How to Properly Clean Sweat Stains on Your Dress Shirt

Thanks to our dress shirts, you should never have to worry about sweat stains ruining your shirts again.  However, we’re realists.  We understand your entire dress shirt closet may not be all Lawrence Hunt dress shirts.  For those shirts that are not a Lawrence Hunt, we wanted to help you get rid of sweat stains.  If you find this too cumbersome just go ahead and check out what shirts we have to offer.  If you are not ready to purchase, try these methods to help get rid of sweat stains:

Hydrogen Peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide is a natural bleaching agent. Soak the stained part of the shirt in water containing three percent hydrogen peroxide. Leave it for approximately half an hour then wash as usual. Hydrogen peroxide should be rinsed off thoroughly as any traces of it that remain will turn yellow when the shirt is exposed to sunlight. For better results, you could use a solution with a 1 to 1 combination of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. Alternatively, you can combine hydrogen peroxide and dish washing soap in a 2 to 1 ratio, and dissolve the combination in water.

White Vinegar

If you want to avoid the fading or yellowing that could result when using hydrogen peroxide for stain removal, white vinegar would be a suitable alternative. Mix 10ml of white vinegar in half a cup of water. Rub the resulting solution on the sweat stain and leave for about 30 minutes. Place the shirt in the washing machine and wash as usual. In case that does not get rid of the sweat stain, mix half a cup each of baking soda and white vinegar and let the stain sit overnight. For sensitive fabrics such as wool, silk and rayon, blot the area with the vinegar solution and wash thereafter.

Aspirin

Take three or four uncoated pills of aspirin and crush them using the back of a spoon. Dissolve the powder in half a cup of lukewarm water. Take the stained section of the work shirt and soak it in this solution for three hours. After that, wash the shirt as you normally do. For ordinary sweat stains, this should eliminate the stain. However, for more persistent stains, you may have to repeat the procedure a couple of times. Why is Aspirin effective? One of its main components is salicylic acid which is just as powerful a stain remover as white vinegar’s acetic acid.

Lemon Juice

This is probably the easiest and least expensive way to clean stained work shirts. All you need is to mix water and lemon juice in equal parts then rub the solution on the stained area. Adding table salt to the solution makes it even more effective. In fact, less stubborn sweat stains can be removed with the salt solution on its own with no lemon juice would be required.

There are several other means of cleaning sweat stains including using ammonia, borax and meat tenderizer. Ultimately, the agent you use will depend on its cost, availability and the nature of the fabric. If you come across a seemingly stubborn sweat stain, try different agents until you find one that works.