My dog peed on my sport coat! Will dry cleaning help with this sort of thing, or is it ruined?
Should I attempt to soak the stain or anything first???
6 Replies
It's been a while. Did you end up soaking it?
Acting quickly is key with stuff like this, with normal clothing I would have filled the laundry sink with hot water, an antibacterial, detergent and a bit of white vinegar. I'd have sprayed the stain with stain remover, & after waiting a sec, I'd try to soak just the parts that were affected first. For something like this I'd follow tag instructions re: water temp, use mild/delicates/wool detergent, and probably nix the stain remover. Then I'd run it through the washer on recommended settings with, again, a bit of vinegar (Or if it's handwash only, give it a second soak in fresh water + mild detergent, and then a rinse). No idea whether this is most efficient or safe for your sports coat, just what's been drilled into me by my mom + experience with my cat with anxiety
Acting quickly is key with stuff like this, with normal clothing I would have filled the laundry sink with hot water, an antibacterial, detergent and a bit of white vinegar. I'd have sprayed the stain with stain remover, & after waiting a sec, I'd try to soak just the parts that were affected first. For something like this I'd follow tag instructions re: water temp, use mild/delicates/wool detergent, and probably nix the stain remover. Then I'd run it through the washer on recommended settings with, again, a bit of vinegar (Or if it's handwash only, give it a second soak in fresh water + mild detergent, and then a rinse). No idea whether this is most efficient or safe for your sports coat, just what's been drilled into me by my mom + experience with my cat with anxiety
Spot on right here ^
Soak it, warm water, dish soap / oxy clean, maybe a tiny spot of bleach, rinse and repeat until the area isn’t discolored and there’s no pee stains
For smell, which may linger even after the spot is removed - white vinegar + sunlight
Soak in white vinegar then leave outside in direct sun. The sun will dry the vinegar which as it evaporates will remove any lingering odors.
^ after this do a regular wash and it should be almost good as new
Good luck OP
You don't soak sport coats in the sink.
You can try to spot clean, but dry clean is the obvious answer if you don't already know how to deal with stuff like this. I'd just bring to the dry cleaner.
The closest thing I've dealt with was expensive dresses and they came out fine, but the standards for well-made menswear seem pretty different, heh. Noted!
Two problems. First is wool - wool is just more sensitive to things like water. Second is the interior of most sport coats (ie, ones that are not unstructured.) The problems with soaking are essentially that, first, the different parts of the jacket (shell, canvas, thread, etc) will swell at different rates, and then they won't simply dry out into the correct shape; and two, that the canvas (or analog) is supposed to be carefully shaped and pressed and it is likely to lose that shape and not regain it properly.
Even a very hard rain has been known to ruin the shape of a jacket before, requiring significant surgery to repair or even being a total loss.
So has steaming, there's often advice to steam stuff to clean it and generally you don't want to steam a jacket.
Unless you have the infrastructure to clean large stains on sport coats, the answer is to send it to someone who does. You need to know a lot on the proper methods to not fuck it up.
You can certainly learn, but I wouldn't practice on a large stain ... of dog piss, no less.
UPDATE: soaked the area (taking pains not to go anywhere near the interlining — lucky for me this jacket is half-canvas and butterfly lined), took to the dry cleaners. The pee stain and smell are gone.