Okay, this is a straight-out Hints from Heloise kind of question, but I am frustrated at not finding any good answers.
For years, across two households at opposite ends of the country, I’ve had a problem with oily spots on dark fabrics. T-shirts and knit cotton in particular have the problem: the dirty shirt shows no particular spotting unless you look really closely. Washed, it has big dark oily spots. I have to hit the spots with Shout or something like it and toss it back in for a re-run, which usually works fine.
Most helpful-hint sites are heavy on finding the source of the spots and suggest everything down to a chapstick in the dryer and a leaking washer transmission. I don’t have any mystery about the spots: they’re from eating and cooking and yeah, I guess I could work harder to keep them off in the first place. Then they suggest pre-treating, which is okay if you have the time to inspect every shirt closely.
What I want is regular washing to remove them, without pre-treating. We use All or Member’s Mark unscented laundry soap, which is fairly well rated. It happened on good city water in California, and on fully conditioned and softened well water here.
If it was a matter of being able to see the spots when I take the shirt off, I could hit them with pretreat right away, and sometimes I do. But often, the spots are all but invisible until laundering ‘develops’ them, and they’re too prominent for me to wear the damned shirt without looking like a slob.
ANY suggestions for (1) better detection of the spots when a shirt is dirty or (2) laundry enhancements (not involving smelly scented products) that will clean the spots in a regular wash cycle?
Can’t help with 1 but 2: make a thick paste out of your regular washing powder. Rub into the oily spot and allow to sit as long as possible (usually overnight for me). Wash as normal. If there is any spot remaining repeat the procedure.
All I can offer is that my late grandmother, who retired from working in a laundry at about age 80, swore by Lestoil to remove these (pretreat and soak in hot water.) I’ve found that Murphy’s Oil Soap will do a passable job as well. No, they don’t smell good, and yes, you have to pretreat/soak. I’m totally confident that if there were a better solution, she would have found it. Many of these stains do indeed come from food/cooking - a tiny splash of dressing or a little bit of cooking grease/oil can spatter. Once it’s on one clothing item, it can spread to the rest of the load. Washing in cold will never ever get them out. Try to remember when you get a stain, and pretreat any known areas. Soaking in near-scalding hot with a strong product works about 95% of the time.
I’d double-check that you’re not doing something like overloading your washer, and putting the detergent in on top of the clothes. Those could be unrinsed detergent spots instead of oil spots, if they aren’t on the clothes before you wash them.
If they are oil stains, pretreating is pretty much the only answer- some stains will come out with just detergent, but oil’s one that doesn’t often do it without a little help. You don’t have to use Shout, Lestoil, Spray & Wash, Zout or anything like that- a little bit of regular detergent soaking in a few minutes before you wash will do the job for almost all oil stains.
Ammonia added to the water will help break down oils. I use ammonia in the pre-wash cycle on my washer. If you have a top load and no pre-wash, start the load with the detergent and ammonia in and lid up so that it won’t go on after filling until you lower the lid.
Ammonia is cheap, doesn’t leave behind a smell, and works.
I use dishwashing detergent (usually Dawn); you know those commercials where they show volunteers washing oily ducks in Dawn soap? It’s that good. I don’t recall ever having a grease spot that Dawn didn’t take care of. You just scrub a little bit into the stain then wash normally (you can wet the fabric first to get better penetration, but it doesn’t seem to matter).
The risk is likely foaming if you use too much, but otherwise, I’d imagine it would work fine on grease spots. Won’t do much for protein or other stains though.
My go-to stuff for oily spots is obvious, when you think of it. It’s mechanic’s hand soap, such as Gojo. It smells sorta industrial when applied, but the smell is gone by the end of the wash. Just put some on the spot, no need to scrub or use hot water.
If you don’t already have some, any auto-parts store has it.
It seems like all the above suggestions are about pre-treating, which as the OP notes is hard to do if you don’t see them first. My suggestion is add some Oxyclean powder to every load. I do this and despite both me and my DH being messy eaters we don’t have spots on the t-shirts after washing. Before using Oxyclean we did. Just my experience.
I didn’t mean to sound like I’m talking about pretreating. I am talking about adding ammonia to every wash. I think it works best if it is done in a prewash cycle, though.
All good suggestions, but some miss the point in exactly the way the Google search answers do. I am not looking for suggestions on how to avoid or find the source of the stains (I know what they are, and it’s pretty much unavoidable unless I throw on an apron every time I walk past the stove, and/or completely fail to ever drop a bit of food I’m eating). I am not looking for alternative pretreating options, as I’d like to avoid doing that for routine, minor spots if I can. (I pretreat anything I get obviously stained or can see in regular sorting.)
I’d like something that will remove the stains in normal laundering and/or a way to more readily see the stains on a wear-darkened shirt. A few good suggestions above; more welcome.
About all I can think of are the various products like Clorox III Stain remover, and the various Tide Boost types.
In my experience, they don’t do much more on grownup clothes than plain old detergent, but they do seem to remove a hair more stains from my sons’ clothing than plain detergent does.
To remove grease or oil spots I discovered chalk, a stick from a chalkboard will do nicely. Just chalk over it, both sides, then let it sit for a bit. The chalk absorbs the oil and washes out in the washer. Sometimes I have to do this twice if it’s a stubborn spot.
I know you’re looking for something to routinely add to the wash, but hey, the chalk actually works!
Seconded on OxyClean laundry booster. I add it to every load. I also have a washer that allows me to select a Kids cycle, which helps with this too. Essentially, the washer is picking options that assume maximum grime. Warm water, longer rinse if I recall correctly.
I also use Tide instead of All. Just IME it works better.
Our washer has a couple of heavy-duty cycles. I’ll see about running my t-shirts in a long cycle.
My only objection to Oxy-Clean is the obnoxious commercials.
I would rather stride about the world wearing clothes that look like leopard skin than use any scented laundry detergent, and you can cube that for the awfulness that is the stench of Tide.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen unscented Tide. Stores tend to carry one and only one brand of unscented laundry product, perhaps backed by their feeble store brand. I can’t remember the last time I saw a selection, anywhere, and All seems to have the market all but locked up.
(I really do prefer unscented - which equals “closest possible thing to no scent of any kind at all,” not some alternative “light” or “fresh” scent -over almost any other characteristic. I also hold a grudge against Tide for leading the pack of power-scent products and overpricing.)
I think Sams has the Sun product in bulk. I’ll look.
Do you use liquid fabric softener in the washing machine? Sometimes the dispenser can leak big globs of the stuff that sticks inside of it. This can happen when you use hot water as the temperature inside the washer can weaken up the globs of old fabric softener. It can make a mess on clothing.
I pull the dispenser on my washer about once a month and clean it out.
