Back at the end of February I wasn’t thinking too clearly and grabbed my favorite white tablecloth to use in my Girl Scout troop’s Thinking Day display. The display looked wonderful, but I forgot that 4th grade girls were going to be stamping using red archival ink. One of the girls would not leave the ink pad alone and before the event had officially started had managed to get red ink smeared on the tablecloth. And that was just the beginning.
By the end of the day I had two large red areas of smeared ink on my formerly white tablecloth. To top it all off it was right in the throws of our cookie season, so the tablecloth got thrown on the laundry room floor and forgotten about – for four months. I “discovered” it recently and decided to see if the Best Cleaner Ever could remove ink that had been sitting so long.
The tablecloth was slightly damp, as my laundry sink had overflowed due to a errant sock (which is how I found the tablecloth). I sprayed all the inked areas with the Best Cleaner Ever and let it sit for about an hour or so. Immediately the ink started wicking. After an hour it had significantly lightened.
Here’s what I was working with. I grabbed my cell phone from my pocket and took a couple of photos for comparison:
And in this one, you can see the yellowish color of the Best Cleaner Ever and the link of ink starting to dissolve.
After sitting for several hours I washed the tablecloth in warm water. Everything — EVERYTHING — came out! It’s hard to tell in this after photo, but there is absolutely no ink left on the fabric.
