Garbage Day: Last ditch efforts to save stained clothing

How often do you find yourself just throwing out clothing, because of stains? With two small boys, I feel like I’m tossing stuff all the time. Even my own stuff–I don’t wear white tops anymore if I’m with them, because I know they’re going to ruin it. This week, instead of focusing on repurposing food, I thought I’d share a tip I tried that save some clothing. Remember, anything you throw in the trash costs you money, so we all need to cut down on waste to save money!

A few weeks ago, I shopped at a clearance sale at Gymboree and found some great deals. Still more than I typically spend on kids clothing, but each piece was still under $10, and I just really, really liked some of it. I particularly liked this one white tee with a navy blue bike embroidered on it. My son has navy pants, dark jeans and navy shorts–and I thought it would be cute on him.

And it was cute. For one day. He wore it to school, once, came home with it stained. I even made sure he didn’t have spaghettios or anything like that in his lunch, but they had food group in school that day. Sigh. Later that day he managed to get pizza on it too, before I had a chance to change him. I sprayed it heavily with that new Tide spray and washed it the next day. It came out still stained. I folded it and let it sit on top of the dryer for a while, while I pondered what to do. Just throw it out? I asked the question on my Facebook page and got a few responses.

Then yesterday, I saw it sitting there and thought I’d give it one last chance, before it hit the trash. It really was too stained to be worn, I wish I had taken a before picture, but to be honest, I didn’t think I could get it out. Here’s what I did:

I laid the shirt out on my kitchen counter. I gently poured white vinegar on the shirt, wherever there was a stain, which was pretty much the whole front section of the shirt. I then carried it outside and spread the shirt out flat, in the sunshine, on our front walk. I left it there for an hour or two, and when I went back to look, the stains were gone! Seriously, they were. The vinegar had dried, so I just tossed the shirt in the wash with a normal load of whites and it came out almost new.

This was a 100% cotton tee. It didn’t fade or bleach the navy embroidery or collar, but try at your own risk. Still, no scrubbing effort, just a few moments of my time and a few tablespoons of vinegar….and one less shirt wasted! If this hadn’t worked, I was going to do one last-ditch effort, which would have been to buy a bar of Felsnaptha and scrub it with that. “Scrub it with some Fels!” that’s what my grandmother used to always say.

It's cloudy here today, hence the darker photo.