It Gets the Tough Stains Out

So not to say that my daughter watches a lot of TV… but she does watch her share.  What can I say, I work from home, and sometimes it’s VERY necessary!  Anyway, we were at Target the other day and she saw on the wall of laundry detergent the Oxi Clean.  She immediately said “OxiClean, it gets the tough stains out!”  I could not help but completely crack up right there. 

How to Get Tough Stains Out

Well, here is one thing I learned while on my trip to the Bosch Appliances showroom.  Different stains can actually SET if you wash them at the wrong temperature!  One way the Vision Washers (Best washing machine I’ve ever come in contact with!) solve this problem is a magic little button called “stain removal”.  What that button will do is slowly step up the temperature so it removes the stains at each level. 

For example blood will only come out with cold water, and can set with hot water.  So the washer starts out cold, to get the blood stain out, then steps up to warmer for grass stains, even warmer for grease stains, etc!  You only have to do one load to remove all of the above, and less work is ALWAYS better!

To test this theory we were giving white T-shirts and a plethora of staining agents to destroy the shirt with.  You can see our lovely art in the included picture.  I even grabbed some potato chips from their little snack stash to crush into the fabric for some lovely grease stains.  We used egg, meat (for the blood stains), chocolate syrup, salsa, orange juice, and much much more.  We did not use any stain pretreater and just threw all the shirts in the washer.  I have to say it did a pretty darn good job.  My shirt came out completely clean.  I even let some of my shirt soak in Coke for about 5 minutes too!  Some of the other shirts weren’t so lucky, but for not using a pretreater, it was pretty darn good. 

Here is a good chart for stain removal in case you don’t have a super awesome washer that will step the temp up for you gradually….

Protein Stains (ex. Milk, Baby Food, Urine, Cheese, Blood, etc) – High temps can cook the protein into your clothing.  You want to make sure you use cold water to remove these.

Tannin Stains (ex. Beer, Coffee, Soft Drinks, Fruit Juice, etc) – Hot water is the way to go on these stains.  Really the hotter the better, so as hot as your clothes can take.  Do NOT use soap for these types of stains, use detergent.  Make sure you detergent does not contain soap.

Oil Based Stains (ex. Bacon Fat, Butter, Cooking Oils, Lotion, etc) – Pretreatment is key in this case.  Rub a small amount of detergent into the stain before you throw it into the wash.

Dye Stains (ex. Marker, Grass, Kool-Aid, etc) – Use a pretreater and rinse it, if it is still there you will likely need to use bleach, and hot water.

So go get your tough stains out!

What temp to get blood stains out?

If you’re dealing with a fresh blood stain, the best thing to do is to immediately rinse it with cold water. This will help to prevent the stain from setting in. If the stain is already dry, you’ll need to soak it in cold water for at least 30 minutes before washing. For both fresh and dry stains, you should use the COLD water setting. When laundering, be sure to use a laundry detergent that contains enzymes, which will help to break down the proteins in the blood and remove the stain. You can also pretreat the stain with a product like Oxyclean or Shout. Be sure to follow the instructions on the packaging and treat the stain as soon as possible for best results.

Disclosure – Bosch Appliances paid for my trip to Arizona and our stay in the lovely Montelucia Hotel in Scottsdale.  They did not compensate us in any other way, or tell us what to post about the appliances or our trip.

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