Blood stains (how to remove)

While laundry should probably not be your highest priority, this is how to do it if the need arises:

1. Soak the stain in cold water for thirty minutes.
2. While you're waiting, make a paste of cornstarch, cornmeal and talcum powder
3. Spread the paste onto the stain and allow it to dry.
4. Brush away, and voila!

There is yet another 4 step method for removing bloodstains.

1. Wet the stain with cold water
2. Coat the blood stain with powdered meat tenderizer and more cold water
3. Rub in this paste you have formed and let the shirt sit for one half hour
4. While you're waiting use this time to make sure your alibi is solid then rinse


Just another helpful hint from your weird uncle Frank.

On non-absorbing materials (formica, painted surfaces, tile,car dashes and the like), hydrogen peroxide works amazingly well on both fresh and dried blood.

Stock up now...

If you can find them, there are these little displays full of Carbona Stain Devils. There's a different little bottle for different stains: Blood, rust, ink, etc. These things are pretty amazing. However, the little bottle runs out pretty quickly, so if you’ve done something like, I don’t know . . . used a Phillips head screwdriver to kill a middle aged hitchhiker wearing a cowboy hat who tried to put his hand a little too far up your leg after you picked him up outside of Tuscon . . . or something . . . and you have blood all over the back seat of your car, it’ll take many bottles to get the blood out. As far as I know, Carbona doesn't offer the product in bucket sizes.

I put down a new carpet recently and then had some water damage that caused some rust stains on the carpet. I couldn't get them out for anything, until I got the Carbona stuff. I just squirted it on the carpet and the rust disappeared. Miracle stuff. I found it at WalMart. (Thanks, Sam.)

Once when short on ideas for prank phone calls, my friends and I called a matress company and claimed that we had a bloodstain on a mattress we purchased from them. We inquired about removing such a stain, and the representative instructed us to use hydrogen peroxide to remove the stain. We then called back a few moments later, and after reaching the same representative, asked how we should go about removing a hyrdogen peroxide stain. He was not pleased.

It is essential that you use cold water when removing blood stains. This is because at high temperatures hemoglobin will get denatured and then it will get stuck onto the fabric because the denaturing of this particular protein is irreversible. Fresh stains are especially easy to get rid of - just soak in cold water, maybe a tiny bit of regular unscented soap with an old toothbrush.

For us females, this removal of blood from fabric is sometimes a monthly process, so it's especially important to know.