Of oily stains and other stories

Are cooking oil and car grease making your clothes unwearable? You’re probably not using the right stain removing products!

The world over, we use various oils in cooking and seasoning our food. A splash of herb oil on our salad, a generous helping of olive oil in our hummus, and with vegetable oil creating the base for a curry, cooking oil enhances the flavour of our food and makes it easier to eat. The oil we ingest also has the ability to lubricate our body’s joints.

But cooking oil can also splash on to your clothes and leave behind an ugly mark. You need not be in direct contact with cooking oil – even the grease dripping off your pizza or burger is enough! Not only does oil cause discolouration on the clothes, it also alters the texture of the fabric. You may not have noticed a tiny dribble of oil on your clothing as you cooked or ate, but when you washed your clothes and dried them, you were puzzled by a strange greyish mark on your clothes. That was caused by a splash of oil.

Even worse are grease stains left behind by car oil. They are dark in colour and quite tough to clean. It would seem like nothing in the world has any effect on them! But if you’re ready to throw in the towel when it comes to grease stains, all hope is not lost yet. You’ve probably not been using the correct stain removal technique!

Here’s how you rid your clothes off grease stains forever:

Do not rinse. Other stains caused by chocolate, grass and ketchup should be rinsed at once, but oily stains do not react the same way with water. Water does not loosen an oily stain as much it loosens other stains.

Blot out the oil. If you spill oil or grease on your clothes, blot it out gently using a tissue paper or a white cotton cloth. Do not rub or you will spread the oil further. Keep blotting till the cloth comes away clean.

Use a stain removing gel. Apply a reliable stain removing gel directly on the grease stain and wait for at least five minutes. The gel gets to work on the stain and begins to lift it out of the fabric. If the stain is large and dried, fill half a bucket with warm water, and soak the garment with a measure of the stain removing gel. You may need to soak the garment for a minimum of one hour.

Wash as usual. Wash the stained fabric in the washing machine. At this stage, the stain will have considerably lightened. Add a measure of the stain removing gel to your clothing load. Once washed, the stain will be eliminated forever.