This is one of my all-time favorite shirts. It is 100% bamboo cotton and feels so amazing. It is light weight and breathable and works great for layering. One problem:
Yep, that's right. The dreaded yellow pit stain. I have an excessive sweat problem (no, really, I sweat ALL the time, even when I'm cold...) and, sadly, I have a LOT of white shirts that have suffered this fate. Most of them have been tossed in the trash or cut up for rags or projects. Some, (like my awesome flame-sleeve shirt from High School) were rather painful to part with. Others, like this amazingly comfy shirt, I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of. I have spent many times wearing shirts like this and trying to keep my arms at my sides, or wearing extra layers to hide the dreaded pit stain. This particular shirt has looked just like this for more than 4 years. So sad! :(
I came across a few things on Pinterest to try to get rid of deodorant stains (as that is what the yellow stain actually is), but they all did little to nothing. I tried straight bleach. I tried White-Brite. I tried Rit dye (yes, they sell white dye). I tried peroxide and baking soda. NOTHING worked.
Then I found a few blogs that suggested adding dish soap to the peroxide/soda mixture. I tried it. Didn't work. So lame! So my shirts sat in my closet, longing to be worn, along with a grease-stained dress shirt from Riker's side of the closet.
Now here's the kicker: I always use cheap dish soap. It cleans, I don't care. Lately, I have been buying Ajax just because. It is relatively cheaper, but I figured it would work better than the super cheap brand. Riker always gives me a hard time because it doesn't SAY that it fights grease on the bottle (this coming from the man who INSISTS on Bounty paper towel, Huggies diapers, and top quality toilet paper. And to be honest, don't tell him I said this, he has been right so far), so how well can it actually clean?
I found another Pinterest tip for another project that REQUIRED Dawn dish soap and no other brand. I thought that was stupid, but I picked some up anyway as Geordi had dumped 3/4 of my dish soap on the kitchen table and I needed more soap.
With my ultra-concentrated de-greasing Dawn in hand, I figured I would start experimenting with things to see if it was really all it was cracked up to be. I think I have been converted! I used 1/3 of the soap I normally use for dishes. That right there convinced me. Then, I figured, what the heck, I will give this peroxide/baking soda/dish soap thing a try again.
...Dude.
This poor shirt has suffered needlessly for FOUR YEARS!! I am going to go crazy on my white shirts tomorrow! Plus, it even removed the grease stain that has been washed and dried multiple times and then sat in the back of my closet for over a year.
I mixed 2 T baking soda, 3 T hydrogen peroxide, and 1 tsp DAWN dish soap in a small bowl. I spooned it over the stain, scrubbed it like crazy with a scrub brush for about 2 minutes or so (didn't damage my soft shirt at all) and let it sit for about an hour. The blue shirt sat for 1 1/2 hours since I washed it in a separate load, but it didn't affect it at all. Then I laundered it normally.
As a side note: this mixture wound up being more than I needed for both shirts, so I would probably halve that for 1 or 2 items. I think tomorrow I will wind up using it all, if not more, but I have 5 or 6 shirts to treat.
Have fun rescuing your favorite white shirts!!
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