Ink Stain Removal

On Tuesday, my husband washed his uniforms for work, 3 shirts and 2 pairs of pants.  While they were tumbling in the dryer, he heard a strange noise.  Upon opening the dryer, he found that he had left a pen in his pocket, which had EXPLODED all over his uniforms and the inside of the dryer.  Luckily his clothes were not 100% dry, but there were ink spots all over.  When he asks me if I know how to get ink stains out, of course my first response is, "Google it!" 

I typed in "ink stain removal" and started to look at all the results.  Most of them said to try rubbing alcohol.  So I started with that (in a hidden area, of course) and not only did it make the color fade, it was useless!!  Then I tried nail polish remover, which worked, but it took forever!  Maybe if I was dealing with just one ink spot, I would have stuck with it.  But these clothes were SPLATTERED with ink!!

I told my husband to call a dry cleaner to see if they could get the stain out and how much it would cost.  One store, just laughed at him.  Another told him they could not guarantee the stains would come out, but it would cost $10-$18 for three shirts.  Now if I wasn't trying to save every penny, I would have suggested we try the dry cleaner and if it does not work, then buy new uniforms, which cost $70 for one shirt.  We were looking at $240's worth of damage.  The pants were dark enough that you could not really see the stains.

Now let me go back for just a moment...When we pulled the uniforms from the dryer, I knew they needed to stay wet, so I stuck the one I was working on in a sink full of "OxiClean" and a little color-safe bleach.  Well in the middle of working on the ink stains, I took a break for lunch and left some stain remover on a couple spots to see what would happen.  After lunch, the stain remover had done nothing, but after rising the shirt off I realized there were much fewer stains on half of the shirt that had been soaking in the "OxiClean" and color-safe bleach.  After showing my husband, we decided to let all the shirts soak in a tub full of "OxiClean" and color-safe bleach.  Later that night, we checked the shirts and they were looking much better.  So we made a new batch and let them soak overnight.

The next morning, there were NO ink stains left.  I washed the uniforms again and they looked as good as NEW!!!  Thank God for "OxiClean" and color-safe bleach.  I wish I had taken pictures to show you the results.