Hey, all. A friend of mine told me a humorous story the other day about how she was on a date with a guy, and somehow the waiter accidentally dropped some food or something, and caused something to happen to the candle on the table so that it wipped a bunch of melted wax all over her date’s clothes. They had a good laugh about it, and then shortly thereafter, something similar happened, and she got wax all over HERself. Interesting first date story to tell on some reality TV show about first dates, someday…
Anyway, she was wondering what the best way to get dried wax out of clothes without having to bring them to the dry cleaner. Any ideas?
The worst of the wax can be removed by placing the garment in the freezer, to allow the wax to really harden and become brittle - taking it out and immediately flexing the affected area should make most of the wax flake off.
After that, you could try sandwiching the affected spot between two sheets of highly absorbent paper, such as blotting paper, then pressing gently with an iron on its coolest setting.
It’s a long process and not perfect, but it works pretty well.
You need brown paper (the kind that you wrap parcels up in), two tea towels (drying cloths? Can’t remember what they’re called in America), and an iron.
Preheat the iron to the highest level. Put two sheets of brown paper over the wax, on each side of the cloth. Cover the brown paper with a towel on each side. Put the clothing flat on an ironing board, and iron the top towel really hard for a couple of minutes, then flip and iron again. Take it all apart and you’ll find that a lot of the wax has been absorbed into the brown paper. Throw it away (or start a fire with it), and repeat with new paper as many times as you need to until the wax in the clothing is a mere oily stain, and then soak that in strong detergent before washing the whole thing.
Assuming the care label says the clothes may be ironed:
First, freeze the wax. You can either put the whole garment in the freezer or, if the fabric is washable, rub an ice cube over the wax. Gently scrape as much of the frozen wax away as you can with a dull knife.
Next, place an absorbent rag, such as an old dish towel, over the wax and iron gently. The wax should melt and be soaked up by the rag. Repeat the ironing as necessary.
Sometimes colored wax will leave a stain behind. In this case, you’ll have to use a stain remover, following the usual precautions. If this is an expensive or special garment, take it to a competent dry cleaner. No sense ruining your best suit jacket in an attempt to save a few bucks.
I just got wax all over our carpet yesterday and had to do a search on how to get it out.
I put some ice on the bigger chunks to make them brittle enough to pick off. When I couldn’t get any more chunks off, I put some paper towels over the spot and used the iron to melt the wax. The paper towels absorbed most of the melted wax. This worked fairly well since it was a white candle and there was no dye do deal with. If your wax stain is coloured, I’m not sure what you might try after the above 2 steps. Good luck!
BTW in case you’re worried about the different iron settings between my and Mangetout’s explanation, I’d say the introduction of the tea towel mitigates the temperature difference (and also stops the iron getting wax on it).
