How to Salvage Smoke Damaged T-Shirts and Clothing
There are many items that simply can’t be saved from smoke damage. Luckily, t-shirts clothing doesn’t have to be one of them. Depending on the degree of smoke damage to an item of clothing, it may be able to be salvaged by giving it some special care.
The first thing to do is to figure out which items of clothing can be salvaged and which ones can’t. There may be a few pieces that are so heavily damaged that no amount of care can save them. If the entire garment is covered in soot and it’s difficult to tell what the item originally looked like, it may be too late to save that particular garment.
Clothing that has light smoke damage may benefit from a spray with a fabric odor spray. These are often made with cornstarch and lift odors out of the fabric and allow them to evaporate along with the liquid in the spray. Try spraying lightly-damaged items and then washing them with a color-safe bleach to remove the odor of smoke.
Some clothing may have a little more smoke damage but may just need a vigorous washing in hot water to make it look the way it did before. A garment that has a strong smoky smell but that doesn’t have a lot of soot on it may be salvaged by washing the item on the fastest washing cycle in hot water. Use a heavy-duty detergent and use a pre-treatment soak before putting it into the laundry.
For items that are in worse condition, try pre-treating the item for a longer period of time and then rinsing the items several times before washing them. It may be necessary to wash these items three or four times to remove the soot and the smell of smoke from them. To help the smell come out of the clothing more easily, add a half a cup of baking soda in with the washing detergent. This will help to absorb some of the smell and to wash it away. Don’t dry the clothing until you’ve gotten out all of the soot that you can.
Chlorine bleach is helpful for whites that have smoke damage. This is an effective way to get both the smell of smoke and the residue of it out of white clothing. Soak the items in bleach in the bathtub or in a sink. After a few minutes, rinse the bleach from the garments and make sure that most of the soot has been rinsed away. After this step, the items can be put into a washing machine with a little more bleach added to the load if needed.
If the clothing has severe damage to it but you want to try to salvage it, try a fire restoration service. These services specialize in restoring smoke and fire damaged items to their best possible condition. There are also some dry cleaners that can provide smoke-damage care to clothing. There is an ozone treatment process that can get small particles of smoke out of clothing without damaging the fibers. Call local dry cleaners and find one that can provide this treatment.
How To Remove Tomato Stains From Your T-Shirt
Stains are one of the most annoying things to deal with when it comes to T-shirt care. Often we find that a perfectly nice white or light colored T-shirt can be ruined by things like tomato stains. So many different dishes are tomato based and therefore it is a very common stain. Luckily T-shirts can usually withstand heavy duty stain fighting, so you can get rid of almost any stain, even the pesky tomato stain.
First and foremost, try to treat the stain as soon as it happens or as soon as possible after you notice it. Remove any excess tomato on your tee by scooping it off with a spoon or gently scraping it with a knife. Flush the area with cold water from the back of the stain to force as much of it out of the fabric as possible. Timeliness in getting started on removing the stain is the biggest factor in how successful you will be with stain removal.
When as much of the stain is out as possible, it is time to get serious. You should apply liquid laundry detergent to the stain and gently work it in from the outside inward. If you have a T-shirt that can be safely bleached you can add a touch of bleach to the stain also. If you want to avoid using something this harsh, applying lemon juice, white vinegar or hydrogen peroxide to the stain can also have a bleaching effect. Continue rubbing the stain alternating the use of laundry detergent with the bleach until the stain is gone. Rinse the T-shirt well and check it in good light to make sure all traces of the tomato stain are truly gone. Apply a commercially produced stain treatment and let sit for 5 minutes, before laundering as usual.
After your T-shirt is washed double check it to be sure that the stain is out. Once it dries in the dryer, it is most likely set for life. Therefore it is important to check clothing as it comes out of the washer to minimize the possibility of permanent stains. If you catch it before it hits the dryer and the stain is still visible treat it by rubbing more laundry detergent into the stain and soaking it in warm water for no less than a half-hour. Rinse, then apply stain remover and wash your T-shirt in the washing machine again.
If after all these steps, you find that you are left with a stained T-shirt, you do have options. Have a new T-shirt custom-made to replace the one you have stained. You can recreate your old T-shirt exactly by having one customized to your own design. You can opt for a more tomato-friendly color like black. You can also make fun of tomato stains, by having a tee made that says “Official Tomato Eating T-shirt” or Official Spaghetti Shirt”. By doing so you can get away with any tomato stains that may come your way.
Get your custom-made tomato stain T-shirt today and show that you can creatively deal with any stains.
How to Remove Blood Out of a White T-Shirt?
