Not all grease spots that appear on your clothing may be coming from food, and before heading off to a great facility like ours, you may want give your clothes a pre-laundry inspection first.

If you inspect your clothes prior to laundering, you may be surprised when you find grease spots appearing after the laundry cycle. Here are a few causes of grease spots and how to prevent them.

First, you should ensure that the machines you are using are modern and well cared for. Having a clean, well-kept machine is important to avoid staining and ruining your clothing.

Another cause of grease-like stains could be some of your laundry products! One of the biggest culprits could be your choice of fabric softener. Fabric softener is formulated with ingredients that leave a coating on your clothing. If too much of it accumulates in one area of the garment, it creates what looks like a grease spot. Sometimes the spots may look blue, which can happen when using liquid fabric softener. Often, grease spots occur when fabric softener is not added to the rinse water properly, and instead gets poured directly onto an article of clothing.

Dryer sheets can also leave grease-like stains, but these are easily avoided. Load the wet clothes in the dryer, lay the dryer sheet loosely on top, and start the dryer immediately. Don’t bury the dryer sheet within the clothing. You may also want to avoid using dryer sheets when you are just fluffing the clothing or drying on a low setting.

If you do end up with a grease stain, you need to treat the stain as soon as you see it. Use bar soap or dish detergent to hand wash the stain, but avoid standard laundry detergents for pre-treatment as they could end up setting the stain.

Once you have pretreated the stain and it has disappeared, use your local laundromat facility to launder the affected clothing items.

There are many types of stains that can accumulate on clothing, but one of the most common is perspiration stains. Odors can also become a problem for the standard laundry routine. The first step is to choose to do your laundry at a quality location like our StarBrigh Laundry facility.

Prior to heading to your laundry facility, it’s always a good idea to quickly inspect each article of clothing for any stains that need to be pretreated. You may find that perspiration stains and odors are some of your bigger challenges.

There are lots of commercial stain removers on the market, but in many cases these are not designed for specific types of stains. You may find that some old-fashioned tactics are the best way to remove sweat stains.

The most common stain areas are usually on the shirts, in the underarm area and around the neck line. They may be easy to identify, because on some materials they will show up as a yellow stain. However, they are often hard to see on colored clothing. What causes these stains to be so prominent is the mixture of antiperspirant and perspiration. A good quality laundry detergent can be used to pre-treat these kinds of stains.

Odor may be also present on your clothing. Prewashing the area with a mix of laundry detergent and baking soda can really help to eliminate this. You can also add a capful of white vinegar to your laundry load to get rid of especially strong odors.

When you arrive at your local laundromat, you can pre-treat affected garments by applying your laundry detergent directly to the stain and rubbing it in well. You can then put it into the machine with the rest of your clothing. This way, the stain is getting a more concentrated application of the laundry detergent than is normally used throughout the entire wash load, which will help to break down and remove the stain.

Summertime is a wonderful time of year when most people love to be outdoors. Summer clothing has its own unique cleaning demands, but when using a quality location like our StarBright Laundry location, even bug stains that have accumulated on your summer attire can be easily eliminated.

Of course, when the children are playing outside there are bound to be lots of bugs. Children’s clothing especially seems to end up with common stains caused when an insect happens to get squished on their clothing. One of the most common is mosquito stains, and more often than not they meet their end after they have feasted on someone. As a result, the clothing is stained with both a small amount of blood as well as the insect’s fluids.

You will want to pre-treat these before putting them into the general laundry. Since there is blood involved, you should use cold water during pre-treatment. Do not use hot water during pre-treatment, as this will set the stain. Also, you need to know what material the clothing is made of in order to treat it properly.

Using cold water and a sponge, wet the mosquito stain by working the sponge from the center of the stain outwards. If the stain has been allowed to dry for a long period of time, it may be stubborn to remove. Some people like to use a small amount of ammonia in the water, but this should be done with extreme caution. The odors of the ammonia can be irritating to your nasal passages, and it can be destructive to materials like silk or wool.

It is a good idea to have a commercial stain remover on hand that has been specifically designed for blood stain removal. Not only does the hot weather bring insect stains that need to be dealt with, but it’s also the time of year where the kids end up with bumps and scrapes that can cause bleeding and additional staining to summer clothing.

Aside from mosquitoes, there are lots of other little summer critters that can create stains on clothing. Caterpillars and moths commonly leave brown stains, and flies leave small black stains. Often a direct pre-treatment with your undiluted laundry detergent and some gentle rubbing is all that is needed to eliminate these just prior to washing them at your local laundromat.

These and many other good tips can help you do the best job possible when using a quality Laundromat.

While doing the laundry is a relatively simple task, we can make mistakes at times. In some cases, the common mistakes we make can have an effect on the overall life span of the garments we are washing.

The number one mistake we make when washing our clothes is when we try and get rid of stains simply by scrubbing the dirty spot. This not only is ineffective, but it can actually make the stain much worse and wear away the fabric, causing the garment to age prematurely.

The best way to tackle a really tough stain is to get to it as soon as the stain is made and to dab the stained article rather than scrub it. Use a clean white cloth, so there is no transfer of colors from the rag and dab from the outside in, so the stain is contained.

Another common mistake that we tend to make is to use too much soap. We all seem to have the mindset that if a little soap is good, then a lot will be even better. Unfortunately, laundry soap does not work that way. The residual soap may not all come out of the garments during the rinse cycle, especially if you have gone seriously overboard. This can lead to a build-up of bacteria in areas that the detergent gets built up in like collars and hems.

Try and experiment with the proper amounts. See what works to get your clothes clean by trying a smaller amount and then add more the next time if you feel that your clothing did not get as clean as you like.

Another great tip is to be sure to fully zip all zippers on jeans and other items before you do the wash as the teeth on the zippers can get caught on other garments, causing tears and pulls that will end up shortening the life of your garments.