Doing your laundry is not exactly a fun chore especially when you have piles of clothes to wash. Separating the clothes, driving to a laundromat, waiting for the clothes to finish, transferring them to the dryer, preparing them again for transport, and finally going home only to find yourself needing to neatly fold the clothes before you can rest— is definitely a physically taxing process.
Imagine if you still need to remove stains from some of your clothes. That just adds more to your chore. One of the most difficult stains to remove is berry stains. In fact, these colorful little fruits are powerful staining agents– some people even use them as fabric dye!
How to Remove Berry Stains
Unfortunately, not everyone wants to dye their clothes with berries, but accidents happen. Here are some ways to get those tough berry stains off your clothes.
Level 1: Boiling Water Method
This method takes some time and lots of effort, but it works! Here is what you need to do:
- Boil some water.
- Gently blot the berry stain with clean clothing. Keep in mind that you should not rub or press too hard— doing so will only press the stain deeper into your fabric.
- Turn the shirt or garment inside out.
- Pull the garment over a bowl and secure it with a rubber band.
- Place the bowl with your piece of clothing in the sink.
- Flush the stain with a constant stream of boiling water.
- Repeat until the stain is gone.
- Let it dry.
Level 2: Vinegar
Some berry stains are berry hard to get out. For stubborn stains, the boiling water method alone may not work. Now, you need to add vinegar into the mix. No, you do not need to add it to your boiling water.
You basically need to go over the steps for the boiling water method, but you add one step before letting it dry. You need to soak the stain in a bowl of vinegar after flushing it with boiling water.
Leave it to soak for an hour or so, then rinse and hang to dry.
Level 3: Toothpaste Method
Is the berry stain still there? Fret not! There is one more thing to try. If flushing with boiling water and soaking in vinegar has not fully removed the stain– you can now then try using whitening toothpaste.
Whitening toothpaste has some bleaching agent that can help remove the berry stain from the fabric.
After flushing the stain with boiling water and soaking it with vinegar, you need to rinse your garment in cold water then gently massage non-gel whitening toothpaste. Then hang it to dry.
Bottomline
Washing striped clothing is not such an unsolvable puzzle after all. The fact that it has two dominant colors might throw you off but once you know how to handle that– you’re pretty much good to go.
