How do I get cooking oil and grease stains out of clothes?

Everyone recognises the stain that was not there when the clothes went into the machine and is obvious once they are dry. Oil is invisible on wet fabric, so a grease mark washed without treatment passes the inspection and reappears afterwards. Water and oil do not mix; only a detergent, and enough heat, will lift it.

What you'll need

• Washing-up liquid
• Talcum powder, cornflour or bicarbonate of soda (optional)
• A clean cloth or paper towel
• Warm running water

Step by step

1. Blot up any surface oil first.Press a paper towel onto the mark and lift. Do not rub — spreading the oil across a wider area makes every later step harder.
2. Keep the fabric dry.Water spreads oil sideways through the weave and forms a wider, fainter halo. Everything up to the wash happens on dry cloth.
3. Draw the oil out with a powder.Talc, cornflour or bicarbonate of soda heaped over the mark and left fifteen minutes for fresh oil, or several hours for a heavy one. Brush it off and repeat if the powder darkens.
4. Work neat washing-up liquid into the mark.It is a degreaser designed for exactly this. A few drops rubbed in with a fingertip until the fabric looks wetted through, then left fifteen minutes.
5. Rinse with warm water from the back.Warm this time, not cold. Heat thins the oil so the detergent can carry it away, and there is no protein here that heat would set.
6. Wash at the highest temperature the label allows.Sixty degrees for cotton tea towels, forty for most clothing. Grease is one of the few stains where a hotter wash genuinely helps.
7. Check it dry, in daylight, before ironing.Oil is invisible on wet cloth. Let the garment dry fully and look at it in good light; if a shadow remains, repeat before any heat touches it.
8. Treat old set-in grease with a solvent.Surgical spirit or a proprietary stain remover applied from the back of the fabric over a clean pad. It works on marks that have already been through a dryer, though not reliably.

Tips

• Chalk works on a fresh grease spot when you are out — rub white chalk into it and brush off before you get home.
• Oil on silk or wool must not go near washing-up liquid or hot water. Powder to draw it out, then a specialist cleaner.
• A grease mark that has been tumble dried is genuinely difficult. It is worth one solvent attempt and then acceptance.

Common mistakes

• Rinsing under the tap immediately — Water cannot dissolve oil, but it does spread it. What was a small dark spot becomes a large faint halo, and the whole area now needs treating instead of a coin-sized patch.
• Washing without treating and hoping — The stain is invisible while wet, so it passes unnoticed, gets tumble dried, and the heat polymerises the oil into the fibre where it becomes close to permanent.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask