You know the drill, you’re enjoying a glass of Merlot with the girls, when someone (pointing no fingers!), gets a little giddy and knocks their glass all over your beautiful (and not yet fully paid off!) sofa! You tell her it’s fine, it’s no big deal, but inside you are crying and hoping she didn’t do it on purpose, just because her gaudy sofa wouldn’t even show up red wine stains!
Don’t panic
All is not lost. Of course, it’s a shame that a perfectly good glass of red is now wasted and spilled all over your furniture but you don’t have to give anyone a replacement bill just yet. There are several tricks you can try.
Act quickly
If you let the wine sink in, it will stain, and you really will end up with an awful red wine stain forever! The important thing is to ‘lift’ the stain to ensure that the color doesn’t soak in too much. If you have split on a shirt, don’t just stick it in the wash and hope for the best, you need to pre-treat it, like, now!
Dab it!
Whatever you do, do not scrub! Dab the liquid with some clean paper towels to try and absorb as much as you can. Dab it until no other color comes out and then it’s time to apply some sort of other liquid onto the stain to break it up. Don’t just stick with water though; there are much more effective options!
White, white wine
If you happen to have some spare white wine laying around (although really, what on earth is ‘spare’ wine?!), pour that on the red and then dab it dry. Often it will neutralize it (I’m not a scientist, it just does) and you can pretend it never happened.
Salt
It’s an odd one, but people swear by just dumping a whole lot of salt on the stain and letting it do it’s thing by soaking it all up! This doesn’t always work perfectly but is certainly worth a try. Leave it on overnight and deal with the rest in the morning. Club soda is also said to work in the same way. Make sure you vacuum them up before using any of the other liquid solutions listed here.
Bicarb of soda and white vinegar
Is there anything these guys can’t do?! A sprinkling of bicarb is enough to change your blood-red stain to gray which you can then work on with the vinegar. Voila!
Washing up liquid
You can make your own DIY wine stain remover using equal parts ordinary household washing up liquid and hydrogen peroxide! If you use this mixture on clothes, it’s important to ensure they are light colored as otherwise, you may end up with bleach stains. Once you have applied the mixture, you will almost instantly see a difference in the stain! Simply stick the item in the laundry as normal, and it should remove the wine entirely!
Hot water
Okay, so we lied about not using water, but the fact is, it has to be done very specifically! This will only really work on fabric such as clothing or tablecloths for example and not carpets or sofas. Stretch the stained fabric over an empty bowl and then pour boiling water through the material where the stain is. This should take the stain right out!
The next time your precious sofa, carpet or bed (we’re not judging) is covered in an unsightly red wine stain, keep calm and carry on. At least, carry on with one of these hacks, and it’ll seem like it never happened.
