How to Make White Clothes White Again

Making white clothes white again has long bedevilled those doing laundry. Some new approaches, and one old one, are likely to restore stained or spotted white clothes to their original whiteness. You may need to take more than one approach, but success is within your reach.

Things You'll Need

• Less-than white clothing
• Bar soap
• Liquid dish detergent
• Enzyme-based pre-soak liquid or powder
• Non-chlorine bleach
• Glass or plastic bowl large enough to hold clothing
• Laundry detergent
• Lemon juice (bottled is fine)
• Salt
• Sunshine
• Patience and a mild fondness for mysteries

Instructions

1. Take action as quickly as you can. Keep the soiled area wet until you can work on it. If your spot contains fats or proteins (lipstick, spaghetti sauce, ice cream, blood), use cool water and rub with bar soap, followed by liquid dish detergent. If the stain is mostly color (fruit juice, grass-stain or wine), use hot water. Often you'll succeed right away. If so, wash and dry garment as usual--assuming your clothing is washable. If you have any doubts, see Step 3.

2. Follow your first steps with enzyme-based presoak, according to directions, and wash garment in warm water with non-chlorine bleach added to detergent if some stains remain after your fast action in Step 1. Sometimes a recent tough stain will require two rounds of this. Most importantly, do not put garment in the clothes dryer until your stain is out. Heat from the dryer can "set" the stain.

3. Treat the stain cautiously if the origins of the stain or the fabric content of clothing--or both--are in doubt. Take the clothing to your dry cleaner (if you find makeup on a pastel fuzzy sweater, for example). The garment may or may not need to be dry-cleaned, but a second opinion from someone experienced in stain-removal and fabrics can add to your strategies or help you decide how far to experiment on your own.

4. Remember that old fabrics often respond best to old methods. This doesn't mean you have to fire up the laundry-boiler and pester your grocer for blueing, but it does mean you may want to use very simple, gentle methods. Especially if the stain is older than you are, try plain bar soap and water, then move on to lemon, salt, and sunshine. Line- or air-dry to check results, as above.

5. Dampen clothes to be whitened with lemon, salt and sunshine. Pour lemon juice (2 cups or more) in the bowl and add 1 cup of salt; stir to dissolve. Put dampened clothing in bowl, soaking up all juice mixture. Hang garment outside in the sun for at least 6 hours or all day (remember, no metal hangers!), until dry and stiff. Rinse out juice and salt in cool water, check your results. For severely stained old cotton or linen garments, you may need to repeat this process several days in a row. If fabric is fragile, rinse thoroughly under cool running water, line dry and then--at last!--iron.

Tips & Warnings

• Once upon a time, fabrics to be bleached by the sun were spread out on bushes or the grass. Somewhere out there is a science magazine article, pointing out that the green of the bushes or grass worked in a complicated way with sunlight to enhance the overall whitening effect.

• You'll notice that chlorine bleach is not listed as a whitener. That's because stains containing iron, rust, and some fruit- and vegetable-juices can actually be made worse by chlorine. It has its uses but is not an automatic solution to all problems. Easy does it.

• Some fabrics with high-synthetic content do not respond very well to any whitening methods because, with age and exposure to light, they undergo a chemical process called "optical darkening." Sheer curtains are a frequent example of this, and you may just have to hit the sales and start over.

• Antique and old fabrics are best gently washed by hand with as little complex chemical-whitening as possible. Fibers are already fragile and will be further stressed by heavy-handed treatment.