Your Ultimate Guide to Removing Stains (And When to Call in the Pros)

Life in Chicago moves fast, and between work, commutes, and trying to enjoy the city, a stubborn stain can feel like the last thing you have time for. Whether it’s coffee from your morning sprint to the L or a splash of deep-dish pizza sauce, we’ve all been there. This guide will help you tackle those frustrating spots, so you can spend less time scrubbing and more time living.

Why Your Stain Removal Isn’t Working

You bought the famous stain remover or tried your grandma’s trusted trick, but the stain is still there. The real reason most people fail at stain removal is simple: they use a one-size-fits-all approach. The truth is, different stains require different solutions and techniques. Understanding the type of stain you’re dealing with is the first step to victory.

The 4 Main Types of Stains (And How to Treat Them)

Not all stains are created equal. They generally fall into four categories, and sometimes you’ll face a combination stain that requires a multi-step approach. If you’re ever feeling overwhelmed, remember that a professional home cleaning service can handle the tough jobs for you.

1. Tannin Stains

These come from plant-based sources like coffee, tea, red wine, and berries. They leave behind natural pigments that need a specific solution to break down.

2. Protein Stains

This category includes dairy, eggs, blood, and other bodily fluids. These stains bond with fabric fibers, and using heat can “cook” them into the material, making them permanent.

3. Oil Stains

Think salad dressing, butter, makeup, and cooking oil. Since oil repels water, water alone won’t work. You need a product designed to cut through grease. For persistent grease around the home, sometimes the best solution is to schedule a cleaning with experts who have the right tools.

4. Dye Stains

Ink, mustard, and food coloring fall here. These are designed to be permanent, making them the most challenging to remove.

The Right Product for the Right Stain

Using the wrong treatment can set a stain permanently. For example, using hot water on a protein stain is like frying an egg on your shirt. Always start with cold water for protein and oil stains.

For protein stains, an enzyme-based stain remover like Puracy is incredibly effective. For tannin or dye stains, an oxygen bleach like OxiClean is your best bet. The key is to use boiling hot water with powdered oxygen bleach to activate its bubbling, stain-lifting power.

A Step-by-Step Stain Removal Plan

Follow these steps for the best chance of success:

• Step 1: Scrape and Blot. Gently remove any excess solid material from the fabric with a dull knife or spoon. Then, blot (don’t rub!) with a paper towel to absorb liquid.
• Step 2: Identify the Stain. Determine if it’s protein, tannin, oil, or dye. Is it a combination, like greasy pizza sauce (oil and dye)?
• Step 3: Treat in Stages. For combination stains, treat one component at a time. You may need to wash the item between treatments.
• Step 4: Inspect Before Drying. After washing, hold the garment up to a light to check if the stain is gone. Heat from a dryer will set any remaining stain.

When to Call for Backup

Let’s be honest: sometimes, you just don’t have the time or energy to fight with a stubborn stain. Other times, the stain wins. If you’re short on time or the stain has set in, it might be time to look for a cleaning service near me. For Chicago residents, Jikas Cleaning offers fast cleaning services to get your life back on track. Whether you need a one-time deep cleaning help or a regular apartment cleaning, it’s okay to get a little help. After all, the goal is to clean your apartment and enjoy your space, not become a full-time stain removal expert.

If you find yourself constantly thinking, “I need someone to clean my apartment,” you’re not alone. As a leading Chicago cleaning company, we’re here to make it easy to get your space cleaned.

