A Motherhood Necessity - How to Remove OLD spit up stains!

Okay - so we dug out the baby girl clothes from under Abigail's bed - you know - the ones that have been there for 7 years!  Well, as you can imagine, even though Abi was not a very spitty baby some of the cutest outfits that we put her in ALL the time were terribly stained!  So I began the task of trying to get those stains out. I remember that I've had this dilemma before but never have the clothes sat for 7 YEARS! And honestly, the boys either didn't wear the clothes, or wore the onesies stained! (sorry boys!)

And I'll confess, some of you Mommy's might already know this trick, but I was so blown away with it, I just had to blog it!

I wish I would have taken pictures of what the clothes looked like before so you could see the comparison, but here is a picture of what one outfit looks like now:

The top portion up by the pink ruffle was completely yellowed.

You can see it is now sparkly white!

I was utterly amazed at how well they turned out.  We had about a dozen shirts/outfits that we treated in an attempt to save some of our favorites!

Before I tell you what DID work...let me tell you what I tried that didn't:  Oxiclean soak, lemon juice - a HUGE  no-no, bleach wash, peroxide, and plain line drying!

What did work was Baking Soda and Vinegar with a Sun Dry!

I thought all hope was lost - especially after the lemon juice fiasco that made the dress pictured below turn completely ORANGE! (again - so sorry I don't have a picture of that to show you but I won't repeat it to prove it...lol) I was so sad :0( - it was one of my favorites and Abi wore it ALL the time!  But then I tried the baking soda/vinegar and was stunned at how well it worked.  (I did have to do the baking soda/vinegar TWICE on the dress below to get it as 'clean' as it is now.)

The lemon juice reacted terribly and even the little flowers at the top
were orange!  I was so sad!

But as you can see...it is all white and pink again!
Sorry about the shadows.

What you do:  Generously sprinkle baking soda over stained area and rub it in. Liberally pour vinegar over stain and let it bubble.  Lay a blanket on the grass outside and place clothes stain side up on a sunny day. When dry - or stain has disappeared - bring inside and wash normally.

I tried to hang the clothes on the line, but they need more DIRECT sunlight, so it worked better to have them laying on a blanket than hanging on the line.

I'm not sure if this method would work with other stains, but I am seriously going to try it on a few of our other clothes that I'd like to salvage.  I'm thinking this is a protein stain remover though, but I might be wrong.

Copyright © 2012 All Rights Reserved MMFarmlife - Melanie Schlatter