Ask a Clean Person: Sweat, Dye, Must, and Onions
Tags: Advice, Cleaning

Jolie. Please. Once and for all. Yellow armpit stains on shirts. Shirts of all kinds. Fancy, beautiful silk shirts! (Ugh, why am I so gross.) Is there any hope?

First things first, you are not gross. No, you are not and I won’t stand for you beating yourself up over the behavior of your glands, so just hush that fuss.

Let’s put your silk shirts aside for a moment and talk about getting those pit stains out of cotton and other washable fabrics. There are a whole boatload of weird and wonderful ways to treat sweat stains that employ everything from baking soda to crushed up aspirin. I know! So great, right? There’s also apparently a sweat stain removal product called Pit Stop, which is HILARIOUS to me. (I have never claimed to have a highbrow or refined sense of humor.) I know nothing of it, but maybe someone reading here does and can provide a product review?

The most commonly recommended way to remove yellow sweat stains is to mix up a solution made up of 1 tablespoon white vinegar to ½ cup of water. Soak your soiled shirt in the solution for about a half hour and then launder as usual, remembering to use cold water only.

When it comes to silk shirts, you need to be super careful because of the delicate nature of the fabric. I would suggest taking the item to your dry cleaner as soon as humanly possible for you — again, remembering our “get to it immediately” mantra — and showing the attendant exactly where and what the stain is. If you’re really an overactive sweater, you may want to eschew silk shirts entirely; they breathe not at all and show stains like the dickens. They’re like a pretty but temperamental girlfriend whose good looks can only take her so far before her many dreadful qualities get her dumped.

One last thing: if the shirts in question are white, you might have a moment where you think, “Oh la la la, I’ll just bleach it!” DO NOT DO THIS. Pit stains are protein stains, and bleach will render a protein stain even more yellow.

Is there a good way of getting red hair dye out of various bathroom surfaces? No matter how vigilant I am, I will always find a missed splotch somewhere the next day, by which point it has had oodles of time to stain and won’t come off. After a few rounds of this, I start to worry about looking axe-murdery and gross. Is there a trick or will I just have to start dying my hair on the roof/covered in newspapers?

Oh lady, have you ever come to the right Clean Person! I’ve been dyeing my hair red for 20 years. TEN YEARS, I MEAN TEN YEARS.

I know your question is specifically about the one spot that you manage to miss every single time but first let me say: I do a ton of prep before coloring my hair. I have Soft Scrub and a damp sponge on hand, I line the countertop with a layer of paper towels on which to set my coloring utensils, and as soon as the headful of dye is applied I eyeball every surface for splotches of red goo.

That said, there is always that one damn splat of dye that gets missed, giving it plenty of time to become one with your bathroom. If the stain is on the wall or another non-tile/porcelain surface use our beloved Magic Erasers to get it out. For porcelain, a couple of applications of Soft Scrub should take the stain out. (Splurt a blurb out directly onto the spot and let it sit for 10 or so minutes before wiping down.) For tile, spray with bleach solution or bleach-based cleaning product, get at the soiled area with a short-handled scrub brush, and then let the cleaning solution sit for 10–15 minutes before rinsing with warm water and your scrub brush.

Any thoughts on how to de-funkify a mattress? Despite not believing myself to be the sweatiest lady on the block or having any memory of unfortunate spills, and though I am a dedicated sheet-washer, I feel like my mattress sometimes smells a little grody (my suspicion is that it’s where all the wafting kitchen smells in my doorless bedroom end up hiding). It’s not a terrible smell, maybe a little musty and not overly pleasant. Thoughts? To add difficulty, some parts of the internet have instructed me to sprinkle various powders then vacuum, but I am rugless and wood-floored and have no vacuum to speak of. Any solutions?

I’m actually a little disappointed that the first Q-asker didn’t have a problem with smells because there’s a product out there called ExStink that I feel would be so satisfying for her to use on her mattress. But you’re here and so yay, you get to use this stuff! It’s a powder, so you’ll sprinkle it all over the mattress and leave it for an hour to pull the smells up. Normally, you’d vacuum the powder up, but since you don’t have one you should get a new mini dustbrooom, something along these lines, and brush the powder off. And do buy a new one — it won’t cost that much and I don’t want you using a dirty broomlet on your bed. If there’s any extra powder the brush didn’t get off the mattress, dampen a cloth and run it over the surface to pick up the excess. You can also run the same set of tricks using plain old baking soda.

You might also want to consider buying a handheld vacuum; a quick review of Amazon turned up a number of pretty affordable options, including one that is shaped like a shark. You should absolutely buy that and then use it to menace your pets.

If you don’t want to use a powder option, you could also spray the mattress with Lysol or any other similar disinfecting spray. Just remember not to saturate the mattress and give it plenty of time to dry before resheeting.

Would love some assistance with the following quandaries:

1) How to remove the scent of raw onions from a wooden cutting board; and

2) How to remove lingering food odors from reusable plastic storage containers.

You’re on, lady! Actually this is one where I’ll ask the commentariat to wow us with their weird and wonderful methods, but in my official capacity as A Clean Person here are two tried and true approaches:

1. To get the smell of onion out of a cutting board, sprinkle baking soda and kosher salt on the stinky surface and then rub it down with the juicy side of a half a lemon. Let it sit for 15 minutes and then wash with warm soapy water.

2. To get the stank out of Tupperware, fill the container with white vinegar, let stand for 30 minutes — longer for really strong smells — and then wash as usual.

Okay, your turn now!

Previously: Understanding Your Jeans.

Jolie Kerr is not paid to endorse any of the products mentioned in this column, but she sure would be very happy to accept any free samples the manufacturers care to send her way! Are you curious to know if she’s answered a question you have? Do check out the archives, listed by topic. More importantly: is anything you own dirty?