Since grease is a lipid, it’s insoluble in water — and that makes it especially hard to wash off. In fact, it tends to cling to the fibers in your clothes and doesn’t go away with a regular laundry cycle. But that doesn’t mean you can’t remove grease stains from your clothes.
To get rid of grease stains on your clothes, you can use dish soap, baking soda, or a stain remover of your choice. First, blot as much of the grease as you can with a paper towel, then apply the cleaning solution and rinse with the warmest water recommended on the care tag. Let the clothes air dry.
While it’s true that time is of the essence when it comes to washing grease stains, removing dried grease stains is still doable. Let’s take a closer look at the different ways to remove grease stains from clothes, depending on their material.
How to Get Rid of Grease Stains on Clothes Using Dish Soap
Liquid dish soap is made to cut through grease, and if it can work on your utensils, it can work on clothes too, right? So, whether you have old or new grease stains, here’s how you can clean them with dish soap:
- Make sure the clothing item is dry. Avoid rinsing it before working on the stain to make things easier for yourself. Water and oil don’t mix, and if you wet the cloth, it’ll only coat the fabric around the stain — and the oil will have nowhere to go.
- Put a piece of cardboard between the layer with the stain and other layers of your clothes to prevent the oil from transferring. You can use any kind of cardboard lying around, whether it’s from a delivery box or a cereal box.
- Use a dry, clean cloth (or paper towel, tissue, cloth, or napkin) and blot the stain to remove as much oil as you can. Just be careful while doing so — you don’t want the oil to spread to other parts of the clothing.
- Put a little bit of liquid dish soap on the stain and allow it to soak. Gently rub it with your fingers, a piece of cloth, or a soft-bristled toothbrush to work it in. Let it soak for around 5 minutes.
- Wash off the dish soap with warm water, and then launder as usual with your regular detergent and laundry booster or bleach.
- Grease stains are difficult to spot on wet garments, so let your clothes air dry first. Machine drying the stain can set it in more, so make sure the spot is really gone before putting your clothes in the machine. If there’s any stain after air drying, wash again with dish soap and launder it once in hot water.
How to Get Rid of Grease Stains on Clothes Using Baking Soda
If you’re dealing with fresh stains, or if you have an oil stain on something you can’t wash like a heavy coat, baking soda should do the trick. Baking soda works by pulling the oil out of the clothes and into itself.
Here’s what you have to do:
- Use a cloth or paper towel to remove excess oil.
- Apply baking soda to the stain, scrub it in with a brush, and let it sit for a day.
- Eventually, the baking soda will change its color and turn brown. Once that happens, remove the baking soda with a brush or vacuum.
- Make a mixture of water and vinegar and use that to spray the affected area.
- Scrub the stain with a brush and soap and rinse.
- If the stain still remains, repeat the steps. To be extra thorough, you can also follow the dish soap method.
How to Get Rid of Grease Stains on Clothes Using Stain Remover
Another way to remove stains from clothes is using a stain remover like this one from Miss Mouth’s (on Amazon).
For this method, start by sprinkling some salt on the stain to absorb it. Then, when doing the laundry, spray some stain remover on the grease stain and wash the piece of cloth with the hottest water that the fabric can handle.
Once again, let it air dry and make sure the stain is no longer there before drying it in the machine.
What’s the Most Effective Way to Remove Grease Stains From Different Materials?
The quicker you start working on removing grease from clothes, the easier it is. Generally, you should apply pre-treatment to the grease stain and wash the clothes in warm water.
However, the best method differs depending on which material you’re working with.
Removing Grease Stains From Cotton and Polyester
To remove grease stains from cotton and polyester clothes, you’ll need a butter knife, paper towels, and stain-pretreatment, laundry detergent, or liquid dishwashing soap. Make sure the dishwashing soap you choose is the handwashing kind and not one that you’d use in an automatic dishwasher.
Then, here’s what you have to do:
- Remove as much of the grease as you can by scraping it off with a butter knife.
- Use a clean paper towel to gently blot the stain and remove as much of the oil stain as you can. Avoid using colored or patterned paper towels since they can transfer color to your clothes.
- Gently rub the liquid detergent, stain pre-treatment, or liquid soap into the stain.
- Allow it to sit for around 10 minutes.
- If you’re using liquid dishwashing soap, make sure you completely remove the soap before putting your clothes in the washer.
- Machine-wash or rinse the fabric with the warmest water it can handle. You can usually find this in the care instructions of the fabric.
- Finally, line-dry the clothing. Remember that you shouldn’t machine dry anything with grease on it since a washer can’t completely get rid of the grease and can instead cause a fire. Plus, heat tends to set in stains that aren’t removed completely.
Removing Grease Stains From Delicates and Knits
You can provide a similar treatment to delicates and knits: Pre-treat them with dish soap or mild detergent before rinsing or washing them in the machine.
Here’s a step-by-step process:
- Just like before, use a butter knife to scrape off as much of the stain as you can and gently blot it with a clean cloth or paper towel.
- Make a solution using mild detergent and the warmest water that the fabric can handle. Make sure you use equal parts of water and detergent. Alternatively, you can use liquid enzyme detergent, liquid dish soap, or stain pretreatment.
- Gently rub the cleaning solution into the grease stain and allow it to sit for roughly 10 minutes.
- Rinse the item with the warmest water it can handle. You can also machine-wash it or dry-clean it, depending on what’s mentioned in the care instructions.
- Finally, line-dry it. Avoid machine drying it unless you’re sure that the grease stain is completely gone.