Protein stains are body fluid type stains like blood, milk, baby formula and most food and egg even mud have protein components. If you can catch these stains before they dry they can be removed with water. Hot water will cook them and make them harder to remove but it doesn't have to be cold water.
If this is a dry clean only fabric it still may be best to rinse the stain but you may have to take it to the dry cleaner to help with removal and sizing damage. Silk and wool are proteins and don't do well with this method of stain removal.
After they dry and age or you didn't see it before you washed it, they can be removed by Ammonia (see post about mustard)! Put some on the stain and let it sit for say 10 minutes or longer but don't let it dry out. You can also agitate it but rubbing can raise the fabric fibers and make it look different. Then wash it again. If the stain is heavy, you should use a brush on the fabric and tamp it. (Tamping is a technical term meaning to beat it with a brush. If you do the back and forth thing then you mess up the fabric. The brush should have short bristles and they should be quite stiff and it helps if it is heavy, like made of wood. I don't know where to get the ideal brush if you are not a dry cleaner, but this is a tool you should have in your stain removal kit.)
Put a towel under the stain so you don't drive it into the other side of the garment or the counter. Occasionally, blood and other Protein stains will leave a light brown stain after washing and this can be removed with a few drops of Hydrogen Peroxide! (no need to wash again)
There are lots of enzyme stain removers out there and their purpose is to remove Protein stains. Enzymes are really good at it, that's what they do but ammonia works well and it's cheep and safe. Try it out and let me know.
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7 comments:
Sweet, thanks! I didn't really understand what protien stains were...besides blood. I've tried the Hydrogen peroxide on blood stains I missed in the wash and it works awesome.
This also explains why hot water doesn't work so well to try and clean up after our daughter has a blowout (those of you with infants know what I mean).
Also, I did some searching around for brushes and found a place that sells some "spotting brushes" here - http://www.cleanersupply.com/products/product.cfm?pID=57
Would these work? And when you say beating, do you mean heavily pounding the stain, or just tapping it with the brush?
TAMPING IS BEATING WITH RESTRAINT. YOU CAN DAMMAGE MOST FABRICS BY "BEATING" TOO HARD AND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO REMOVE THE STAIN BY BEATING IT YOU ARE JUST BREAKING IT UP TO ALLOW THE CHEMICAL TO WORK ON MORE SURFACE AREA. THOSE BRUSHES AT CLEANER SUPPLY ARE WHAT MOST DRY CLEANERS USE. GOOD LUCK.
You must be some kind of saint starting a blog like this. I would love to know how to get pen ink out of a shirt if you wouldn't mind sharing. Not a ball point pen but a inky pen (I don't know what they are really called).
I'll do a ink removal blog! but keep in mind inks are one of the bad ones.
I love this! It just happens that Spencer grabbed my brand new white towel to take care of his bloody nose the other day and I didn't find out until I was putting it in the washer a few days later. After coming out of the wash it left that light brown stain and I set it aside for another day.
That was last week and I instantly thought of it when I read this post. I put the peroxide on it and then used my steam cleaner (fantastic) to heat it up and it just disappeared!!!
Thank you!!!!
I bought an antique table runner with a rust colored stain on it. I thought it was tomatoe based maybe, but it didn't come out even when I put bleach directly on the spots. Any suggestions? You have GREAT info on here.
specific stains on specific fabrics are not for the amature. if the fabric was still intact after the bleach you can brobably work pretty hard on the stain. If it is rust you will not be able to remove it without Phosphoric acid which is safe for fabrics but not good for skin and eches glass and marble.
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