Stains are one of those everyday annoyances, inconvenience, frustrations, quiet things that just like ruin your afternoon. And the real reason why you’re not getting rid of stains when you wash your clothes is because you’re not using the right products and techniques. And you might think, but wait a minute, I bought that amazing stain remover that everyone talks about, or I do the thing that my grandmother always did. Why isn’t it working? Well, the truth is there are different kind of stains and for each stain, there’s a certain kind of solution or way that that stain needs to be treated. So, in this video, I’m going to walk you through exactly what you need to do for each kind of stain, how to easily identify them, and by the end of this video, you’re going to know everything you need to know about stains. You are never going to have to worry about it again. Oh, and stick around to the end of this video where I share my most embarrassing stain story. Like I actually debated whether or not I should share this on the internet, but you know what? I’m human. You’re human. We’ve all had moments like this. So, I’m going to out myself. And just a quick reminder, if you haven’t done so already to subscribe to the Clean My Space channel and give this video a thumbs up if you’ve ever been embarrassed by a stain. Now, I want to be clear. There is a difference between using lowquality laundry detergent and highquality laundry detergent. And I am always a proponent of the ladder. Use the best possible stuff you can because that detergent can do so much in a stain and odor fighting capacity that a base level detergent quite simply cannot. So you’re always going to end up with a better clean. And even some stain removers are incredible at removing certain stains, but not all of them. So there are four different general categories of stains that we are going to encounter every day. There’s tannin stains which come from things like tea and coffee and berries and wine. There’s protein stains like dairy, bodily fluids, eggs. There’s oil stains like salad dressing, olive oil when you get a little aggressive, and dye stains, dye obviously. But then what ends up happening is there are compound stains where you might have olive oil with tomato or with hot peppers in it. So now you’re dealing with an oil stain but also a tannin stain. And that is where things become complicated because your stain solution might work really well for oil but might work terribly for tannins. And to understand how these stains behave, let’s dive in a little bit deeper. Tannin stains like coffee, tea, wine, and juice will leave behind natural plant pigments. Protein stains, again these are things like blood, sweat, milk, and eggs. These bond with fabric fibers. Oil stains like butter, makeup, and salad dressing. These, like oil, repel water, so water alone won’t work. And dye stains like ink, mustard, and food coloring are literally designed to color things permanently. So, they’re going to be challenging. And why most people fail with stain removal is because they just throw one general solution at the problem. But now that you understand what each of those stain categories are, I kind of want to talk about some of the challenges that you can run into in the event that you use the wrong treatment with them. Let’s say you use hot water to remove a protein stain, like blood or eggs. Well, what happens when you fry an egg, the egg cooks, and that’s precisely what happens when you use heat with a protein stain. It quite literally bakes it in. That’s why I always talk about washing your stains in cold water, at least your protein and your oil stains. Now, if you threw a bleachbased stain remover on a protein stain, it would literally do nothing. And let’s say you throw bleach on a dye stain because you think, well, obviously I just need to get rid of the color, so I’m going to use bleach. Well, you might actually ruin the garment itself before you remove that stain. And in the case of tannin stains, you need something that can break down those pigments. So, if you’re not using that, that stain will persist. I want to talk about two, maybe three of my favorite stain remover products because they are no fail, absolutely no fail products, and I get great results with them. But again, they will work the best when you use them quickly and apply them correctly. And the other thing to remember is that if you have a combination stain, you’re very likely not going to remove the whole stain in your first shot. You will have to treat one part of the stain first, wash it, retreat it for the second part of the stain, wash it again, and then you should be good to go. So, first up, let’s talk about protein stains and what you should be doing. Always, always, always make sure that you scrape and blot to remove any of that extra material from the surface. If you don’t do that, it can spread. Now, I find with protein stains, rinsing it under cold water is a really great place to start. For example, if you have a nose bleed or someone gets a cut on their arm and their shirt has some blood on it, take that shirt and run it under cold water quickly. That stain should mostly come off, but there will be some remaining material left behind that you want to deal with. Once this is done, you want to use an enzymebased stain remover. The best one that I have found is Puracy. I’ve linked it for you down below. I’ve used it for years. I talk about it left, right, and center. All of my friends and family use it. It is incredible. Please just get Puracy and keep it in your laundry room. Now, you’ll apply this stain remover, rub it in gently with your finger, and let it sit for at least 15 minutes. Launder it with cold water and regular detergent. Once that’s done, take it out and hold it up to a light source. You want to look right through the fabric to see if that stain is remaining. If it is, you have to retreat it with the enzyme stain remover. If it’s gone, you can proceed as you normally would. throw it into the dryer, air dry it, whatever you like. Now, if it’s a combination stain, the next thing you’ll need to do is treat that second part of the stain. So, let’s assume that it’s either a tannin stain or a dye stain. In this case, you need to use a color corrector. And that is where Oxyclean comes in. OxyClean is oxygen bleach. And what it does is it helps to break the bond of dirt from the surface or specifically stain pigments from the surface. Now, the trick with powdered oxygen bleach, which I totally recommend, is that it will only work if the water that is used is boiling