Wine stains can easily spoil both a thin tablecloth and your favorite outfit. However, red marks on the fabric is not a sentence, and it is not necessary to throw away your favorite jeans or an elegant dress decorated with wine blots. If you know several ways to deal with them, you can even get rid of old spots on your clothes.
What are the spots?
Red wine stains are considered complex and stable. The point here is the chemical composition of this alcoholic drink. Due to the presence of an element such as anthocyanin, the liquid quickly stains the tissue, and after the pigment has penetrated the tissue structure, it is very difficult to get rid of this contamination. But, if you are still determined, you can safely enter the struggle for the cleanliness of your clothes. First of all, the choice of tools at hand depends on how old the stain you have to clean.
Fresh
If you have the opportunity, then, of course, it is better to work with a fresh spot. If you just spilled wine on clothes, then the chances of completely cleaning the surface of the fabric are much higher. In case you spilled a drink during a feast, you can try to get rid of the traces with some other alcohol. Try pouring them with warm vodka or wine, but already white. And in fact, and in another drink in the composition is ethyl alcohol. It is he who helps to effectively remove traces of red.
By the way, white wine also contains organic acids, which also help to combat such pollution.
There are several other tools that also help well:
- Freshly squeezed lemon juice.It should be applied in a small amount to the fabric and after a few minutes, wipe the stain with a dry cloth.
- Alternatively, you can sprinkle the stain with citric acid.
- If you have the opportunity to immediately wash the contaminated thing, then you can use warm milk. Soak the fabric in it and hold for about half an hour.
After this time, the thing must be rinsed in clean water at room temperature.
Old spots
If you work with stains that “adorn” the surface of the fabric for a long time, then you need to use slightly different methods. For a long time, the color is eaten into the fabric, so it is much more difficult to clean it, but it is still possible. The most effective in this case are different chemical bleaches. Wine stains can be cleaned using Domestos.
It’s best not to take the usual product, but one that is specifically designed for washing clothes or other delicate materials. This is especially true if you plan to clean some kind of thin and elegant cloth.
Using ready-made fabric cleaners is even easier than improvised ones:
- You just need to pour a little liquid on the speck and leave it for a few minutes.
- When the product works, gently rinse the item in cold water.
- As an alternative, many housewives recommend using pharmacy products, for example, sodium hydrosulfate. It must be applied to the contaminated place for a couple of minutes, and then also pour on top with a small amount of hydrogen peroxide. This will discolor the material.
- The last stage of purification is the use of acetic acid, but here it is worth considering that acetic acid must be very well diluted with running water.
Necessary accessories and tools
As you can see, to clean the fabric of red wine, you can use a lot of tools, both chemical and improvised. An effective way to cleanse tissue is to use purchased stain removers. They work well enough, so you can safely use such a tool.
This works on both colored fabric and white. But you should always make sure that the chemical product is completely suitable for you.
First of all, look at the label to see if the product is suitable for your type of fabric. If not, then the product may well not only not remove the stain, but also damage the fabric itself. Also, always pay attention to temperature and other tips on how to wash the material and how much to keep the chemical product on its surface. If you don’t want to take risks and use stain removers, or you simply don’t have them at hand when you need to urgently remove a trace of wine, then pay attention to household items that will replace your chemistry. They need to be selected individually, focusing on the material.
For fresh spots, emergency helpers are suitable:
- Fine salt or fresh lemon juice. Salt is a good tool that will save you if you are dealing with delicate fabrics that cannot be treated with chemical or pharmaceutical agents.
- Many women also recommend using a simple laundry soap, which was previously used to solve almost all household problems, to clean the fabric of wine stains. If you thoroughly soap the cloth and soak for a couple of minutes, then you can forget about the contamination after the first wash.
Features of cleaning materials
If you choose the right tool and method of cleaning the fabric, then the likelihood that you will successfully remove the stain will be much higher.
the cloth
The finer and finer the material, the more carefully you need to work with it:
- If you messed up cotton thing, for example, a sweater, T-shirt or a new tablecloth, then it can be cleaned with warm milk. Preheat it, but do not let it boil. If the stain is small, then it must be carefully soaked in warm milk using a napkin, for example.Then the thing must be left alone for a few minutes, and when the milk works, wash.
- Wool and silk, despite the external differences, in fact, they are precisely those materials that must be handled as carefully as possible. They are recommended to be cleaned with a mixture of wine alcohol and glycerin. Proportions should be equal. Contamination should be treated with a cotton pad moistened with this composition. The fabric will be cleaned after one and a half to two hours. After that, it can be washed in order to get rid of the remains of the solution. This way you can clean warm sweaters, and silk dresses or shirts.
- Drops of red wine often fall on jeans or other denim products. This material quickly absorbs wine, so if you have the opportunity, it is better to work on the stain immediately after you put it. From denim, traces of alcohol can be removed with salt or soda - just sprinkle the stain and wait for the product to soak.
