How to Get Rid of Chocolate Stains From Baby Clothes
Jolie Kerr is a cleaning expert, advice columnist, and New York Times bestselling author of My Boyfriend Is Boiling In My Purse … And Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha About . Her flagship column, Ask a Pure Man, debuted in 2011. Here at Offspring we’ve launched a new iteration dedicated to parenting and all the mess it brings.
How to get chocolate ice cream stains out of my daughter’s pretty pink and yellow dress?!?
It’s a fun time of year for school to start, but the weather still feels like summer and technically it’s still summer, but Halloween candy is already on the shelves of my local drug store (what? Stop it, Duane Reade.) So while we’re here, between the season of chocolate ice cream and the season of tiny individually wrapped chocolates, let’s talk about removing chocolate stains.
Milk stain scoop
While we’re mainly here to talk about chocolate stains, we should bypass and reconsider what you need to know about dairy treatments because the question is about ice cream. Dairy products are protein stains, so an enzymatic stain remover can be used to remove stains caused by all types of dairy products, be it ice cream, milk, cheese, etc. Some of them are Zout , Biz or Puracy. Stain remover . Apply the product to the stain, let it work for 10-15 minutes to absorb and break down the proteins, then wash the clothes as usual.
The only thing to avoid when removing dairy stains is to use hot water to either rinse the stain off or when choosing the temperature of the water in the washing machine, as hot water will “weld” the dairy stain. Gross! So stick to cool or cold water.
One Product You Need For Chocolate Stains
Quite by accident a few years ago I discovered that the Shout Spray is great for removing chocolate from fabrics. (Confession: The accident that led to this discovery involved eating chocolate in bed. It happens!) For stains on upholstered furniture, carpets, or, um, white duvet covers, apply a small amount of Shout – perhaps once or twice. trigger – directly on the stains, then gently rub the area with a damp cloth or sponge.
To remove chocolate stains from clothing, saturate the stain with Shout spray and rub the stained area of the fabric by itself to apply the product. Then, pull the cloth under cold running water to wash off the stain by rubbing the cloth. against yourself under the stream.
A note about Shout wipes
In general, I love Shout Wipes for removing stains on the go. I find they work much better than Tide Pens , which I suspect has less to do with detergent than with the difference between delivery systems: wipes are simply a better way to remove fabric stains than a pen. Plus, these individually wrapped small napkins are easier to carry than the Tide pen.
With that said, I recently enjoyed Mister Softee with a friend (cherry sauce for me, rainbow chocolate for her) and the bottom of her cone dripped onto her jeans. I had Shout Wipes because of course I did, so I pulled out one, tried her pants and … pfft. Little happened! The wipes left dents on the stains, but were nowhere near as effective as the spray. This is not to say that Shout Wipes are not a good option when you are on the go, but I mention this to point out that they are not completely spray interchangeable.