Dear Frugal Upstate,
Photo by Florence Crayne
I’ve been using and love your Homemade Laundry Soap, but it’s got me wondering. . . do you have a frugal homemade laundry stain remover? My kids (and frankly my husband) are hard on clothes.
Alice
Well Alice, here are a few inexpensive options you can use to deal with stains. Remember, I am not a fabric or stain expert, and you have to use any method at your own risk:
1. Use Fels Naptha, Octagon or another “Laundry” bar soap as a stain pretreatment.
Many people will just take a bar of a true laundry soap such as Fels Naptha, wet it and rub it into the stain. Let it sit for a few minutes then toss it in the laundry as usual.
2. Pretreat with Tide (or another product you feel really works well).
At one of the conferences I attended I had a really long, really interesting talk with one of the gentleman from a large name brand detergent company you would recognize. I found it very interesting that he said yes, Tide really does get out the tough stains. . . but that most other detergents (like the brand he represented) worked just as well for normal laundry dirt.
My takeaway? For 90% of the jobs the inexpensive stuff (or homemade!) is fine, but if you’ve got a really really tough stain you might want to try the good stuff. So maybe, in the long run, it’s worth it to buy something like Tide, but to keep it ONLY as a stain pretreater-just rub a little bit of the liquid into the stain and give it time to work, then use the homemade detergent for the entire load.
3. Use a Homemade Stain Soak
I found the recipe for this stain soak years ago in my copy of The Complete Tightwad Gazette
1 C Powdered Cascade (or other plain powdered dishwasher detergent)
1 C Clorox II
5 Gallons very hot tap water
Mix it together and then soak the stained articles overnight. Do not use on delicate fabrics or fabrics that are not color safe.
4. Ignore the stain.
Yeah, this is actually a method! An item can have a stain and be completely clean. I don’t bother trying to get the stains out of the bottoms of my kids socks (they INSIST on wearing socks outside while I’m not looking) or my washcloths for the kitchen sink.
Personally, I like the idea of kids having “play clothes” and “school clothes” so that when they come home (and are more likely to be outside getting filthy) they wear clothes that are either already stained or that I don’t care if they get stained. I’m working on implementing that here-maybe it’s something that would help you?
So what are some of your favorite frugal stain strategies?
Another good method: the sun. Lots of stains can be bleached out naturally by leaving the stain out in the full sun for the day. Works better for “organic” stains. Not so much for dyes and inks, etc.
Very true. My son’s cloth diapers were horribly stained until I started line-drying! Now they’re as white as when they were new.
I go with the Fels Naptha method more often than not. Either that, or something I’ve received to try out for review. 🙂
Here’s another couple of ideas:
http://wellnessmama.com/3615/natural-stain-treatment-reference-sheet/
http://wellnessmama.com/3505/homemade-oxyclean-stain-remover-recipe/
I needed a spray bottle once, but $Tree was out of them. Instead, I bought a bottle of stain remover at $Tree, figuring I’d use the remover and then save the spray bottle it came in. Turns out the stain remover works REALLY well. I have a 15 mo and a 3yo, so you could say my house is “stain central.” Stain remover doesn’t have to be a brand name or expensive to be effective.
I really like your website, you are very creative. Love your from “scratch” cooking, foodways and crafts section. My sister is the Stain Removal “Queen” and recommends Lestoil, the all purpose cleaner. Rub it into the spot and keep rubbing with some H2O until it comes out. You may need to soak it first if it doesn’t come out, usually it works without soaking. I’ve had old stains that Lestoil removed.
The two products I use are vinegar and baking soda. Plain and simple. place the vinegar first, pour on some baking soda and then scrub in after it’s done fizzing. I also use this mixture to make my own Oxi-clean. It works great for baby clothes since you don’t want to use a harsh product for their clothing, and it worked great on my husband’s greasy clothes from work. I posted about it on the blog :).