Chocolate stains there are nothing sweet about them....

Created on Thursday, 19 April 2012 05:53

The Easter bunny has come and gone....chocolate eggs have been delivered and by now half eaten and half distributed between clothing, upholstery, face and floor. Not so lovely now is it? Chocolate is so readily available and loved by all but within a millisecond it can cause such mess misery. How are you supposed to clean it up?

If it melts in the hands in seconds imagine how much mess when it’s sat on, stamped on, and rolled about in! Cleaning up the chocolate carnage can make more mess than you think. If you don’t know how to clean and remove chocolate stains correctly you can exacerbate the problem. Rubbing and scrubbing the area often ends up with a smeary mess worse than when you started! Whatever the area (unless it’s attached to the body) the best thing to do is to scrape off the remaining chocolate and then attack the areas with the correct cleaning solution for the fabric. We have put together a few tips on how to clean stains from the most popular areas...

1. Remove from the body – a good wash or a bath should do the trick.
2. Remove from clothing – scrape off the excess chocolate and rub the stain with your normal washing detergent and clean as normal.
3. Remove from Carpet – scrape the excess chocolate off and use a non acidic cleaning solution and dab over the area, keep dabbing with a cloth and the chocolate should start to lift, keep blotting the area with a cloth. Use a carpet cleaner to suck up and clean the carpet if you have one, if not keep repeating the dabbing and blotting steps until it has been removed.
4. Remove from furniture – depending on fabric and furniture item, you can wipe clean if wood, plastic or glass. If it is material based fabric – check whether covers can be removed and if it is machine washable, if it is you can scrape off the excess chocolate and cover the area in washing detergent and wash. For a fixed fabric like suede or leather you need to carefully remove the chocolate by scraping gently, be careful not to rub the area as it will smear. You can then dab on a cleaning solution for specialist fabrics (bought from supermarkets or specialist dry cleaners).
5. Remove from Curtains – Again the best method here is t scrape off the excess chocolate and either get your curtains to the dry-cleaners or dab with washing detergent and machine wash.

Next time ensure that all areas are covered or eat chocolate elsewhere!

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