How to Fix Pink Laundry

There are multiple rules to remember when doing laundry to maintain your clothes' best quality. For example, you must keep light-colored and dark-colored clothing separate, wash heavy and light fabrics at different times and avoid mixing synthetic and natural fibers in the washing machine. However, it's easy to make mistakes when washing clothes. If you accidentally combine a red clothing article with white or light-colored fabrics, the red dye can bleed onto the lighter fabric, resulting in pink clothes. If you attend to this problem right away, you can save your clothes from being ruined.

Washing machine
Dryer
1/2 gallon bleach
1 tbsp. bleach
1/4 cup water
Bowl
Eye dropper
Clean cloth
5-gallon bucket
4 gallons hot water
1/4 cup boric acid powder
Laundry detergent

Instructions

- 1
  Examine your laundry after your washing machine has completed its wash cycle. Remove any red articles of clothing, as their dye is what has bled onto your lighter clothes. Place the red clothes in the dryer and dry them normally. Don't dry your pink laundry.
- 2
  Check the labels on your pink clothes. Separate the clothes that are safe for washing with bleach and those that aren't. In general, cotton and most white fabrics are safe to use with bleach. Silk, wool, mohair, leather, spandex, nylon, rayon and some other synthetic fabrics can't be used with bleach. To test whether bleach will discolor or negatively effect a garment, combine one tablespoon of bleach with one-quarter cup of water in a bowl, then use an eye dropper to apply a small amount of the mixture onto a small area on a seam inside the garment. Allow the mixture to stand for two minutes, then blot it dry with a clean cloth. If the tested spot shows discoloration or has any other negative changes, consider that garment to be unsafe for bleach.
- 3
  Fill a 5-gallon bucket with four gallons of hot water and one-half gallon of bleach. Submerge the bleach-safe clothes inside the bucket and allow them to soak for about two hours.
- 4
  Place the clothes that aren't safe to be bleach in your washing machine. Add one-quarter cup of boric acid powder and wash the clothes using their normal wash setting. This will lift the pink dye and remove the stains. If any pink still remains, repeat the wash cycle again using the same amount of boric acid powder. Dry the clothes normally once the pink stains have been removed.
- 5
  Remove the bleach-safe clothes from the bucket after around two hours, once the washing machine is available. You may notice that the pink dye has lifted from the clothes. Place the clothes in the washer, add the normal amount of laundry detergent and wash the clothes using their normal wash setting. Once the cycle is complete, check to see if there's any remaining dye on the clothes. If any dye remains, wash the clothes again to remove it. Dry them normally.

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