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Someday I will learn to keep my napkin in my lap when I eat, but in the meantime it’s given me lots of practice for how to remove grease stains from clothing!
Materials
What you will need to remove a grease stain or an oil stain will depend a bit on how long the stain has been there. Here I’m showing an easier stain removal technique for a fresh oily food stain, as well as one that was washed and dryed before I tried to remove it.
Either way the things you may need are a stain removal spray, baking soda, liquid dish soap and your laundry tasks toothbrush.
Easy Grease Stain Removal
If you’re trying to remove a grease stain that’s fresh (this one was a couple of hours old and was oily salad dressing) that’s generally going to be easier than if you let it sit or try to wash it in the washing machine first.
My first line of defense for getting rid of an oily stain is to spray the area with a stain removal spray (I used Shout, but whatever you have on hand is good).
Then sprinkle baking soda on top of the stain and use your toothbrush to rub it into a paste. Baking soda absorbs the oil the stain remover pulls out of the fabric.
Let it sit for at least 30 minutes or until you remember it again.
I usually will give it another little scrub with the toothbrush and then rinse with hot water if your fabric can take it.
You might need to let it dry a little to see if the stain is still there, and treat again if necessary.
This one needed two treatments.
Now I can’t even remember where the oil stain was.
How to Remove Grease Stains that Have Set
This second oily stain I had noticed before I did the laundry but foolishly expected it to take care of itself. The next time I wore the pants I saw I was mistaken, so that gave me a chance to demonstrate a slightly more aggressive method for removing oily stains from clothing.
Here I got the stained area wet and squirted some dish soap on the stain. Use your toothbrush to get it into the fibers a bit.
Since dish soap works on grease when it’s on dishes, it makes sense it would work on fabric, too.
Here again you’ll want to let it sit for a while and rinse and let dry enough to see if the stain is gone.
In this case it wasn’t, though it is hard to see in the photo, so I tried again with the stain remover and baking soda method mentioned above.
That didn’t completely work, either, though the stain was definitely getting harder to see.
One more round of dish soap did the trick (you can really see it in this photo where it’s wet) and now I can’t really see it at all.
Knowing how to remove grease stains and oily stains is key to keeping your clothes looking good, especially if you’re a messy eater like I apparently am! These tips are great to know if you have kids, and they work well on other kinds of food stains as well.
Have any great stain removal tips? I’d love to hear them. Also check out my tutorials for dealing with ink stains and blood in clothing to keep your stuff looking great.
And if you can’t get a stain out with these methods, you can always use a patch to cover a stain!
