Welcome back to the Gentleman's Gazette! In today's video, we're going to be
discussing a set of techniques that are absolutely vital for keeping your
clothes in wearable condition as long as possible, how to remove any type of stain
you might encounter. This video is part of a series on garment care; the previous
installments in the series dealt with how to remove the musty smell from
vintage clothing how to wash and maintain wool sweaters and some cheap
and easy laundry hacks, you can find those videos by clicking the banners at
the right. Today's video is the final part in this series and as we mentioned
at the top, it covers stain removal. No matter how careful a man may be in his
day-to-day life with his clothes, the occasional stain is inevitable whether
it be from a plate of spaghetti and impromptu tire change on the side of the
road or really any time spent with a toddler, you're bound to encounter a
tough stain at some point. Fortunately, however, stain removal doesn't have to be
a chore or involve the dry cleaner. As long as you understand some basic
chemistry you'll be all set. To begin, here's a breakdown of the four basic
types of stains you're generally going to encounter. Stains can be organic or
inorganic in nature and from there can be oily or not. In other words, the four
types of stains are organic, inorganic, oily organic, and oily inorganic. As
examples of each of these, stains from living organisms including plants are
considered organic, things like grass stains, blood, or red wine. Meanwhile,
stains from manmade materials are inorganic, things like ink, solvents, or
machine dust. Oily organics are things like barbecue sauce or sweat stains and
oily inorganics are generally cosmetics like lipstick. With that said, there are a
few exceptions as far as treatment is concerned. Coffee and tea are treated
like inorganics, for example. For such exceptions and really for any case, it
never hurts to do a little bit of searching on the
web but in general, here are the best techniques we've found for getting rid
of all of these different types of stains. First, standard organic stains are
best treated with hot water and a substance that's commonly marketed as
bleach alternative. Bleach alternative and oxygen bleach are marketing names
for a substance that's scientifically known as sodium percarbonate or SPC for
short. It's the active ingredient in cleaners like Oxiclean but whereas
those types of commercial cleaners usually contain fillers, SPC is most
effective in its pure form. Here's a related point as long as we're talking
about bleach alternative, never use conventional chlorine bleach on your
clothes again. Not for stains and not for whitening. Most white clothes are
actually treated with agents referred to as optical whiteners or optical
brighteners. Chlorine bleach, in addition to being harmful to the body if ingested
or with prolonged contact, can also remove these optical whiteners from
clothing actually making them look less white and can damage the fibers of
clothes over time. So bleach alternative or SPC as we'll refer to it throughout
the rest of the video is the way to go. For treatment of an organic stain, start
by laying a towel down on your work surface. Actually, for any of the types of
stains we're about to cover, putting down a clean towel is a good idea. Next, add a
bit of SPC, we used about 1/2 capful to a basin of hot water and stir to
completely dissolve it. Then, thoroughly wet the stained area of the garment in
question with the hot water and SPC mixture. Lay the garment flat on the
towel and gently blot at the stain with a clean cotton cloth, wash cloth, or towel.
You can also use a garment safe stain brush on most fabrics as we're doing
here. The exceptions to this being wool and silk, because these fabrics are often
more delicate, we'll cover them separately later on in the video. After
pre treating your stain this way, it can be
washed as normal in your machine and if you'd like, you can also add a bit more
SPC directly to the drum of the machine during the wash process. Next, standard
inorganic stains like ink are best removed by the use of a solvent. Rubbing
alcohol or more technically isopropyl alcohol is best here. Although you can
also use different substances like plain vodka. Applying the alcohol to the stain
with a spray bottle works well after which point it can be gently blotted.
