3. STAINS AND SPOTS
Fruit and wine stains.—If fruit juice or wine is spilled at table, cover the spot with salt. The salt lessens the stain, saves the appearance of the table, and diverts attention from the culprit who did the spilling.
Boiling water poured through fruit or wine stains will usually remove them entirely. If it does not, try a weak solution of oxalic acid.
Coffee and tea.—Pour boiling water through the stains until they disappear.
Ink and iron rust.—Cover a spot of either ink or iron rust with salt wet with lemon juice and lay it in the sun. Repeat until the spot disappears.
Or, use salts of lemon and sunshine in the same way.
Or, if the material stained is white linen or cotton try chlorinated soda.
Sometimes ripe tomato will remove ink stains.
Sometimes soaking them in milk will take them out.
Often an ink-eradicator such as is sold to remove writing from paper will take ink spots out of white material.
Paint.—Turpentine will remove paint from fabrics, also from glass or iron.
Mildew and grass stains.—Try lemon, salt and sun applied as for iron rust.
Try diluted oxalic acid.
If the material stained is white, try boiling it in buttermilk.
Try alcohol for grass stains.
Or rub them with molasses and then thoroughly wash the fabric.
Grease spots.—If the article may be washed, try washing it with cold water and white soap.
Or, moisten it with a strong solution of household ammonia and water, cover with blotting paper and iron dry.
Or, sponge with a mixture of four parts alcohol to one part salt.
Powdered French chalk will often remove grease spots from silk or woollen materials.
Tar, carriage grease or machine-oil may usually be removed by rubbing the material with lard and then thoroughly washing it with soap and water.
Spots of candle grease will disappear if they are covered with blotting paper or coarse fibred brown paper and ironed with a hot iron.
Kerosene.—Kerosene spilled on books, rugs or furniture will quickly disappear if they are held near a hot fire or a gas jet. Not nearer than your hand can bear. Sometimes if the article is left in strong sunshine all day, the spots will disappear.
Blood stains.—Wash first with clear cold water.
If the stain is obstinate wet with kerosene, then wash in warm suds.
Stained hands.—They are improved by the application of any of the following: vinegar, lemon juice, pumice, ripe tomatoes or dishwater.
Note.—Colour taken out by an acid can usually be restored with an alkali. Colour taken out with an alkali can usually be restored with an acid.