How to clean a handle from a doll — 11 proven methods

Young chil­dren love to paint any­thing they can get their hands on. Espe­cial­ly often under the “strike” are dolls. You can throw away a dam­aged toy and buy a new one instead, but it’s bet­ter to try to remove the stains, while at the same time explain­ing to the child that you can’t do this.

Features of the doll material

Most often, plas­tic, vinyl and rub­ber are used for the pro­duc­tion of mod­ern dolls. Plas­tic toys are eas­i­er to clean from the han­dle. If an expen­sive rub­ber doll is paint­ed, then the mat­ter becomes more com­pli­cat­ed.

Ball­point pen paste is very soaked into the rub­ber of dolls, so it can be dif­fi­cult to clean a paint­ed toy. How­ev­er, there are ways to help either com­plete­ly remove pen stains, or at least dis­col­or them. The dura­tion of the removal depends on how heav­i­ly the toy is paint­ed: in some cas­es, the marks com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear in 1–2 hours, while in oth­ers it will take weeks or even months to remove the stains.

Ways to wash the handle from the doll

There are sev­er­al ways to get rid of the pen draw­ing on the doll.

Vegetable oil

It is enough to wet the cot­ton wool with oil and wipe the places of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. It may take sig­nif­i­cant effort. At the end, it is enough to wash the doll with dish­wash­ing deter­gent or pre­pare a solu­tion using laun­dry soap.

match sulfur

Match sul­fur con­tains ele­ments that react with the oil base of the ink, caus­ing the lat­ter to become soft­er and eas­i­er to remove. It is enough to moist­en a match with water and wipe the marks from the han­dle on the doll with the sul­fu­ric part.

Toothpaste

Put some tooth­paste on the let­ter­ing with a pen and gen­tly rub it into the mate­r­i­al. After the ink stains dis­ap­pear, rinse the toy under run­ning water.

white, vinegar

Mix two prod­ucts in equal pro­por­tions — 1 tsp each, soak a cot­ton swab in the solu­tion and treat the dirt on the doll. Scrub the pen marks vig­or­ous­ly for 20–25 min­utes. Be care­ful: when mix­ing these ingre­di­ents, the release of chlo­rine begins, which is unsafe for health and well-being.

At the same time, try to treat only con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed areas, since white­ness dis­col­ors sur­faces and mate­ri­als.

There is anoth­er way to use vine­gar and bleach. Mix the ingre­di­ents in a 1:1 ratio, then soak a cloth in the mix­ture and wrap the doll with it. Next, put the toy in a warm place for about 40 min­utes. After this time, rinse the toy with a house­hold clean­er to remove any remain­ing ink, white­ness, and vine­gar.

Depend­ing on the poros­i­ty of the rub­ber mate­r­i­al and the dura­bil­i­ty of the ink, a longer pro­cess­ing time may be required — up to 1–2 days. Over time, the spots will light­en, after which they will com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear. In the case of long-term pro­cess­ing, when apply­ing vine­gar and white­ness, it is nec­es­sary to hold your breath so as not to acci­den­tal­ly inhale dan­ger­ous fumes.

A mixture of hydrogen peroxide, potassium permanganate and vinegar

Add liq­uid or crys­tal­lized potas­si­um per­man­ganate to the vine­gar essence so that the solu­tion has a rich pur­ple col­or.

There are 2 ways to use the solu­tion:

1. Place the doll in the pre­pared prod­uct and hold the toy in the solu­tion for 1 hour.

2. Soak a cot­ton swab in the solu­tion and apply it to the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed areas. Try not to inhale the vapors so as not to harm your health.

After that, a pink­ish-brown col­or may appear on the sur­face of the doll. To elim­i­nate it, you need hydro­gen per­ox­ide: soak a cot­ton pad in it and wipe the doll. The pink­ish brown col­or will dis­ap­pear imme­di­ate­ly.

