Image via Wikipedia As with many things in life, I get ticked off when stain removal doesn’t work absolutely and every time. I mean, really quite grumpy…for, like, the rest of the day.As a left hander who uses fountain pens and a lawyer, I write a lot and ink generally gets on me and my clothing – sometimes as much, or more, than on the paper. Through the decades I’ve spent many a day pissed off because the “surefire ink fix” that this or that celebrity or guidebook suggests simply does not work. You have the secret fix your Aunt Melba used once in the 70s and it worked then hunh? Well, screw you and Melba, because using her fix spread the blotch and it totally ruined my favorite t-shirt.
In my 20s I became adept at strategic placement of handbags, cool jacket lapels and pins to cover up the teeny weeny ink stain that simply wouldn’t come out – not even after dropping $50 in repeated dry cleaner bills. To a certain extent my inkedness dispelled any thoughts of buying clothing that was more than disposable, because regardless of whether a blouse was $20 or $2,000, it was destined to get ink on it in my life.
Well, dear reader, if you’ve made it this far…I’ve found ink removal nirvana. Yes, really.
This trick works every time. I repeat, every time. It works completely and it does not harm the fabric. It also does not need to be done immediately. It will work on a dried ink stain as well as one that's just happened.
So what is this magic ink removal fix you ask? Nail polish remover. And it doesn’t need to be fancy schpancy nail polish remover. The cheapo schmeapo stuff works just as well for a fraction of the cost. (But hey, if you want to drop an additional $20 on big name stuff, go ahead. Be a spendthrift. I’d rather save the cash.)
So take the ink stained item (here it was a t-shirt), put a folded up paper towel under the layer where the stain resides. Here, the ink stain was on the front of the t-shirt. I separated the back of the t-shirt from the front, slipped my hand in between (ie-inside the shirt) and held the folded paper towel directly under the stain…so the back of the t-shirt was behind my hand-holding-the-paper-towel. Then put the paper-towel-and-ink-stain directly over an open bottle of nail polish remover, press the paper-towel-t-shirt onto the open top and flip it over quickly. So the nail polish remover doesn’t “run freely,” but the polish douses that circle of ink. The paper towel will be wet underneath. That part of the ink stain will be gone. Now repeat for the rest of the stain. Blot the front of the item (here a t-shirt) with a dry paper towel so that any excess polish remover is sucked up and doesn’t run all over the place.
After you’ve made the entire stain disappear, close the bottle of nail polish remover and rinse the area with tap water. I generally just run it under the faucet until it doesn’t smell badly when I hold it up to my nose.
Then dry out the item and wash it in the laundry like you’d do regularly.
Have fun trying this one out – let me know how it goes for you!
Any questions on stain removal? Send me an email at jenn (at) jbmercurio (dot) com.
It's irritating to stain your shirts, good thing there are countless solutions in the web like this to help you make your favorite shirts stain-free.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lot harder when it comes to dealing with the stain. Choose an effective detergent to remove it.
ReplyDelete