Arrgghhh Halloween Stains And How To Get Rid Of Them!

How to Get Rid of Halloween Stains

It’s that time of the year when we don our scariest outfits and go trick or treating, or more commonly these days we celebrate this spooky time of year with a haunted house party. All sounds great and good fun until the next morning when we spot stains around the house or a “what on earth is that?” on your five year old son’s t shirt – it’s Halloween and we have an abundance of possible things that could stain, smear and smudge our homes and clothing.

Pumpkin, chocolate, face paints, make up and food colouring offer just as scary stains as your husband’s attempt at Pennywise the clown! But how do you go about getting rid of them and get your beautiful home immaculate again. Here are our top tips, using natural or common kitchen ingredients rather than using toxin laden chemicals:

Face paints

That Day of the Dead costume sounded a good idea and you wowed your friends with your best Daniel Craig impression however it comes with two problems, how do you get it off your skin and if you accidently smudged your sleeve across your face, then your clothing, and what about that spillage on the bedroom carpet when you were getting ready as well.

If you are lucky the face paint will be water-based – woo hoo, simply wash your face and clothes as you usually would and you’ll be sorted, however the issues arise if your face paint is oil-based. Treating oil stains requires a little more effort. If you find an oil stain on your sofa or clothing, rub some of the kids white chalk on it as soon as possible then after a little while wash it off with cold water, avoid hot temperatures as that will make the stain set in. Another alternative to chalk is rubbing alcohol, simply dab a small amount on the stain and again wash off with cold water.

Red Wine

We all love having friends over for a haunted house party, but with kids running around the house high on trick or treat sweets then the chances of a red wine spillage is pretty high. The quickest and most effective treatment for red wine stains is actually white wine, in this case two wrongs do make a right.

The white wine counteracts the red wine which stops it seeping into the fabric further, then you can treat the remnant of the stain with salt and soda water. Always remember to dab rather than rub!

Chocolate

Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without the bucket load of chocolate and sweets that the kids bring home with them after a successful “trick or treat” session. To be honest, we are probably all guilty of pilfering their buckets after we eventually get them to bed after their sugar high but chocolate unfortunately can leave a terrible stain, so how best to treat this one?

The best thing is to try and remove most of it from the clothing or carpet as soon as possible, either with a spoon or knife. Do not rub the stain as this will make it worse! Once the excess has been removed, mix some washing up liquid with water and work from the outside towards the centre, rinsing with clean water as you go. Keep repeating it until it’s gone.

Pumpkin

When I was kid you couldn’t get pumpkins in the shops so we used to carve our lanterns out of large turnips! You might laugh but at least turnips do not stain like the bright orange fleshy alternative pumpkin does. So you have tried your best to keep your kids pumpkin-carving antics to the kitchen table on top of a piece of newspaper but yet still that orange stain manages to make it onto your kid’s clothes and somehow your cream carpet!

The best way to treat a pumpkin stain is remove any excess flesh and then immediately treat with white vinegar, leave it on the stain for a few hours before wiping or vacuuming – simple!