While few things are as nice as a clean, pressed cotton shirt, nothing is as grimy-looking as sweat stains on it instead. The yellowed, smelly residue left over from one wear or more can almost render a shirt useless forever. However, with the steps presented in this article, getting stains out of a cotton shirt will be no sweat.
Instructions
1. Saturate the area with detergent. Find the sweat-stained areas and saturate them with detergent. You want to make sure the area is thoroughly covered and soaked with liquid detergent. Any type of detergent will do but if the shirt is colored, make sure the detergent is color-safe.
2. Add hot water and lather. Once the areas are saturated, add hot water and begin to rub the area, folded onto itself, briskly. You want to create suds and lather in the area of the stain. Keep looking to see if the stain begins to disappear. You do not need to wet the entire shirt.
3. If it is a white shirt, add bleach with detergent. If the cotton shirt is white, feel free to add less than 1/4 cup of bleach to the areas as well. Bleach will quickly aid in removing the sweat stains as well as the detergent. Make sure not to add too much bleach as the chemical can break down the actual shirt itself, leaving weakened spots and eventual holes.
4. Throw it in the washer and put it on the longest cycle for additional cleaning. Let the washer fill with enough water to cover the shirt if it is the only item present.
5. Allow it to air dry. By letting the shirt air dry, you avoid cooking the stains into the shirt by drying it if they did not come out initially. If the areas are still sweat stained, repeat the detergent, water and bleach combination until the stains are removed.
Tags: sweat, stains, cotton, cotton shirt, with detergent, make sure, shirt white, sweat stains
