14 Nov 2024
It’s said scented candles can impact your mood: peppermint aids concentration, citrus for positivity and lavender is the go-to candle fragrance for relaxation.
Spilling liquid candle wax down your clothes is another sure fire way to impact your mood.
And not in a good way.
BUT rest assured, with 5 smol steps you can rescue your clothing and all will be well.
So… having checked your clothing care labels for any specific washing instructions or warnings, you’re ready to tackle that wax.
step 1: chill.
With almost every stain on the planet, the advice is to act fast because the quicker you deal with it, the easier stains are to remove.
BUT candle wax is NOT the same. Even if it’s coloured wax.
The first step is to leave the wax to cool and harden. This will make your task so much easier because trying to remove warm wax can smear it into your fabric further and cause more discolouration. If you want to speed things up a bit: pop your stained item into the freezer.
step 2. scrape.
Now you must gently scrape off the solid wax from your clothing with a butter knife or even the back of a spoon. It’s really important to use something quite blunt if your stained fabric is made from wool, silk or some other delicate material. You don’t want to snag or tear your clothing.
For tougher clothing like denim jeans you can scrape with something a little sharper BUT always take care, work slowly and use as little pressure as possible to avoid damaging the fabric.
step 3. iron.
Lay the stained area face down on a clean piece of kitchen paper or greaseproof paper and then lay another piece of clean kitchen paper on top followed by a tea towel as another layer of protection.
Take a warm iron and carefully run it over the top of the kitchen paper to lift the remaining wax stain from the fabric into the paper.
Repeat this with clean pieces of kitchen paper each time until you are no longer seeing any of the stain transfer.
step 4. soak.
Take your smol bleach-free, colour safe stain gel and wet the stain before applying the stain gel directly to it.
Leave the gel to act for 5 minutes then soak the garment in a sink of lukewarm water for at least an hour.
step 5. wash.
Wash your clothing in the washing machine as you normally would - making sure to check the clothing care label first so you don’t exceed the recommended temperature.
Both smol bio and smol non-bio laundry capsules give great results at all temperatures so you know you’ll get a deep clean regardless. In fact our capsules work so hard they’ll match the big brand clean even on a 20°C cold wash. Good news for your wallet and great news for the planet.
check before you dry.
If the stain remains after your machine wash - don’t dry your item and definitely DO NOT put it in the tumble dryer. That will set the stain for good.
Just repeat steps 4 and 5 again until the stain is gone.
As always - try to dry outside. It’s free, helps your clothes last longer plus the UV rays will help fade any remnants of staining and combat any remaining bacteria. BUT if you need to dry indoors, check out our alternatives to the tumble dryer here.