The seagull dress that nearly broke me

This week, group admin Katie shares about the mystery stain that tested her laundry skills.

I used to assume nappies were the hardest laundry to wash. These days, my nemesis is muddy socks, spaghetti bolognese and, worst of all, chocolate ice cream.

My daughter’s early learning centre has a rack inside the foyer for an informal clothes swap. Near the end of December, I spotted a blue dress with printed seagulls in her size. There was a large stain on the front, making it pretty much unwearable. Feeling quietly confident in my laundry abilities, I decided to take it home and revive it.

The default solution: long washes and high heat

At this point, Clean Cloth Nappies is almost a 50/50 split of nappy and non-nappy members. With a steady stream of new people joining for non-nappy reasons, we get a lot of posts about mystery stains. Now I had one of my own!

My first hypothesis was that the stain was food related, probably tomato based. From admin troubleshooting experience, I know prominent-looking stains are often due to short, cold cycles with underwhelming detergent. They wash out easily in a long, warm wash. 

I started my stain removal attempts with a long 40°C wash using Cold Power powder. The stain didn’t blink. I moved on to spot treatment with bar soap, a diluted bleach soak, and a second 40°C wash. None of these methods were successful, so I ran it through a 90°C wash, hoping that the high heat would break down the stain. The seagull prints survived, and so did the stain.

At this point, I knew the stain was purely cosmetic, but I was not comfortable with my daughter wearing it.

💖 Most op shops and clothes swaps do not have the resources to revive stained clothes. If the dress was donated to an op shop in its current state, it would be destined for rags or landfill.

Rethinking what the stain could be

By now, I suspected the marks were from chocolate ice cream. The culprit ingredient is a thickener and stabiliser called guar gum. This is used in a range of frozen desserts, low-fat dairy,  sauces and even cosmetics. Like the oft-feared polyquart-7, guar gum residue is a laundry dirt magnet. Loose dirt particles bind to it and create stubborn stains.

I knew from some reading that the mannanase enzyme is effective in removing guar gum stains. Most quality detergents contain enzymes, but not all of them list out the specific ones. 

Consulting the brains trust

I wasn’t completely sure if my chocolate ice cream theory was correct, so I messaged the admin WhatsApp group with a picture of the dress. This prompted ‘several people are typing’ to appear within seconds.

If it’s chocolate ice cream, I wish you all the luck in the world lol that stuff defies all laundry science 😂

Could it be an old paint stain? How about a bottle of turps?

Tried citric acid? Just for fun

I hadn’t tried any solvents yet, so I spot-treated with methylated spirits and isopropyl alcohol. Alas, no change.

The ‘why am I still washing this?’ phase

By now, I was convinced the marks truly were from chocolate ice cream. I needed a detergent that I could guarantee contained mannanase.

Tide contains mannanase. I had some Tide pods in the cupboard ‘for emergencies’, so I decided it was time to break them out. I popped the dress in a long 50ºC Cottons wash with two pods and headed out to my last day of work for the year. I returned home to an unchanged stain 😓

That’s where my troubleshooting moved from active to lazy. Over Christmas and into the New Year, I included the dress in all my long Cottons cycles. I continued using Cold Power, but started adding laundry booster to improve stain removal. After two weeks, the stain had faded considerably, but was still visible. The constant washing had also caused the seagull print to disintegrate slightly.

I sent the admin team a quick update. Luckily for me, they were as invested as I was in getting this clean. 

I was thinking about this the other day! Was wondering if you had admitted defeat 😅

Targeted treatment instead of more washing 💪

After a pep talk and more suggestions from my laundry-loving friends, I decided the only thing left was to pierce one of the Tide pods and apply the concentrated liquid directly to the stain. For good measure, I made a booster paste and gently worked that into the fabric. I left this for 15 minutes, then washed on a sixty-minute 40ºC cycle with the last Tide pod in my emergency laundry kit.

At last, success! I’m finally happy to let my daughter wear this, and when she outgrows it, I can donate it.

And I’ve learnt my lesson, if you have set-in ice cream stains, move directly to spot treatment using laundry detergent or a booster paste. These stubborn stains need targeted treatment to break down the guar gum glue and enable the stain to wash out.