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You’ve snoozed your alarm one too many times and now you’re going to be late for work. In your haste, you’ve managed to miss your toothbrush and now your shirt’s covered in toothpaste—great! You don’t have time to deal with the mishap now, but you will have to when you get home. So how do you get toothpaste stains out? We have the answer!
The method for removing toothpaste stains is practically the same no matter what type of toothpaste you’re using, but there are a few little tweaks here and there.
Use a blunt object (like the edge of a spoon or a credit card) to carefully remove any excess toothpaste from the garment. Try to get under the blob and lift it up rather than scraping it, as you could make the toothpaste stain bigger.
Take a damp cloth and gently blot the area to get as much toothpaste off as possible. Dip the cloth in liquid detergent such as Persil® ProClean® Original scent and work into the stain. Simply wash the garment as you normally would once you’ve completed these steps.
Gel toothpaste might look cool with its translucent green or blue coloring, but this dye is a lot less fun when it gets on your favorite white shirt. Simply follow the same instructions as written above for regular toothpaste. Once the item of clothing is finished in the washing machine, hang it out to dry in the sun. This will help to bleach the stain and get your garment sparkly white again. If toothpaste stains are still visible after washing, repeat these steps, but first begin with a pre-treat stain remover such as Zout.
Whitening toothpastes contain a mild bleaching agent to get your pearly whites sparkling. Since there’s bleach involved, you can imagine what happens if it lands on a dark top, for example. Deal with it as quickly as possible because once your garment is bleached, there’s no going back. This also involves the same steps as with regular toothpaste, but the difference is that you should act fast before the bleach has time to act.
These toothpaste removal methods cannot be used on clothes that are labeled as dry-clean only since they should not come into contact with water. Instead, carefully remove any large blobs of toothpaste with a dull knife or spoon to prevent the paste from soaking deeper into the fabric. Do not rub the stain into the fabric.
If you don't have time to take the clothing to the dry cleaner, there are dry-cleaning stain removal products that can be used instead.
If you’ve just run out of laundry detergent and need a quick fix so your clothes aren’t permanently stained, there is another way to get toothpaste stains out according to many online sources.
Scrape off as much of the toothpaste as you can and then use a clean rag to rub the dish soap onto the stain (a teaspoon of liquid dish soap in one cup of water should be more than enough).
Now that you know how to remove toothpaste stains, you might want to prepare yourself in case any other surprise stains should occur. Our other stain-related articles will be useful for this, such as how to get chocolate stains out of a carpet, how to get oil stains out and how to remove deodorant stains.
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