How to get a pen off a white shirt

Marks from pens and felt-tip pens are most notice­able on white things. And most often the blots appear on men’s shirts, as men car­ry pens and oth­er sta­tionery in their breast pock­ets. Hav­ing found such a stain, do not rush to take the item to the dry clean­er or throw it away. There are many ways and means to solve this prob­lem. From this arti­cle, you will learn how and with what to wash off the paste in such a way that not the slight­est trace of it remains on a white shirt.

Rules to follow

Com­pli­ance with sim­ple rules will allow you to achieve the desired result and car­ry out the pro­ce­dure for remov­ing traces of the pen with­out the risk of sad con­se­quences, such as a chem­i­cal burn on the skin or a hole at the site of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion:

1. What­ev­er stain remover you use — impro­vised or pro­fes­sion­al, wear rub­ber gloves just in case.

2. If you are using a prod­uct that smells strong­ly, such as ammo­nia, use a res­pi­ra­tor and work in a ven­ti­lat­ed area.

3. Try to start remov­ing stains as soon as they appear. It is eas­i­er to remove fresh ink marks than those that have had time to dry well.

4. Before using any of the clean­ing prod­ucts, deter­mine what fab­ric the shirt is made of and also make sure that the stain remover you choose will not harm the fibers of the prod­uct. You can test the drug on an incon­spic­u­ous area of ​​the item, for exam­ple, on the low­er free edge, which is usu­al­ly tucked into trousers.

5. In order not to stain pens and oth­er areas of the white shirt with ink dur­ing pro­cess­ing, place a plas­tic bag under the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area, and some­thing absorbent on it — a paper nap­kin, tow­el.

6. Work the stain from the edges to the mid­dle so as not to smudge it fur­ther.

The rules are not com­pli­cat­ed, it will not be dif­fi­cult to fol­low them. Espe­cial­ly if you use spe­cial stain removers, the choice of which is quite large.

Professional tools for removing ink from a white shirt

On sale you can find spe­cial stain removers that help to eas­i­ly remove traces of the pen, includ­ing from white fab­ric. It is with them that you need to start the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the soiled thing. For exam­ple, you can buy the Ger­man rem­e­dy “Dr. Beck­mann pen and ink”, designed to remove stains from ball­point pens, ink, felt-tip pens, mark­ers, water­col­ors. Due to the inno­v­a­tive com­po­si­tion, the drug effec­tive­ly dis­solves the col­or­ing pig­ment, removes it from the fibers, while not dis­turb­ing the struc­ture of the fab­ric, retain­ing its col­or. The stain remover costs about 2 dol­lars per 50 ml. There­fore, if the thing is dear to you, it is bet­ter to aban­don the use of risky meth­ods and buy a proven spe­cial-pur­pose tool.

Using a stain remover is not dif­fi­cult:

1. Take a saucer, put a nap­kin or a piece of clean white cloth on it.

2. Place the part of the shirt that is stained with ink over a saucer, soak with stain remover, cov­er with a sec­ond saucer on top.

3. Leave for a while until the stain com­plete­ly dis­ap­pears.

4. Wipe off the liq­uid with a dry cloth.

5. Wash the shirt under run­ning water, rinse.

6. If nec­es­sary, you can repeat the clean­ing with­out dam­ag­ing the fab­ric.

Stain removers are sold in dif­fer­ent for­mats — these are soak­ing liq­uids, and pens, and sticks, and sprays. On sale you can find such house­hold chem­i­cals of the brands “Eared Nyan”, “Van­ish”, “Frosh”, etc. Choose for your­self the appro­pri­ate form of release, a reli­able and trust­ed man­u­fac­tur­er, the opti­mal cost and feel free to start clean­ing the prod­uct. And if for some rea­son there is no oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy house­hold chem­i­cals, you can try to apply one or more folk recipes.

Folk ways

Experts have select­ed for you sev­er­al pop­u­lar ways to wash a pen from a white shirt:

1. 
   Milk. This is a proven method with high effi­cien­cy, the white shirt is com­plete­ly washed off from pen marks. You need to take enough milk so that the prod­uct can be soaked in it. Warm the milk to room tem­per­a­ture, immerse the thing in it, leave for two hours. Then rinse first in warm, then in cold water and wash.

2. 
   A mix­ture of glyc­erin and ammo­nia in a ratio of 1 to 1. We take a sponge, soak it with a mix­ture, three spots. It will just dis­ap­pear right before your eyes.

3. 
   Ace­tone-based nail pol­ish remover or pure ace­tone. You need to take a sponge, cot­ton pad or cot­ton ball, soak it with a sol­vent, attach it to the mark left by the pen, rub it light­ly. Take a new disk, sat­u­rate it with liq­uid, apply it again to the stain and rub it. It works until the ink is com­plete­ly dis­solved.

4. 
   Laun­dry soap. A piece cut off from a bar is rubbed on a grater. The shav­ings are poured with warm water so that it dis­solves, turn­ing into a paste. Apply the paste on the trace from the han­dle for 15 min­utes, then wash the thing with your hands, care­ful­ly work­ing through the area with pol­lu­tion.

5. 
   Glyc­erol. The liq­uid is applied to the mark from the pen for 30 min­utes, then the stain is blot­ted with a paper tow­el and the prod­uct is washed in the usu­al way.

6. 
   Hydro­gen per­ox­ide. Using a cot­ton swab, apply liq­uid to the stain, wait 10 min­utes, blot with a dry paper tow­el. If nec­es­sary, the pro­ce­dure can be repeat­ed.

7. 
   Table vine­gar, alco­hol or vod­ka. Heat the liq­uid in a water bath to 50 degrees, apply to the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion for 15 min­utes, wash the prod­uct.

Also, many house­wives try to use lemon juice in order to wash the pen from the fab­ric. Cut off half a lemon, squeeze out all the juice onto the stain from the han­dle, you can addi­tion­al­ly rub the pol­lu­tion with a squeezed half of cit­rus. Leave for half an hour, wash. This method is con­sid­ered effec­tive, but in prac­tice this is not con­firmed. Pen marks on a white shirt still remain and may even become brighter. But with traces of gel pens and felt-tip pens, mark­ers, lemon juice can cope, in any case, you can try this method. Anoth­er fall­back option for remov­ing ink from a shirt is to use tooth­paste, which is applied to the stain for 15 min­utes.

We select a tool depending on the type of fabric

If you intend to use non-pro­fes­sion­al prod­ucts to wash the pen, con­sid­er what mate­r­i­al the item is made of. Opti­mal clean­ing prod­ucts for dif­fer­ent types of fab­ric:

1. Cot­ton, linen, chintz — milk, hydro­gen per­ox­ide, ace­tone, vine­gar, house­hold bleach con­tain­ing chlo­rine (White­ness).

2. Wool — milk, soda, glyc­erin.

3. Syn­thet­ics — vod­ka, med­ical alco­hol, tooth­paste.

4. Suede — laun­dry soap, sta­tionery eras­er for pen­cils.

5. Silk is hydro­gen per­ox­ide.

Using any prod­uct, it does not take much effort to rub it into the fab­ric, oth­er­wise the fibers of the shirt can be dam­aged, due to which the mate­r­i­al is deformed or torn. Also, do not soak the prod­uct in an impromp­tu stain remover for longer than 15–30 min­utes. If dur­ing this time it does not work, then it is not worth hop­ing that the effect will occur lat­er.