Tested Ways to Deal with Yellow Sweat Stains

Sweat stains are bastards to deal with. In many cases they are unavoidable, so however careful you are, do not seek ways to prevent sweating – it is merely a waste of time and will only cause disappointment. The better approach to this is to find a way to deal with the stain after it appears. Sweat stains, especially the yellow perspiration ones, leave a nasty mark on the clothes and the colour, caused by a mixture between urea and salts – that looks very ugly on you and is not a pleasant sight. That colour is not dealt with after you throw it in the washing machine with the rest of your clothes, and it cannot be scraped off like dirt during carpet cleaning. And, for heaven’s sake, do not add bleach! Here is the proper and tested way to deal with such stains.

What you need are plain and simple home cleaners. Pick your favourite from baking soda, rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, aspirin pills or any plain dish detergent. Before making use of any of them, get a sponge and wet it with warm water. Now moist the problematic spot on the clothing you want cleaned. The reason you want to use warm and not hot water is because such stains are usually caused by sweat interacting with the aluminium found in many perfumes or deodorants, and adding hot water to it will set the stain. The only way to use hot water is if you dip the item in cold water first, treat it with whatever you are planning to treat it with, and then soak it in hot water to purge the stain completely.

Back to the treatment tool. You need to make a mixture of warm water and one of the listed cleaning agents above. Mix them in a separate container. The ratios you need to follow are: 1-1 for the liquid agents (rubbing alcohol, vinegar, dish detergent), 3-1 for baking soda, and 3 or 4 aspirin pills. Baking soda should make a paste-like mixture, and the former should stay in liquid form. If this is how it does happen, then you are doing it right.
So far so good. Now comes the time to apply the newly made cleaners to the stain.

• For the soda paste, rub it into the problematic part using an old toothbrush, or any kind of brush you can find. If it is a weaker stain, you should already be witnessing it fade. You may add vinegar to your own risk to produce a bubbly effect that will strengthen the purging, but remember – vinegar has acidic properties, and weaker fabric will tear with so many cleaning agents. Your job is not done with that, though. And do not immediately wash out the paste. Instead, wait for it to sit for about an hour, or for the whole day if the stain is particularly bad. This way you give the cleaner time to act upon the stain. After that, wash the paste off with hot water – the hottest that will not cause damage to the fabric of your clothing. If the stain is still not gone, you can repeat the process – you can be sure that the treatment works.

• For the liquid cleaners, simply soak the stain in the created mixture and let it sit for 15 to 30 minutes. Darker stains will take more time. After that, wash over with the hottest water the fabric will allow without being damaged, and the stain should be history.

Removing the pesky yellow stains is not a hard job, it hardly requires the help of professional cleaners. All you need to do is be calm, go to the kitchen and find all the solutions you need in the nearest cabinet.