whites white. Not quite as eco-friendly or effective as drying your washing outside in the sun, but with British winters, what can one do?
Yellow perspiration stains come out by soaking the item in white vinegar overnight.
Vinegar mixed 50:50 with cold water applied for 30 minutes and then scrubbed before washing will get rid of grass stains.
Fat stains come out when you smear a paste of bicarbonate of soda over the stain for 30 minutes and then wash as normal. Another treatment to try is cornflour when the stain is still greasy. The paste also works on red wine stains, if left overnight.
Lipstick – use playdoh or a ball of squidged white bread to absorb the lip prints.
Freeze chewing gum on clothes in the freezer, and then whack it and it will crumble away. Likewise with crayon marks, although scraping it away works better than Hulk Smash.
Candle wax is drawn out of fabric by brown paper when ironed.
Blood can be removed by soaking in cold, salty water before washing. Alternatively, hot water with sodium carbonate decahydrate (soda crystals) works too, although technically, soda is a nasty chemical. This hot water & soda works on tea and coffee stains too.
Cold water and sodium bicarbonate or soda crystals stops stains on muddy items, before normal washing.
You can remove biro from clothes by soaking the stain in cow’s milk for 3 hours before washing.
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