If you are one of those who suffer from excess sweat, aka hyperhidrosis, you will probably have noticed when you take off your clothes that your sweat usually leaves a pesky yellow stains.
Sweat itself is supposed to be colorless, but that yellow stains happen when sweat from your armpits interacts with chemicals on the surface of your skin.
Here you have a practical guide to easly remove those undesirable sweat marks.
1. Check the washing instructions for each garment
Stain removal treatment largely depends on the fabric. Check if the care instructions say only "dry clean", because if so you should spot the place of the stain when you take it to the dry cleaner (and don’t delay).
2. Do not bleach
It might seem intuitive to bleach a stained, white garment but in the case of sweat stains it will actually make matters worse. Instead of chlorine, use a mixture of powdered enzyme cleaner like OxiClean with warm water, then soak your garment in the mixture for 1 hour and up to overnight. Rinse and launder regularly.
If you don`t have Oxiclean on hand you can try soaking your garment in 1 part of white vinegar and 1 part water for one hour or more. Then rinse and air dry outside in the sun or next to a sunny window if possible.
For stubborn stains definitely is recommended to pre-treat the garment by soaking them for 30 minutes to 1 hour with either mixtures, then comes the scrub.
3. Rub and Scrub
If the stain is very difficult to remove, rub a mixture of 1 part dish soap, 2 parts hydrogen peroxide and enough baking soda to form a paste. Let sit the mixture on the stain for an additional 30 minutes and then toss the garment into the laundry machine and wash according to label instructions.
If you have a stain that doesn´t go away, and you have tried all of the stain removal techniques with little to no success, it’s time to try the overnight soak.
Most of the products for this job come in a powdered form that you first need to mix with warm water to dissolve. Here´s a list of products for soaking stain removal:
4. Toss the laundry in to the laundry machine
After having soaked, and scrubbed your garment. you are ready to throw it in the washing machine. These are the best laundry detergents we found for sweat stains and bad odor:
- Persil ProClean
- Tide Odor Rescue
- Arm & Hammer plus Oxi Clean
- Lysol Laundry Sanitizer
- Sweat X Laundry Detergent
- Active Wear Laundry Detergent
- Hex Performance Laundry Detergen
There are many laundering products available in the market to help get odors and stains out of your clothes. We've collected just a few to give you some ideas.
