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Citric Acid
Summer is almost here but the temps have already reached high enough to break out the swimming suits and most definitely the sun block. Speaking of sun block we had quite a bad experience with some on Memorial Day weekend.
Mommy in PA and her family decided to go out fishing and were making sure they applied and reapplied their sun block throughout the day as it was a scorcher and being out on the open water only seems to make it that much worse. It was a beautiful day, we caught lots of fish, we went down to the in-laws for a cookout afterwards, it was great.
Then the next day I went to put our clothes in the laundry and I noticed that my son and I had orange stains all over our clothes. We have the occasional iron issue with our water here but these hadn't even made it in the washing machine yet. And then I realized that where the stains were was where the sunblock had been touching : (
I was so bummed...I had only wore the shirt that one time, and now it was ruined...or was it?!?! I did a search online and found others had the same problem, some sunblocks will do this to clothing, I never had this issue before so I read on and on until I happened upon a post about citric acid.
Citric Acid is what canners use when canning tomatoes in place of lemon juice. And another thing...this lady said it would take away the orange stains. Sign me up!!!
So that evening we went to the store and picked up some citric acid (you can find it in the canning department). And another great thing...it was under $3!!!
I got it home and first attempted to make a paste with it and applied it to the shirt directly and rubbed it in...nothing. I knew I should have read more about it but instead decided to just wing it and make a solution to soak it in. I put a couple of tablespoons of the citric acid in a bowl of warm water and submerged the shirt. I am very impatient when it comes to these kind of things and was beginning to think it was a failure when I noticed about ten minutes in that the water was starting to get a yellowish look. I rung the shirt out and resubmerged it and left it in awhile longer. After about 30 minutes the water was definitely yellow and the stains were starting to disappear. I continued the process for quite awhile, not sure exactly how long but it worked.
This got me thinking about a tank top I had that was originally white with gray polka dots that now had orange spots because of the iron in our water. This shirt was surely doomed due to the fact it had already been through the wash and dry cycles many times as I used it only under other shirts. But I decided to give it a try anyway and got very good results with it as well. Now there were a couple spots where it didn't come out completely but enough that I would not be worried about wearing it alone.
I am pretty sure my family thought I was crazy that night because I kept looking for more clothes to try this on. We have used it on probably ten shirts now with very good results. Keep in mind that it is not exactly a miracle and not all orange stains will totally go away but they definitely seem to get lighter anyway.
Here are pictures of my most recent endeavor (this tshirt has been orangeish from our water issues for years):
Above is the t-shirt before the Citric Acid bath. As you can see the iron in our water really messes up whites when the water softener isn't working properly : (
You will need a bowl/bucket (depending on the size of the item) of warm water, Citric Acid (I use about two to three tablespoons), and your item...in this case, the orangeish t-shirt.
This was after just ten minutes of soaking. You can see how yellow the water is turning already.
I left this particular shirt soak over night due to how orange it was but most items you just keep checking until the orange stain is gone or in some cases almost gone. This shirt didn't come totally orange free but it is a lot better than it was : )
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