Nail polish remover

This is a quick and easy way to remove ink from your doll as it does not need to be dilut­ed. How­ev­er, it must be used with cau­tion, since the dol­l’s rub­ber may con­tain dye. If the liq­uid gets on clean areas, they will light­en, and the dol­l’s skin will become uneven in col­or.

You will need to moist­en a cot­ton swab in nail pol­ish remover, and then care­ful­ly walk along the trail of a ball­point pen.

Stain removers

When clean­ing a rub­ber doll from traces of a gel pen, you can use a stain remover. The best option is a hypoal­ler­genic bleach designed for chil­dren’s cloth­ing. It is nec­es­sary to make a hot bath with a stain remover for the toy, and then wipe its sur­face with a sponge. Boil­ing water can­not be poured into the con­tain­er — oth­er­wise the rub­ber of the doll will be deformed.

Melamine sponge

Melamine sponge is one of the most effec­tive stain removers. These are com­pressed crys­tals and fibers of melamine — as a result of chem­i­cal. reac­tions, they turn into a porous mate­r­i­al that forms a sponge.

Melamine sponge is a uni­ver­sal prod­uct for clean­ing any dirt on any sur­face. It also elim­i­nates marks from pens and felt-tip pens.

At the same time, when using a melamine sponge, care must be tak­en, because if it enters the human body, the prod­uct can set­tle in the kid­neys and lead to the for­ma­tion of stones. If you decide to use such a sponge and clean the doll from the inscrip­tions of the pens, then after pro­cess­ing it is nec­es­sary to thor­ough­ly wash your hands and the toy itself with soap and water. Wear rub­ber gloves dur­ing han­dling. The sponge itself should be wound in a closed bag in a safe place so that chil­dren and pets can­not get it.

Remove-zit

A paste prod­uct is pro­duced specif­i­cal­ly for remov­ing ink marks from plas­tic, porce­lain, vinyl and rub­ber dolls. How­ev­er, at the same time as the ink, the paste also removes all the rest of the paint on the dol­l’s face — it will have to be drawn from scratch. You can also pre-smear the dol­l’s eye­brows, lips, eye­lash­es and eyes with Vase­line so that the paste does not get into these places.

Sun rays

If none of the above options helped, then the sun’s rays will help to remove the stains of the han­dle from the doll. It is enough to place the doll in sun­ny weath­er under the open sky, and under the rays of the sun the ball­point pen will begin to soak into the rub­ber. How­ev­er, the removal of the han­dle will take a long time — for some it takes months.

This method also has a draw­back: if the eyes, eye­brows, etc. of the dolls are drawn, then the “make-up” can also fade in the sun.

Baziron AS

This is an acne cream, which, odd­ly enough, also helps to remove marks from a ball­point pen from a doll. To do this, you need to gen­er­ous­ly smear the cream on the traces of the pen, and then put the toy on the bat­tery. If there are few stains from the pen, they will dis­ap­pear in a few hours. If the child paint­ed the toy abun­dant­ly, then it may take 3–4 days to remove the stains, and every day it is nec­es­sary to re-apply the cream on the rub­ber.

You can also put a doll smeared with Baz­iron AS cream under a lamp, on a win­dowsill, etc.

Nailfile

If there are a lot of small marks from the pen, try to “sand” the sur­face of the rub­ber with a nail file, fine-grained sand­pa­per or pumice stone. Be care­ful not to erase the dol­l’s orig­i­nal make­up.

Conclusion

Thus, in each house there is one or sev­er­al means at once in order to wash the doll from notes and draw­ings with a pen. Aggres­sive meth­ods should be used only in extreme cas­es, when noth­ing helped. It is nec­es­sary to apply such a tool for a max­i­mum of half an hour and be sure to mon­i­tor the reac­tion of rub­ber to it — oth­er­wise there is a risk of los­ing the col­or and shape of the toy mate­r­i­al.