Blood is one of the hardest stains to get out of clothing. Because of its deep red color and its relative thickness, a blood stain is harder to get out than most simple food stains. Blood will ruin a white t-shirt, even if the blood stain is small. For that reason, saving the t-shirt means getting rid of the stain.
To get rid of a stain quickly and without damaging the t-shirt, the blood stain has to be treated immediately. Once blood has touched the t-shirt, every second counts if you want the blood to come out completely. If it’s at all possible, take the t-shirt off immediately. If you can’t take the t-shirt off, you can hold the stained portion away from the rest of the t-shirt so that the stain will not spread.
Run cold water through the shirt at the point of the blood stain. This is far easier if the t-shirt has been removed. If it hasn’t, hold the stained area under the tap as best you can. Continue running the water through the fabric for a minute or two. If the blood has been on the fabric for a few minutes, you will have to run the cold water through the fabric for several minutes. Rub the fabric together under the running water to help the blood dissipate if it seems to be lingering on the shirt.
If the stain is fresh, this should get most if not all of the blood out of a white t-shirt. If there is still a light residue left over, fill a sink or a tub full of cold water and let the t-shirt soak in the water for at least an hour. Then, drain the water and run the t-shirt through fresh, cold water for another minute. This should loosen the remaining blood from the shirt.
If the stain is older, it can still be removed from the t-shirt, though it may take more time. If the blood is dried or the t-shirt has already been washed, the stain will not respond well to cold water. The blood stain will probably need to be bleached out of the fabric. This must be done very carefully, however, because bleach will drain the color out of any clothes it comes into contact with- including what you’re wearing. It can also damage clothing and cause holes in the fabric if too much of it is used.
Pour a small amount of bleach into the cap from the bleach bottle. Then, dip a cotton swab into the bleach and apply it to the blood stain. If the stain is very large, place the t-shirt flat on a hard surface and pour the bleach from the cap onto the stain. Let the bleach sit for at least 10 minutes to break up the color. When this is finished, put the t-shirt directly into the washer by itself or with other white items and wash the bleach from the fabric. This will result in the least damage to the shirt.
How To Get Toothpaste Off My T-Shirt
There are many horrible stains that can be very pesky to deal with on your favorite T-shirt. Luckily, toothpaste is not one of them. It is in fact one of the easier stains to remove. Generally, you can just throw the shirt into the washing machine and it will come out clean. The key is, as with all stains, to not let it set in, especially if it is a colored gel or whitening toothpaste.
In fact regular white toothpaste, not the gel kind, is recommended to use as a stain remover for certain kinds of oily makeup stains, fresh marker stains, crayon stains and more. In fact plain, cheap toothpaste is a multi-purpose stain remover for white T-shirts with stains of all kinds. If you are wearing a white T-shirt and happen to get a colored stain on it, many tipsters recommend covering up the stain with plain white toothpaste to help you get through the day if you can’t deal with the stain right away. In addition to T-shirts, toothpaste is also suggested for cleaning carpet, shoes and more.
However, if you happen to get a glob of toothpaste on your T-shirt, it is in your best interest to scrape off the excess immediately and soak the T-shirt. This is especially true for dark T-shirts which have received a whitening toothpaste glob. Whitening toothpaste contains bleach and therefore can leave bleach marks on dark shirts, ruining the shirt irreparably. For this reason, getting to the stain as soon as possible is very important.
If you are getting ready for work and happen to get toothpaste splatters on your dark-colored T-shirt as you are brushing your teeth, you can attempt to get them out with a wet cloth. This sometimes works if the splatter is still wet. However, toothpaste really does need to be washed out with lots of soap and water typically. Therefore, your best bet, especially if you are crunched for time is to throw the T-shirt in soak and get another one.
If you are unlucky enough to not catch those whitening toothpaste stains in time and you end up with a spotty shirt, you can always choose to dye it or put it in the stock of clothes you use around the house when cleaning. Bleach of any kind is the worst thing that can meet your clothes.
Custom-made T-shirts are great for those sloppy tooth brushers. You can get a T-shirt made that pokes fun at your clumsiness or that talks about the benefits of toothpaste stain removal. Some fun options to print on a T-shirt include:
• Official Tooth Brushing Shirt
• Step 1: Clean Teeth, Step 2: Remove T-shirt with toothpaste splatters
• I hate toothpaste splatters
• Toothpaste stains suck
• New markers for 2 year old - $3, White toothpaste to remove marker stains from sofa and carpet - $2, Saving 2 year old’s derriere - Priceless
Get a fun custom-made T-shirt and show off your feelings about toothpaste and stains today.