It’s a laundry day disaster–the cap of a red marker came off in a pocket (above is the view of the inside of the pocket; the outside of the shirt is below) and the shirt may be headed for the ragbag. Or maybe a gesture goes astray and you end up with some ballpoint pen ink on an item of clothing.
Never fear–you can almost certainly get that stain out with, of all things, hairspray. Start with the cheapest, most basic hairspray you can find, unscented and without special stuff in it that’s supposed to be good for your hair, like herbs. You may have to go online to find it, so you might want to have a bottle on hand so you don’t have to wait to treat these kinds of stains.
It doesn’t matter how long the stain has been there, although it’s best if the item has not been washed and dried–especially dried–with the stain on it. Spray the stain until it is thoroughly soaked. For the red marker disaster, I opened the bottle and poured a generous dose of hairspray over the area so that the nooks and crannies in the pocket would not escape the hairspray bath.
Then wash the item as you normally would, but check before you put it in the dryer to see that the stain came out. For a ballpoint pen mark, one wash has always worked for me. The red marker disaster was special–here’s how it looked after one wash.
It was still too pink to count the shirt in the “saved” column, so I soaked the stain with hairspray again and washed the shirt again. Here’s how it looked after two washes
There may be a faint blush at the bottom left of the pocket, or it could just be the light. In person, the shirt looks completely clear of marker stain. Another laundry day victory and a shirt saved! (It’s a small thing, but we have to count our successes where we find them.)
Sisterly Kindness 