Then wash as normal and as before, you can add some SPC to the machine if you'd
like. All oily stains whether they're organic or inorganic in nature are best
treated by first dealing with the oil. As oils often surround other staining
substances, we'll be looking at these stains sort of like a stain sandwich
that is oil layer, stain layer, oil layer. To remove the first oil layer, fill a
spray bottle with a solution of 50 percent white vinegar and 50 percent
water. Spray the oil layer of the stain and then blot. Actually, using a stain
brush may work best here. Next, apply a bit of water along with laundry
detergent or better yet soap flakes and scrub again to deal with the main stain
layer and for the final oil layer, spray again with your water and vinegar
solution and blot or scrub a final time. To finish here, you guessed it! Wash as
normal with optional SPC. Finally, in this section, we're going to pay special
attention to sweat stains as they're often a combination of oily organics and
the aluminum found in many commercial antiperspirants. They're best treated
with a combination of SPC and a stain solution. Apply a few drops of the stain
solution to the sweat stain then add a pinch of SPC, you should create a paste
with either your finger or your stain brush. Let this paste sit for at least 20
minutes or longer if you prefer and then rinse it out with hot water.
In fact, boiling water poured from a teakettle works best here then
wash as normal with optional SPC. Here's a related tip to prevent stains from
returning to these garments, you can spray the affected areas with your
vinegar and water solution before washing them as normal in your machine.
So what about treating stains on wool and silk garments? As we said earlier,
these types of garments are usually more delicate in nature so you won't want to
apply SPC to them directly or scrub them with a stain brush. For these fabrics,
it's best to pre-soak for a little while in water with a bit of stain solution
and then wash as normal. Of course, these garments, if placed in a washing machine,
should be individually and tightly packed in mesh washing bags. You can add
a bit of SPC to the drum of the machine while washing if you'd like since the
low concentration and minimal direct contact won't be overly abrasive. For
more information on washing silk wool and other delicate fabrics, you can take
some tips from our previous video on washing sweaters here. Here are a few
final tips for today. Whichever stain type and consequential
removal method you're dealing with, know that you shouldn't expect to see a
complete clearing up of the stain as you're scrubbing it. Rather aim for about
an 80% reduction in stain visibility and then machine wash, the rest should come
out. As we said in our sweater video, washing on warm and with the express
setting should be sufficient for most garments and you can always add a little
bit of SPC to the drum if you so choose. Finally, it may well be that a given
stain isn't solely one type of the stains we've covered here today.
Therefore, if you've tried one removal method and the stain hasn't completely
come out, just try one or more of the other removal methods and you should
ultimately be successful. As an example of having to use multiple methods, we
found both the fountain pen ink and the lipstick that we used for demonstration
purposes in this video to be especially resilient.
They didn't come out with each of the first methods we recommended so we used
a few other methods to get them out. We think that they got to about the 80%
stain removal threshold we were looking for and putting them through the washing
machine should get the rest of the stains out. With these techniques in your
arsenal then, stains should no longer pose a significant threat to you or your
garments and you should be able to take care of them completely from the comfort
of your own home. As we said at the start of the video, be sure to take a look at
the three previous installments in this laundry and garment care series here.
Which of the techniques we laid out today were you most surprised by and do
you have any alternative techniques for stain removal that we didn't mention
here? If so let us know in the comments section below and as always don't forget
to subscribe to the Gentleman's Gazette YouTube channel and hit the little bell
icon so these videos will come straight to your inbox.
in today's video I'm wearing an outfit that might be typically worn around the
house taking a day to do a little bit of necessary garment care my medium blue
cardigan is especially informal given its two front pockets I'm wearing it
over a shirt from Charles Charles Tyrwhitt that features a gingham pattern in blue and
white the shirt does have French cuffs but I'm wearing them configured in a
barrel style today so that they fit better under the sleeves of the sweater
my cufflinks are vintage silver ones and they feature a simple geometric pattern
that complements the gingham pattern of my shirt
well my plain brown trousers harmonized well with my shirt and cardigan and on
that note you can check out our video on how to effectively pair brown and blue
here to go along with this color scheme my socks are plain blue in color but
they do feature a subtle stripe in their weave the outfit today is rounded out by
my dark oxblood penny loafers which are informal in nature and also harmonize
well color wise I'm not really wearing very many accessories today aside from
the vintage cufflinks but if you'd like to take a look at some other types of
accessories cuff links as well as tie pins collar
clips boutonnieres pocket squares and so on
just take a look at the Fort Belvedere shop here