hot. So, take your boiling hot water, add a scoop of oxygen bleach. I use OxyClean. Stir it up. You’re going to see some bubbles. This is good. You want the bubbles. The bubbles are what’s going to do that stain in. Then throw the stained garment right in there. Give it a good stir and let it soak. Now, sometimes that stain might come out within a few minutes. Other times, you might want to empty out that bucket and restart the process about an hour later just to really get it nice and saturated with that bubbly action. So, I set up this demo to walk you through how stain removal works, where you can go wrong, and where you can do things the right way. So, I have four different swatches, and what I’ve done is I’ve treated each of them with yellow mustard, which is ubiquitously known as one of the most, if not the most difficult stain to remove. Then, I used barbecue sauce. And then, I squished a few blueberries onto these tops. Berry stains are also notorious for being difficult to remove. Now, once I let the stains sit for about 15 minutes, I scraped the stains using a knife, just a dull knife to lift up any of that excess material. And then I blotted it to remove any excess liquid. I used paper towel. And the reason I did this is because anything that’s wet is going to spread. So, if we can get it flat and dry, we can really hone in on that stained area and treat it effectively. Now, for the control, I didn’t use any purity on any of these swatches, but for the remainder of them, I applied purity and let it sit for about an hour before I put it in the washing machine. And in this case, between purity and my laundry detergent, it took away the barbecue stains, no problem. So, in our second go, I’ve treated this swatch with another round of Puracy because let’s say you get really frustrated and you’re like, I’m going to hit it again. Well, I want to show you what would happen if you did that again and why you still might not be delighted with the results. But then I’m going to show you what happens if you use OxyClean. So to do this, I’m going to fill up a bucket with boiling hot water. That’s the only way that OxyClean is going to work effectively. Then I’m adding a scoop to the bucket and I’m letting it bubble and fizz. That is the magic of OxyClean. Now, you might notice some color change happening right away. You see this with the mustard stain. In other cases, you might notice your stain disappearing almost on contact. It’s pretty cool. So, depending on the severity of the stain, like for example, this mustard stain, I need to let this soak for at least an hour, if not overnight. And if it’s an old stain, you might have to repeat this process several times before you see success. So, now I’m going to run another load of laundry where I’ll throw the control in with no stain removal product whatsoever. I’ll throw in the swatch with the second round of purity and I’ll throw in the swatch that’s been soaked in OxyClean and we’ll see what happens. So, here are the results. With the control, both the mustard and berry stain remain the same. With two purity treatments, the berry stain came out mostly clean, but not completely, and the mustard stain was only fractionally lighter. With the OxyClean treatment, all the stains came out perfectly clean. The reason understanding this is so important is because when you get a stain, if you understand, oh, first I need to deal with the grease or the oil and then I need to deal with the dye or the color correction, you’re in great shape. And this is also a great reminder that just because you have a spray bottle resolve OxyClean Max Force Puracy, it is not a one-sizefits-all solution. I also want to remind you that for basic simple everyday stains that you run into like oil stains, olive oil, salad dressing, that kind of thing, even a little bit of dish soap or laundry detergent, that’s designed to cut grease and lift stains. You can take that and apply it right to the stain, rub it in, and it right away. It should come right out. Now, in certain very, very sad and depressing circumstances, there will be stains that you won’t be able to remove. And that dramatic pause was purposeful. And that’s because some stains just aren’t meant to come out, like permanent marker. Man, how many times have people asked me, “How do I get a permanent marker stain out?” And it’s like, you can’t. So remember, the next time you encounter a stain, it’s not about dipping that item in a bucket full of bleach or continuing to hit it with a bottle of stain remover that just isn’t doing the job. It’s about using the right product and the right technique to get the job done right. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, is there a really embarrassing stain story that you have? Let me know in the comments down below. I’m very happy to share a painfully embarrassing stain story with you. I can’t even believe I’m going to put this on the internet, but it’s human. So, here goes. I was at a wedding. It was on a boat. I was wearing a black romper. Okay, thank God. Like God was on my side that day that I was that I chose black. Okay. And of course, because why wouldn’t I? I had my period on that day. And what do you think happened? I leaked and I was stuck on this boat. There was one lady’s bathroom. It like wasn’t a set of stalls. It was like one room that you had to go into on this boat. I had to do like a cleanup situation. I had to I don’t I don’t even know what I was doing in there. There was a lineup outside. I was very aware of the fact that everyone probably knew that this happened and then I had to put like a napkin down on my chair because I had definitely leaked through. Oh my god, it was really bad. Anyway, the point is, if you’re going um on a boat and you’re a menrating woman, please bring extra products with you because you never know when that is going to be a problem. Um so, now that I’ve really outed myself, feel free to share your super embarrassing stain moments in the comments down below. Did you know that I talk about topics like this and more in our newsletter? It’s called The Dirty Dish, and you can subscribe to it by clicking the link in the description box down below. We also have a membership program. So, if you love what we do here at Clean MySpace, there’s an easy way for you to support that. If anything I said today about OxyClean excited you, check out this video. OxyClean is magic, and this video shares 15 different ways that you can use it around the house to clean and do some other pretty cool stuff. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.