How I Removed an Olive Oil Stain from a T-Shirt (Hint: Sometimes the Easiest Way Works the Best!)
At the very end of the summer, I somehow ended up getting an olive oil stain on one of my t-shirts during dinner.
I don’t remember it happening, and didn’t even notice it until I took my clothes out of the dryer to hang them up and saw a big stain.
I only know it’s olive oil because that’s the only kind of oil I use in my cooking.
At the time I figured that the stain was already set from being in the dryer, and that I wasn’t going to wear a short sleeve shirt for a long time, so I had plenty of time to research how to get an olive oil stain out of clothes.
So the t-shirt sat there, and sat there, and every so often I’d look at it and go “oh yeah! I need to look that up.” Then I’d move on to something else, forgetting about it for another few months.
Well, this past week I saw it sitting there, and realized that I’m now wearing short sleeves fairly often, and really like the shirt and want to be able to wear it again, since I only bought it last season.
At this point the stain had been there for months. So I was sure that regular stain remover wouldn’t work.
So I searched all over online to see what people used to get olive oil stains out of shirts.
Most popular was WD-40 along with other things.
So I started with the most complicated, figuring it would work the best.
I put WD-40 on the stain, then put baking soda over it, rubbing it trying to get the stain up. Then I put Dawn dish detergent (ok, I have some other brand, don’t even remember which one, but I figured they’re all the same) on top, and then put it in the dryer.
Took it out about a half hour later, and guess what?
Not only was the stain not gone, but it was even bigger now!
Did a little more research and found some people said that WD-40 leaves stains on clothes….great!
So next I tried WD-40 again, this time with nothing else…but I was careful, so I put the WD-40 in a disposable cup, and used a q-tip to brush it only on the parts with the stain.
I let it sit for a half hour, and then washed it.
I took it out of the washer….and still had a stain! At least it wasn’t any bigger this time.
At this point I was really frustrated, thinking that the shirt might be lost to me forever.
So out of desperation, I figured I’d try Shout, the stain remover.
I sprayed it all over the stain…and left it in the sink for about a half of an hour.
I put it in the washer…and about a half of an hour later, I took it out…
…and guess what?
The stain was completely gone!
Of course, I didn’t bother taking a picture of this…because why on earth would the stain remover have worked when nothing else was working? Sigh…
Talk about nuts. The easiest method worked perfectly fine. You can’t tell there was ever a stain there. I should have just done this in the first place, but I was SO sure that it wouldn’t work after all of those months, especially on an oil stain.
Moral of the story? Stain removers (and I can speak for Shout specifically) work WELL! Always try it first, before resorting to a bunch of other crazy stuff that might or might not work.
Enjoy,
