Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cleaning and clothing

Smells like teens' spirits

chalbe — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:13:01 -0800

Help me get the vomit smell out of a cotton canvas messenger bag. Long story short, I woke up one morning to find my cotton convas messenger bag covered in vomit. It must have been soaking in it for at least 7 hours. After some quick googling, I tried the following steps over two weeks to clean it but the smell still persists:

1. Washing machine with detergent and hung dry
2. Dry cleaned
3. Sprayed all over with Febreeze
4. Soaked in hot water with vinegar for 6 hours
5. 2nd trip in washing machine + extra vinegar and hung dry
6. And lastly, two days left in the freezer to try and draw out the smell

What am I missing? Is my bag doomed to a life of smelling like an awful mix of vomit, Febreeze, and vinegar?

More Efficient Laundry System?

jacksides — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:08:54 -0800

How do you keep your laundry system running smoothly in a bi-level (or larger) house? I want to hear how others have set up hampers, etc or otherwise established a system to efficiently move clean and dirty clothes to and from the laundry room. Growing up, we had laundry chutes (one on each floor) that we used to send all of our dirty clothes down to the basement. It was a great system - clothes never piled up anywhere; it was so easy to just throw everything down (and the laundry fairy -- okay, my mom -- did laundry almost every day ... how she kept up with it, I'll never know...).

Now that we have a small family (1 year old + 3 year old + two parents) living in a bi-level townhouse, it seems like clothes pile up in corners constantly (especially upstairs). I've tried putting a hamper on the landing to create a centralized place for the dirty clothes upstairs, but that doesn't seem to be enough (plus, when we bring the full hamper down to the laundry room, it seems to sit down there for awhile ... which means clothes upstairs start piling up on the floor again ... aggggggggggh). When we do get the clothes clean, we tend to use the laundry room as our closets -- just grabbing what we need when we need it ... no one actually wants to put away an armful of hanging clothes or a whole laundry basket. Part of it is laziness, I'm sure, and part of it is that it just seems like I always have a baby on my hip, so having two free hands and a few minutes to go upstairs and put clothes back in my drawers is rare.

This seems simple enough, but I'm sure someone out there has a hack or two. I'd like to hear how other people have set up a productive laundry system -- from how/where you set up your dirty clothes repositories to how often you actually do your laundry. Are you on a schedule? Do you just do it when you run out of clothes? Do you return the clean clothes back upstairs immediately after washing them?

Any tried and true solutions/methods for removing deodorant build-up from the armpit area of T-shirts?

karizma — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:35:08 -0800

Any tried and true solutions/methods for removing deodorant build-up from the armpit area of T-shirts? On several of my T-shirts I have a noticeable build-up of deodorant in the armpit area. It makes the fabric somewhat rigid and definitely unsightly. I have tried stain stick, hot water, detergent rubbed into the area, multiple washings, etc. - and nothing seems to work. I really like these shirts and it would be a shame to have to throw them out. Thanks!

Don't Wanna Wreck Grandma's Closet

Medieval Maven — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 19:28:59 -0800

I need Cleaning Vintage Clothing 101. I have acquired, as part of costuming a show, a number of vintage pieces in varying conditions (mostly excellent to good condition). They all need to be cleaned and pressed. I am unsure how to to proceed, as this doesn't seem like the sort of thing one simply drops at the drycleaners and trips away thinking All Will Be Well. Do I look for a particular sort of drycleaners? One that advertises a particular sort of service? Do I soak the garments in a weak solution of Oxy Clean or similar? Does what sort of fabric it is matter?

For context, I have worked with "vintage" clothes before, but these are from the 40's, and the other things I've dealt with have been from the 60's and 70's primarily, so not as old and usually of manmade fibers. I'm dealing with crepe, satin, linen, vintage millinery (no, really), tulle, lace, rayon, wool, and cotton.

My jacket stinks of puke

lou — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 12:38:19 -0800

How do I get the vomit out of a wool jacket? My friend had a little too much to drink one night and threw up all over my wool jacket. I tried to rinse it out with water in the sink but I didn't want to soak it because it's supposed to be dry cleaned. So a few days later I took it to the dry cleaners and they did everything they could, but when I got it back it still reeked and there's an oily feel to the wool where the vomit is. So. Did I do something wrong? Did the cleaners do something wrong? Is there anything else I can do? Or is the jacket ruined? (Yes, the smell still bothers me and I'll bet everyone can smell it too.)

Collar Stains

jasper411 — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:34:03 -0800

Clothing stain filter: In addition to t-shirts, I have a number of shirts with a regular collar (non-button down). After I wear them for a while, EVERY ONE of them gets this little kind of brownish stain at in the front where the collar comes to a point. It looks kind of like rust. These stains are *really* hard to remove, and resistant to most stain removers. There are no similar stains anywhere on the shirt.

But my question is - what the heck is that stain? Where does it come from? Is it just me? Or is this a problem that all people who wear shirts with collars deal with but never talk about? Is this a message from the gods that I should only wear t shirts or only dark colored collared shirts?

BTW most of my shirts are wrinkle free cotton/poly blends, and they usually have one of those clear plastic collar stay things inside the material to keep the collar straight and pointy.