Removing toothpaste from clothing
We have two types of toothpaste in our house. I prefer one and The Husband prefers another.
My girlfriend Monica recently asked me if I knew how to get toothpaste out of clothing.
Don’t you hate when you are dressed and you brush your teeth and you get a spot of toothpaste on your top? You rub and rub and it doesn’t come off.
This is definitely frustrating. And either you don’t want to change, you don’t have time or you have to change your item of clothing. And who wants to do that? Especially if you have the perfect outfit on.
According to the website How to Clean Stuff, many toothpastes contain titanium dioxide powder which is what makes them white. When it gets on clothing, it is impossible to dissolve without the presence of a detergent.
The site gives step by step instructions on how to successfully remove the toothpaste stain. Essentially you take a damp cloth and rub it on the spot, mix a few drops of laundry detergent in water, dip the cloth into the sudsy water and rub into the spot. Once the detergent penetrates the toothpaste stain, it should release and be removed.
If the piece of clothing is dry clean only, the above method should not be used as the water can leave a stain. There are dry cleaning stain removal products available by Dryel that can be used on these pieces.
A Yahoo! article I found gives all sorts of tips to remove toothpaste stains. It also gives a lot of warnings on how to not make the stain worse or create another stain.
One major warning the article mentions is if the toothpaste you are using has dyes, such as blue or green gel and if you use gel soaps or detergents with dyes they could react and make the stain worse Also, check on your toothpaste and make sure it doesn’t have a bleaching agent.
This Good Housekeeping article gives tips on removing toothpaste from fabric, upholstery and carpet. The fabric tip is fine if you aren’t planning on wearing it immediately after getting the toothpaste stain. I think you can follow the upholstery tip, just with a smaller amount of detergent and water.
Next time this happens to me I plan to mix a little detergent with water and rub and hopefully remove.