So, yeah, a whole load of clothes have dried with ink all over them. Seems hopeless. I suppose I could try treating each stain with alcohol, acetone, or any one of the seeming endless list of household products that remove ink, and see how that goes. But there’s hundreds of ink spots, and that would take days, if it even worked! The ink was in the dryer, so they dried with it on them, just to be clear.
Anything I can do?
If you have a product that can spot-clean ink, would it work to soak the entire load of clothes in water plus that product?
Nail polish remover (acetone) did the trick for me.
Yes, it was a tedious job.
A lot of the products have alcohol and/or acetone in them, which I don’t think would be safe to dry after washing or soaking in. If there’s no other solution, I might try this, but I’d have to air-dry them, I guess.
We washed and dried a pen–getting ink all over everything. My husband (blessed be he) went to the hardware store and asked what to do and they gave him a product that was “environmentally friendly”–it had green in the title. It worked great. He can’t remember the name, though.
Was it Simple Green? I’ll stop in to a hardware store tomorrow and ask about that.
I really don’t recommend this.
If the pen in question was traditional ink, you may have luck soaking the individual spots in a bowl of alcohol or acetone. You need organic solvents to remove most inks. If you dilute your solvent in water to that degree, you lose all the advantage of an organic solvent, as you now have a mostly aqueous solution.
My brother penned a load of my mother’s laundry. The only solution she found was lots of tedious spot treating. The good news is that she got all the ink out of everything but one pair of his bluejeans. (serves him right anyway) I suggest you find a good solvent for your particular ink and muster up a lot of patience.
If money isn’t an object, or the clothes are pricey and therefore worth it, you may find a drycleaner has more solvents and patience than you do.
Oh… treating all those spots individually does not sound like fun. It was mostly my youngest son’s clothes, which he only wears for a few months before they’re too small, anyway. So maybe I’ll just look like a bad mom for a few months, with him walking around in inky clothes. Oh, okay, I’ll spot treat what I can and let the rest go. But first I’ll try the hardware store and see if they know of anything I can just dump into the load and rewash them with.
Thanks, all!
Be very careful regarding use of solvents and household clothes washing/drying equipment.
Improper use can lead to unplanned remodeling and a visit from the local fire department.
My Wife treated heavy ink stains with hairspray. Worked wonders.
She bought a couple of cans of … I donno… Let me look…
White Rain.
Not sure how it would do with a large batch, but we where amazed.
eta: Just sprayed some on the bad parts and threw it in the washer.
I accidentally sent a pen through the dryer once (and crayons twice - don’t ask!).
I got the ink out of clothes with liberal use of hairspray (cheaper is better) and Shout, but the melted-crayon clothes were a lost cause.
Spray the hairspray on generously, and let it soak in. Scrub and scrub. Spray more on. Let it soak a little and wash again. Don’t dry it again till you know you have all the ink out.
I got the ink off the inside of the dryer with Simple Green and a lot of elbow grease. It’s really hard to scrub the inside of a dryer!
The Simple Green worked less well on the crayon, and there were always spots of red and blue on the drum.
Simple Green will clean out the inside of your dryer, but it won’t take care of the ink on the clothes en masse. The only way to get those stains out, I’ve found, is by using acetone/hairspray/insert-favorite-remedy-including-SG and elbow grease on each spot.
–Diomedes, wearing a shirt with an inkspot on the tail right now
Crayon can be removed with WD-40. There are also specialty removers available from JoAnne’s Fabrics and (gag) Wal-Mart called Stain Devils that work well on ink.
No one will think you’re a bad mom for this. Well, some people will, but they are all childless, soulless, humorless morons whose opinions on anything is unworthy of respect.
Seriously - I don’t think any of our youngest daughter’s clothes are stain free. Nobody cares. If a quick spritz with spray and wash doesn’t take off the cranberries, we just live with it.
Tomorrow I’ll get a couple cans of cheap hairspray and try that. Kinda scared to wash and dry them with all that alcohol on them… but it’s not my house, it’s the laundry room of my apartment… I’ll just run out really fast. Nah, I’ll rinse them in my bathtub and pony up the quarter for an extra rinse in the machine. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go to a fabric store for help.
Thanks, everyone- I’ll let you know how it goes.
Somehow, we had a similar accident. But, even worse than our bedsheets being ruined, the dryer’s drum looked like a party decoration! We took hairspray and rubbed off the marker fromt he drum - just in case the ink could ruin other things. Then, we let the drum air out for a good while since the hairspray fumes would be flammable. What a mess that was!
Alcohol rinses out readily in water. Good luck!
Cheap hairspray will also remove ink from hair…even very fine, light blond hair.
(When I was in 1st grade, a girl on the playground thought it would be funny to throw a broken fountain pen at my head. I don’t remember if the ink ever came out of my sweater though.)
There’s this stuff called Ink Out. It’s pretty expensive but it works. And it has a refreshing peppermint smell.
You put an old towel underneath then spray on it and wipe with another old towel. It takes awhile.
I had a really frustrating time when I washed a pen in my husband’s shirt.
I had an inky mess on some clothes after they went through the wash and dry cycle with a pen in the pocket of a jacket. I used Dryel, a home drycleaning product. After I ran the clothes through two cycles, most of the ink came out. The few remaining stains I treated with Motsenbocker’s Lift Off #3.