Easy/safe way to brighten fabric that picked up colors from other wash items?

[mattl]

Made kid of a dumb mistake, I guess we all do from time to time.  I was washing a load of tans and grey stuff, all have been washed dozens of times, and decided to toss my yellow knit cotton polo shirt that had a few spots on it in with the load.  I had set the duet to Steam with the Sanitize option, i do this every now and then to get all the built up stuff out, and did not give it a thought.  When I took the stuff out it looked fine but after I pulled the shirt out of the dryer it seemed a bit muddy looking to me.

 

Any safe way to get the shirt looking good again?  Do those color chaser strips work?  Don't really want to bleach it.  Any ideas?

 

[tomturbomatic]

You might try an Oxi-Clean treatment.

 

[stan]

Re Wash

by itself in hot water

HTH

 

[chris74]

Colour chasers

They work only before the accidental dying has happened. Are there no decolourizers in the U.S.?

 

[tomturbomatic]

Rit had a product we used back in the 70s when a friend threw his white shorts in with some Madras shirts and they came out yellow. It was called Tint & Dye Remover. We poured it into very hot water and added the shorts and they became white again.

 

[chris74]

Probably too strong

It will possibly totally decolourize the shirt to white...

 

[bosch2460]

From my experience...

Try soaking it in pretty warm water and Biz (or something of the sort). Do it in a bucket, it needs to be pretty concentrated. Then re-wash, as usual, with Tide with Bleach or with an Oxy type bleach. Try the sun too. Turn it wrong side out, and put it in the sun. It will lighten the picked up color, and should not hurt the origional dye, if it is wrong side out. I've had to do this before for my sister, who turned an entire load of good white clothes orange. Good Luck!

-Joel

 

[mattl]

Thanks for the tips. I tossed the shirt in with a load of whites I was doing using oxygen bleach. Initial look seems to indicate it helped a bit but not totally. Perhaps a few more washes will improve things.

Not the end of the world, but I know from time to time these things happen, just wondering if there was a "miracle" product out there now, I guess not. Thanks.

 

[tomturbomatic]

@chris 74

You don't have to use the full amount. You could make a slightly weaker solution.

 

[stan]

Used to work

in professional Dry Cleaning & Laundry.
when something like this happened, the garment was dealt with right away. Usually just re washing in hot water would do the trick!
However, once it has been dried in the dryer, there was a good possibility that the dryer heat would set it in! If you don't have time at the moment, at least don't put it in the dryer. Hang dry, and retry later (sooner would be better)

 

[retro-man]

I just went through this yesterday. I had a light blue shirt that was sitting against a red shirt which had been washed at least 20 times and it left all kind of red stains on the blue shirt. The blue shirt had been through the dryer before i noticed it. Threw it back in the pile for another load. It sat there for at least a week. It went into another load of mixed shirts on the steam cycle and pulled it out and all was gone. I was very surprised but it worked. I used Tide w/bleach for the detergent.
Jon

 

[stan]

You got

Lucky
*LOL*