What lifts what — a plain reference
What lifts each soil from each fibre.
A stain has no single treatment. It has a treatment per fibre. Select a soil class and a substrate; the reference resolves to one procedure, its restrictions on that fibre, and the one action that would make the stain permanent.
Procedure
—
| NEUTRAL DETERGENT SOLUTION | 1 teaspoon mild liquid hand dishwashing detergent in 1 cup warm water. Never dishwasher-machine detergent or a strongly built laundry powder. |
| ENZYME DETERGENT | Protease presoak, or a detergent labelled “enzyme” / “protein stain remover.” Spot dose ⅛ teaspoon in ⅛ cup warm water. Prohibited on wool and silk. |
| OXYGEN BLEACH | Sodium percarbonate soak per label, or 3% hydrogen peroxide by dropper. Alkaline percarbonate attacks protein fibre; on wool and silk use buffered peroxide, short, tested. |
| CHLORINE BLEACH | 1 teaspoon in 1 tablespoon water, by dropper, local only. Prohibited on wool, silk and elastane. Sets rust. Never in a metal vessel. |
| HYDROCARBON SOLVENT | Petroleum dry-cleaning solvent. Ventilated, no flame, no pilot light, no spark. Never acetone, amyl acetate or lacquer thinner on acetate. |
| ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL 70% | Applied to a swab, never flooded. Dilute 1 part alcohol to 2 parts water for acetate. Test on dyed goods. |
| WHITE VINEGAR SOLUTION | 1 part white vinegar to 2 parts water. Never combined or sequenced with ammonia on an acidic food soil. |
| DRY ABSORBENT | Cornstarch, talc or fuller’s earth. Applied to a dry lipid deposit, left 15 minutes, brushed away, repeated. |
Sources. Procedure structure and wet-cleaning discipline — blotter beneath the stain, tamping rather than rubbing, testing on an inconspicuous area, working outside-in, five to seven flush cycles, thorough final rinse — follow the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute stain-removal reference (mci.si.edu/stain-removal). Agent preparation, dilutions and the fibre prohibitions — no chlorine bleach on wool, silk or elastane; no machine-dishwashing detergent; no unsaturated fats as lubricants; solvents ventilated and away from ignition — follow Cornell Cooperative Extension, REMOVING STAINS AT HOME. The American Cleaning Institute stain guide is listed as corroboration only; it was not retrievable at revision and no cell depends on it.
Well sourced. The soil classes and their cardinal prohibitions: heat coagulates protein and fixes it; water carries lipid deeper into the fibre; salt and heat fix tannin; alkaline soap browns tannin; chlorine converts iron oxide to a permanent dark stain; acetone and amyl acetate dissolve acetate and triacetate; proteases and chlorine bleach destroy wool and silk; ammonia over an acidic food soil can set it permanently.
Conservative default. The per-cell severity where the published sources address the soil but not that fibre. Every TST cell is an admission, not a finding — the reference declines to predict and directs a seam test. The elastane column and the acetate column are graded down one step throughout on the same basis: both are under-documented in the consumer literature and both fail irreversibly. Flagged as uncertain and deliberately not upgraded: perspiration on silk and on acetate; grass on acetate; tomato on acetate; ballpoint ink on elastane; rust on acetate and on elastane.
Not a substitute for the care label. Where the label specifies dry-clean, or the article is valuable, aged, unlabelled or of unidentified fibre, refer it to a professional cleaner or a textile conservator. Stop at once if colour transfers to the test cloth.
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