How to Get the Melted Gain Flings Off of a Comforter Without Washing It Again
Jolie Kerr is a cleaning expert and advice columnist. She'll be here every week helping to answer your filthiest questions. Are you dirty? Email her . Are you still dirty? Subscribe to Ask a Clean Person: The Podcast on Acast , iTunes or Stitcher , and like Ask a Clean Person on Facebook .
I messed up. I tend to do household chores the old (probably wrong) ways I've been doing them since I was a kid, both because I'm a full-time, single, very busy dad, and also because I'm a bit lazy/impatient/set-in-my-ways.
I have resisted detergent pods for years because they seem wasteful, and I like to use the same liquid detergent my clothes have been washed in since my mom did laundry when I was a kid.
Anyway, to the point, I was in a hurry and didn't want to wash too many loads of laundry and I overfilled the washer (I know). Also, I had bought those detergent pods this time because there was a sale and I like a good deal. Anyway, the pod didn't dissolve or something and now it's baked into the shirt of my son's Taekwondo dobak. It's the black-trimmed black-belt one with patches sewn onto it, so it's, like, $60 to replace. Please help.
HELP IS HERE. DO NOT WORRY. I'M SHOUTING AT YOU BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER THAT MELTED DETERGENT PODS ARE NO BIG DEAL AT ALL.
This is a super easy fix, seriously! But before we get into what to do about a melted detergent pod situation, I have to do something I don't love doing. I have to tell you that, yeah, you messed up.
It's OK though, because it's not a huge goof. Also, you're doing the rest of the greater laundering public a favor by giving me an excuse to talk about the proper use of detergent pods. It also lets me evangelize a little bit about the use of pods more generally, which I shall do first.
How to Use Laundry Detergent Pods
I was one much like our Letter Writer, in that I clung to my liquid laundry detergent out of both habit and out of a sense of skepticism about those pods. But I finally made the switch, in part because I'm laundromat-dependent and they truly do make my life so much easier (as you might imagine, I do a lot of laundry.)
And while I won't go so far as to say that I think everyone should switch, one of the reasons I do want to encourage people to consider the pod is that having your detergent pre-measured for you will allow you to stop overdosing, which is a thing that most of us are doing when we measure out liquid or powder detergent. It's normal to feel that more detergent = more clean, as I'm fond of saying, but actually the opposite is true: The use of too much detergent will leave behind soap residue, meaning your clothes aren't actually clean when they come out of the wash.
Think of it this way: If someone handed you a drinking glass that had suds all over it, you would be like, "Oh, hey, this isn't clean." Same with your clothes.
So, pods can actually make you better at laundry by taking out the very human instinct that makes us think that more detergent = more clean. The thing is, though, that the order of operations becomes wildly important when dealing with a detergent pod—and it actually becomes another area where the use of pods leads to better laundering practices.
The two things to know about pods are:
- They go into the drum of the machine before the laundry;
- If you overstuff the machine, you're going to be much more likely to end up with a melted pod situation.
Now, the correct practice is that one puts detergent of the liquid or powder variety either in the detergent dispensing compartments (when using a front loader), or in the drum of the machine prior to putting in the laundry (when using a top-loader). But a lot of people don't do that, either because they were taught differently or because they're unaware of how their particular machine is meant to operate. Enter the pod, which takes all of that guesswork out of the equation because you MUST (I'm shouting again so you'll remember!) put a pod into the drum of the washing machine, regardless of whether it's a top- or front-loader (HE included), before the load goes in. You're already so much better at laundry!
But it's really on that second point when the power of the pod can make you so much better at laundry. If you know that the pod needs some room to move around in order to fully dissolve, you will be much less likely to overstuff the washing machine. And that's a thing you shouldn't be doing because, while it may save you a load of laundry, your clothes and sheets and towels and Taekwondo togs aren't actually getting clean if they're so jammed up in the machine that there's no space for the water and detergent to fully penetrate their fibers.
Of course, telling you all that now doesn't really help you out of the jam you've already found yourself in. So let's move right along to the triage part of the festivities.
How to Remove Stains Caused by Detergent Pods
It's pretty easy, actually: Just re-wash the stained garment.
Now, hopefully you realized you had a melted pod sitch on your hands before the item went into the dryer, because it will be much, much easier to get the stain out if the garment in question hasn't been exposed to a dryer's high heat. In that case, just throw the thing back in the wash. Because the garment is already clean, if a bit stained, don't use a full dose of detergent; a very small amount, say an eighth to a quarter of a dose, is all that's needed.
If it had been dried, you can certainly go ahead and re-wash it; it will most likely come out. But if it doesn't, or if you would like to take some additional steps in advance of re-washing just in case, here's what to do.
Start by holding the stained area taut under on-the-hotter-side-of-warm running water. The warm water will help to dissolve any of the membrane from the pod that may be lingering in the fibers, and the force of the water will help to push out the staining from the detergent.
If it looks like the stain is lightening significantly, go ahead and re-wash at this point in the proceedings. If there's still significant staining, apply rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer, which has a high alcohol content, to the stain and allow the garment to sit for 10 minutes, then re-wash. That's all! Fear not: The melted detergent pod is a thing that seems much trickier to reverse than it actually is.
And, as a bonus, you'll probably become a better laundress or launderer by dint of using pods over detergents that don't build in dosing or encourage mindfulness around load size. Hurrah for pods!
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Source: https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/news/a53791/ask-a-clean-person-laundry-detergent-pods/
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