Chocolate’s a tasty treat when it makes it into your mouth, but it’s also a sticky mess when it doesn’t (Let’s hope that doesn’t happen too often). We’ll help with that sticky mess if you promise to work on your aim.

How to Clean Chocolate Stains from Clothing

The first thing you should always do before trying to remove stains from an article of clothing is to check the care tag and make sure you’re not going to destroy it during your efforts. If its dry clean only or you’re not sure, you’re better off taking it to the dry cleaners – why take the risk? If you are sure, or are just feeling adventurous then follow along:

1. Allow the chocolate to harden (you can place the article of clothing in the fridge to hasten this) and scrape as much chocolate from the surface as possible using a butter knife or other blunt edge.
2. Run hot water (as hot as you can get it) through the back side of the stain to melt it and push it out of the fabric. Do this until it stops shrinking.
3. Saturate the remaining chocolate stain with household dish detergent and let it sit for 10 minutes.
4. Gently fold the stained area in on itself and rub the fabric together to agitate the soap and stain, then rinse the area again with hot water. This should finish removing the chocolate stain.

If you went through those steps and still have some chocolate stains left, or if your facing a chocolate catastrophe, throw everything in the washing machine along with 1 gallon of whole milk and let the load soak for 30 minutes before running it through the wash cycle. That should remove the chocolate. If dark greasy stains remain, finish them off by pretreating the areas with dish detergent 15 minutes before running then through another wash cycle.

How to Remove Chocolate Stains from Carpets and Furniture

Since we can’t exactly stick your couch or your carpet into the washing machine, we’re going to have to do something a little different for these items than we would with regular clothing.

1. Allow the chocolate stain to dry and scrape as much from the fabric as possible using a blunt instrument like a butter knife.
2. Lay a couple of layers of paper towels over the stained area.
3. Run an iron over the paper using one of the lowest settings and without steam. This will make the chocolate begin to melt, and the heat will pull it into the paper towels. Move the towels around as they absorb more chocolate and replace as necessary until the stain is gone. The trick is to get the iron hot enough to just barely melt the chocolate, too hot and you risk spreading the stain.
4. If a dark spot is left behind, follow up with either a spot treatment, or scrub with some dish detergent and blot dry.

Good luck! Be more careful next time and be sure to share your chocolate stain removal tips with others by using the form below!