You can remove the old wine stain from such clothes by mixing the detergent for dishes with a small amount of peroxide.
- Often a victim of unsuccessful gatherings over a glass of wine becomes carpet. Since it cannot be pushed into the washing machine, and generally washing is rather inconvenient, you have to go a little different way. Either table salt or a mixture of egg yolk with glycerin is good here. Both products are applied to the carpet with a soft sponge slightly moistened in warm water. After the salt or yolk has absorbed the main pigment, you can proceed to cleaning. For this, it is advised to use only products designed specifically for cleaning carpets. They cope with pollution more efficiently and faster, and do not harm the surface of the floor covering.
If you are dealing with some more delicate and thin fabric, then you should not wash it - just blot the contaminated area with a piece of cotton or a cotton pad soaked in a mixture of glycerol, ammonia and vodka.
Color
In addition to the type of fabric, it is important to consider its color. In general, all materials can be divided into color and white. It is easy to guess that the stain is the hardest to remove from a white cloth. It even shows traces of light spray, which speaks of full-fledged traces that remain after you spilled the contents of the glass on the tablecloth, or, even worse, on your own outfit.
There are three main ways to fight for the purity of light tissue:
- The most common is the use of peroxide in the contaminated area. It is she who is able to remove wine pigment from light tissue most effectively. Simply wipe the material with it, set aside the thing for ten minutes, and then wash it in warm water. The result is likely to please you and pleasantly surprise you.
- Another effective tool that is found in almost every home is ordinary vinegar. It is also used to wipe tissue. The thing after that is left alone for half an hour and is erased.
- As an alternative to vinegar on white things, you can use a solution of citric acid. To prepare it, you just need to fill in 2 g of acid with a glass of warm water. Citric acid, by the way, helps to remove traces of unsuccessful gatherings even from things that you have long despaired of cleaning, and fresh lemon juice is perfect for fresh spots.
You need to work with colored fabrics in other ways:
- Effective is the use of potassium permanganate solution. Although at first glance it seems that this colored liquid will only exacerbate the problem, in practice this is far from the case. With a solution of potassium permanganate, the fabric must be treated immediately before washing. The solution should not be very concentrated - just add one teaspoon of potassium permanganate powder to a glass of water.
- The second option is the use of glycerin and yolk. This unexpected combination of simple products allows you to achieve surprisingly good results.Yolk is used raw. In equal amounts, it must be mixed and applied for two hours to the fabric, which after this time needs to be washed. The tool works fine on old spots.
But bleaches on colored fabric is not recommended at all. They will make the fabric faded, which does not improve the situation at all. The only more or less suitable option is high-quality stain removers, created specifically for cleaning printed items.
For more information on how to remove stains from red wine, see the next video.
How to wash off?
If you just knocked a glass of wine onto the fabric and are looking for a quick way to save the situation, you can try to wash off the dirt with a napkin or a cotton sponge soaked in water. If this is done on time, then you will not have to wash old stains from the fabric.
Red wine will still leave a slight mark, but if you pre-treat the fabric with a damp cloth, it will be much easier to cope with this problem at home.
If you have the opportunity immediately after such an incident to get to the bathroom, then washing the contaminated fabric will be even easier. Use soap, water and alcohol. The correct and effective composition that really helps you remove traces of wine consists of a spoonful of alcohol, a liter of water and a small piece of laundry soap, which will dissolve after a few minutes.
In this composition, it is necessary to soak a contaminated piece of fabric for twenty minutes, and after the item is wet, you can easily remove dirt by washing the fabric.
But what exactly is not worth doing is in a hurry, trying to wash off red wine from the surface of the fabric with hot water. This can lead to a completely opposite result - the wine only penetrates deeper into the structure of the fabric, and when you try to remove the material in any other way, the stain will only turn blue or green.
Recommendations
Finally, we need to mention a few additional recommendations that will help to cope with wine blots:
- Firstly, if possible, then better to deal with this problem right away. The faster you wash the pigment from the fabric, the easier it will be to remove it completely in the end. Keep in mind that in this emergency situation, hot water is the enemy, and high-quality white wine is a good helper. This trick is advised to the hostesses by the most famous wine lovers around the world - the French.
- It is also worth remembering that you can prevent sprawl spots over a large area. To do this, start cleaning or rinsing off alcohol from the edges, not from the center of the stain.
- All these improvised tools work in most cases, but, alas, not always. Sometimes the stain does not appear at all, or has already eaten so deeply that as long as you do not process it, a light color remains. If such a fate befell your favorite thing that you don’t want to throw away at all, then you can give it the last chance, using dry cleaning services.
As you can see, wine stains are not always a sentence for your favorite thing. Any experienced housewife will cope with the cleaning of such pollution quickly and without panic, but it is important to consider all the recommendations.