Stain Removers

Food-stained clothing is a sad reality in our test kitchen. We decided to get serious about laundry, so we purchased several stain removers from local supermarkets and put them to the test.

These products fell into four categories:

Pretreaters are applied to the stained garment, which is then thrown into the wash.

Laundry additives go right into the machine with the wash to boost the stain-removing power of the detergent used.

Spot removers are applied to clothes, which are then rubbed to remove stains and washed.

Oxygen-based powders are diluted with water to make a soaking solution for garments. Once the stains are gone, the clothes can be washed.

For our tests, we took plain 100 percent cotton T-shirts and dirtied them with the foods most infamous for leaving unrelenting stains: pureed blueberries, pureed beets, black coffee, red wine, ketchup and yellow mustard (to simulate a hot dog mishap), melted bittersweet chocolate, and chili (which included grease stains). Each cleaning product was applied according to the manufacturer's instructions for maximum stain removal.

All of the products removed the coffee, wine, ketchup, and beet stains, but only the spot removers and oxygen-based powders managed to completely remove the tougher stains left by chili, blueberries, chocolate, and mustard. T-shirts tested with the pretreaters and laundry additives came out of the wash with several distinct, if muted, stains.

Spot removers call for brushing or blotting the stain until it is gone, and though this method is the most labor-intensive (in some cases up to seven applications were necessary), even the toughest stains were gone before the garment went into the washing machine. If time is a luxury you can afford, and scrubbing and blotting are not your thing, then the oxygen-based powders are the way to go. T-shirts treated with these cleaners — used as concentrated soaking solutions, per the manufacturers' instructions — needed only a light rubbing to remove the toughest stains. Although the T-shirts did need to soak for up to three hours, the labor was mostly hands-off (sounds good to us).

Our conclusion: If you can't part with that favorite blouse or pair of pants and you don't mind an investment of time but little elbow grease, use an oxygen-based powder.