More stains showing up *after* a boil wash
Well, that brings back memories, LOL!
I've seen that happening a lot when friends and family, who, BTW, claimed to be happy with their laundry routines and with how white their clothes were, for one reason or another put a load in the washer for a "boil" wash (95C/205F), or even just boiled a handful of small garments on the stovetop, usually to remove only one or two stains that were being stubborn.
Of course, I find out, because I'm usually the first person to get a call to ask what to do next and what "made new stains show up after the boil wash".
It doesn't take much to find another few pieces of cloth they have around that are "clean", even when you look at them, to show them what happened and make it happen again.
You look at say, a "white" kid's t-shirt and it looks fine. You bring it near a source of bright light, like a lamp or window and it looks fine, but when you look *thru* it so the light is not reflecting, but passing thru, and you may just see new stains show up and disappear depending on how the light reflects or passes thru the fabric.
What's going on?
Well, some manufacturers found out that when places like Consumers Reports and Which? etc test how well their laundry detergents clean, they do so "scientifically" by using a color spectrometer, of whatever fancy name they have, but the thing is that the machine gets easily confused when enough optical brighteners are involved.
In the early 90's for example, one of the cases that I've seen was a t-shirt that looked just fine, but when you made the light pass thru the fabric you could clearly see where a chocolate milk had been. The article had been washed with a product that had gotten Consumer Reports top pick. The detergent that we used that removed the stain by just washing it had been in second or third place for both "cleaning" and "whitening", because, although it actually *cleaned* much better than the first pick (probably had more enzymes and more than one detergent), it did not have as much optical brightener or a kind that did not glow as aggressively as the first product.
Because those stains are not fully removed, they bake on multiple cycles in the dryer, and when one boil washes the clothes, you remove most of the dirt around it and the old stains show again. You can repeat the process or use stain removers to get the old stains out.
BTW, that's usually the *other* thing I hear about -- when the articles are boiled on the stovetop for the first time and people are looking at the process, they also report that the water was disgustingly dirty, when all the articles had been previously washed and they were just trying to remove a few stains.
So, anyway, not saying that this is what happened to Michael, but it's what it reminded me of, given that boiling or washing clothes at temperatures higher than 60C/140F is not very common here in US, although as more and more washers start offering the option of a "sanitary" wash, we're beginning to see more of this happening.
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
]
