Stain Fighter

Last October I wrote a blogpost about saving a cute Halloween shirt from wretched stain. The pertinent paragraph is:

So to make my shirt wearable, I hauled out my trusty bleach+milk concoction. That stuff is utterly amazing! I fill a shot-glass nearly half full of milk (the higher the fat content, the better) and fill it the rest of the way with bleach. It can't be made ahead; there's a chemical reaction that causes a slight color change and a significant rise in temperature; the effectiveness lasts for 10 minutes or less. Using an old toothbrush to scrub that concoction into a stain on white fabric has done wonders to clean things. I don't trust it; it's pretty strong on the bleach and I'm never sure whether it might ruin something. But when an alb or a surplice gets such horrid sweat stains at the neckline that it's in dire need of replacement, I've discovered that bleach+milk will garner us several more years before we have to go ahead and order new vestments for the pastor. (Those you can't pick up at Goodwill for three bucks like you can kids' clothes.)

Yesterday I tried it on a colored garment. I had a kombucha stain on a cuddly-soft gray turtleneck that had sleeves long enough for a chimpanzee. (In other words, the cuffs actually made it all the way to my wrists!) The stains were bad enough that even I, messy pig though I be, was getting ashamed to wear it. So I tried the bleach & milk. It worked! And there aren't even white spots. The stain-fighter left the gray color in the shirt unmolested, but the stain is gone.

All right. Maybe this is goofy to be excited about. But I guess I get cheap thrills now and then!