How to Get Butter, Oil and Flour Out of Clothes

Baking produces a specific set of stains, and they need opposite treatments. Get grease wrong once with hot water and it's permanent. Here's each one.

The rule that covers most of it

Heat sets stains. Hot water, and especially a tumble dryer, turns a removable mark into a permanent one by bonding it into the fibres.

So: treat first, wash cold, and check before drying. If the mark is still visible when it comes out of the machine, treat and wash again. Once it's been through a hot dryer, you've usually lost it.

Butter, oil and grease — the difficult one

Grease doesn't dissolve in water, which is why rinsing does nothing. You need something that breaks it down.

1. Blot, don't rub. Lift what's sitting on the surface with kitchen paper. Rubbing pushes it deeper.
2. Cover it in something absorbent — cornflour, talc, even plain flour. Leave 15 minutes. It pulls oil out of the fibres. Brush off.
3. Work washing-up liquid directly into the mark with a fingertip. Not detergent — washing-up liquid, which is formulated for exactly this. Leave 10 minutes.
4. Wash cold or warm. Check before drying.

For an old, set grease mark: repeat steps 3 and 4 twice. It often comes out even weeks later, as long as it hasn't been tumble dried.

Flour and dry dough

The easy one. Shake it off, then cold wash. That's it.

The one thing not to do is wet it first. Water turns flour into paste and paste into glue. If dough has dried onto fabric, let it dry completely, then scrape it off with a blunt knife or a bench scraper and brush the residue away before it goes near the machine.

Egg

Cold water only — hot water cooks egg protein into the fabric, which is exactly the problem. Rinse from the back of the fabric, then a cold wash. Biological detergent helps, because the enzymes break down protein.

Chocolate

Two stains in one: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Scrape off the solid, rinse from the back with cold water, then treat the greasy remainder with washing-up liquid as above.

Berry, jam and fruit

Rinse from the back with cold water immediately — flush it out the way it came in rather than pushing it through. For anything stubborn, white vinegar diluted 1:2 with water, applied for 10 minutes before washing, is effective on fruit pigment.

Sunlight is genuinely good at bleaching fruit stains out of white cotton. Wash, then dry the garment in direct sun.

Turmeric and curry

The hardest of all, and one of the few where the shortcut works: wash it, then leave it in bright sunlight. Turmeric's pigment breaks down under UV, often completely, over a day or two. Chemical stain removers frequently do less.

Wine and coffee

Blot, don't rub. Cold water flush from the back. For red wine, salt poured on immediately absorbs a lot before it sets. Then a normal cold wash.

Protecting printed clothing

All of the above assumes plain fabric. On a printed garment, a few extra rules:

• Don't scrub the print. Treat around it and blot on it.
• No bleach or oxygen bleach on the printed area. It lifts the ink as readily as the stain.
• Turn it inside out to wash, always — the print faces away from the drum.
• Never iron the print directly. Tea towel between iron and design if you have to.

There's a fuller version in how to wash printed shirts and hoodies.

The genuinely easier answer

Wear an apron. Almost everything in this article is a problem you can decline to have. A decent apron takes the grease, the flour and the berry juice, gets washed on its own terms, and your clothes stay out of it — apron styles compared covers which type suits long sessions.

And if something is already beyond saving, it becomes the baking shirt. Every baker has one.

Questions we get asked

How do you get oil stains out of clothes?

Blot, cover with cornflour for 15 minutes to draw the oil out, then work washing-up liquid into the mark and leave 10 minutes before a cold wash. Check before drying — heat sets grease permanently.

Does flour stain?

Not really — shake it off and cold wash. Don't wet it first, because water turns flour into paste. Let dried dough harden completely, then scrape it off.

Can you remove a set-in grease stain?

Often, yes, if it hasn't been tumble dried. Repeat the washing-up liquid treatment two or three times. A hot dryer is what makes grease permanent.

How do I wash a printed t-shirt with a stain on the print?

Blot rather than scrub, keep bleach away from the printed area entirely, wash inside out and cold, and hang dry. Aggressive treatment lifts ink as easily as it lifts the stain.