Laundry experiement

[vacuumfreeeke]

Hey guys, I've decided to do a laundry experiment and wanted to share it here... What I wanted to do is stain a shirt and then wash it with different additives and on different cycles and with different water temperatures and see what the results are.

Sometimes I have trouble getting stains out, so I thought this would be a fun experiment.

I got a white t-shirt and labeled it with a permanent marker.... then painted it with a mixture of bbq sauce, ketchup, mustard, and a little soy sauce just for flavor )

I figured when I have a stain, it's usually food, so this would be a good thing to use as the "dirt".

The standard wash will be cold water, normal cycle, and regular liquid Tide detergent since that is how I do most of my laundry. I'm going to cut the shirt up and wash each part separately so I can really see what results each change is giving me.

I'm going to let the stain set for a few days (I put the shirt in the oven so it doesn't smell or attract bugs) before I start the experiment.

The categories I have so far, are standard wash, standard wash with hot water, standard wash with oxi-clean added, standard wash with 7th generation oxygen cleaner added, and standard wash with bleach added. None of those will have been pre-treated in any way.

Then I'm going to pre-treat overnight with Fels-naptha laundry bar, Zout, and Dawn and do a standard wash (all separate). I just ordered an ultrasonic stain remover, so I'm going to pre-treat with that as well, once it arrives.

Then I'm going to vary the wash... no pre-treating, and still Tide, but will use hot water with normal cycle and will use the Heavy and Quick wash cycles as well (cold water) to see the difference.

I'm going to do one standard wash with Gain Joyful Expressions as well, and one with my homemade laundry detergent (borax, washing soda, and grated Fels-naptha), to see if there is any difference between that and the Tide.

I thought about hand washing as well because I do have a scrub board, but that wouldn't be very objective because I could wash until it got clean and might wash more in some areas than others.

Pictures of the beginning of the process to follow, I likely won't do the actual experiment until the end of the week because I want the stain to set well and I need to wait for the ultrasonic stain remover to arrive.

Can anyone think of anything else I should try? There's still time (and room) to add more categories )

The blank canvas:

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

the paint

The dirt )

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

application

It smells good anyway )

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

all done

Time to wait

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

The machine

The machine that will be doing all the work.... I have very mixed feelings about this machine after having come from a portable all in one front loader, but it's what I have now, so I'm going to go with it.

I'll update with more pictures when I finish the experiment....

 

[georgect]

this is going to be very interesting

I can't wait for the results.

 

[arbilab]

Hey, that's my hamburger marinade!

 

[mayguy]

Any update for us??

 

[stan]

Ya

what happened with this?

 

[launderess]

Oh Stan? Oh Stanley? HEY STAN! - *LOL*

Have been quite curious as to your testing results of the soaps one sent awhile back. Anything you'd care to share?

LOL

L.

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

Hey guys, I completed the experiment, and I will post pictures soon... I'm tired right now, but I got some surprising results... will try to post tomorrow...

 

[yogitunes]

a few things to consider.......first....don't mix the stains....how are you gonna know which ones are removed?.....

you can start with a number of items....but you may need several shirts, besides thers no loss once you figure out the right formula to remove all the stains, the first time!....

use actual dirt, grass stains, chocolate, blood, grease, ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, iodine...even wearing the shirt for perspiration and deodorant stains.......your trying to avoid odors and bugs, but you have to consider what happens to regular laundry for any given person....do you use your oven as a laundry hamper normally?...

real stains, on real clothing, in real life situations.......

we have all done this for fun......and great to see the results.....and findings.....

we just had a topic on ERA detergent......and taken some of these stains, painted on, dried, and write the word "ERA" across the stain, let set, and run cold water over the stain.....just like the commercial, it worked!....

you may also want to consider more than just a cotton T-shirt......try oher items like a poly blend dress shirt......or outter wear.......items that can't be washed without special instructions......this is what people buy, and have stains on these items to combat.....

remember, nothing gets out every stain....but if you can fnd a formula that works for a majority of conditions, in one wash.....your on to something....

keep at it....looking forward to what you discover

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

The first thing that I want to show is the results of the ultrasonic cleaner.... It practically cleaned all the stain off before I even washed the piece of material. It even started attacking the permanent marker! I worked on this for about 10 minutes with the wand, then put it in the tub that came with the ultra sonic cleaner and ran it another five. Then washed it. I have a piece I hadn't washed yet there for comparison. I did use dawn dish soap because ultrasonic cleaning uses something called cavitation to clean and you have to add some kind of detergent to the water in order for cavitation to be effective... I've read that plain water doesn't cavitate very well. The definition for cavitate is : The sudden formation and collapse of low-pressure bubbles in liquids by means of mechanical forces.

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

the cleaner

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

These were the best performers... bleach seemed to do the best of course, but you can't use that on every color of fabric/material. The next best was Dawn which makes sense because the stains were food based! The heavy cycle did much better than the quick cycle, so (next picture will have the results of the quick cycle) it proves that more/longer agitation really is effective...

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

These didn't do quite as well, but still better than expected. It might be hard to see in the picture, but name brand Oxiclean did much better than the 7th Generation... Zout and Fells Naptha really disappointed me...

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

Hot water and homemade laundry soap also disappointed me....

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

Here's where I messed up... I washed everything 4 days after I made the stain except these two... the standard (cold water, normal cycle, no pre-treat) wash with regular liquid Tide and the standard wash with regular liquid Gain Joyful Expressions... It got too late and I had to go to bed, so I washed these on the 5th day and the stains had longer to set.... I wouldn't think that one day would make much difference, but obviously it did because even the quick wash and no detergent gave better results.... I washed everything separately and there just wasn't enough time in the day to do these two....

 

[vacuumfreeeke]

Here is everything together.... even though it may not have been the most scientific experiment, it was still fun and I learned from it...