Mystery stains and how to get rid of them

Back to school. It means different things to all of us, but one thing it means for everyone is the regular appearance of the mystery stain. No one really knows where they all come from or what they are either. But, we’ve still got to get rid of them. This beauty came home to me on the first day back to school a week ago. Happy new school year to me! I don’t know exactly what it is other than the fact that there’s a lot of it. Maybe they were dissecting Martians that day? Who knows.

Paints at school are usually water-soluble and will come out of clothes. Hopefully. You still need to be careful treating them because they can spread all over your other laundry and occasionally leave spots and marks. The last thing you want is for this mystery mess to spread and you want to make sure you get rid of all of it.

Make sure you have plenty of Roux Maison Stain Remover. We can’t overstate this enough. It will make such a huge difference to all of your stain removal efforts all the time. We keep some everywhere. In the laundry room, in the car, in our closets, in our purses and desks. The sooner you spot and treat stains, the more likely they are to come out. Plan ahead and keep some wherever you usually see stains so you can treat them quickly.

Blot any obvious excess of the mystery goop off of your garment and then place enough absorbent paper towels or rags underneath that side to prevent it from bleeding onto the other side of the garment. Next, pre-treat the entire soiled area with Roux Maison Stain Remover. Let it sit for at least 30 minutes up to a couple of hours. This example is not a shirt that would ordinarily need to be hand washed and certainly would not be under normal circumstances. In this case, hand wash anyway. You don’t want this blue sludge getting on anything else or stuck all over your machine. This is a cotton shirt so I used Roux Maison Essential Detergent to wash it. I just squirted a few drops into the running water in the sink. That is all you need to wash such a small garment. I probably only used about ¼ of a capful of detergent. Our detergents are all 6x concentrated so it takes much less than you think to completely wash your clothes.

I swished it all around in the sink and then let it sit and soak for about 20-30 minutes. Rinse it out carefully and thoroughly and don’t wring it out. You don’t want to stretch the fabric or cause it to become misshapen. A great way to dry off anything that you hand wash and don’t want to stretch is to roll it up in a clean towel to remove all of the excess moisture and then just lay it flat to dry.

This method worked like a charm and the giant blue blob is completely gone and the shirt lives to see another day at school and certainly more strange stains. We hope your mystery stains all disappear too.