Tomato juice and tomato sauce are essential ingredients in many dishes. Regrettably, they also leave unsightly orange stains on a variety of materials. It literally stains anywhere, or at least anywhere that’s most inconvenient to you. As such, follow these tips to remove tomato stains from all your household surfaces.

Basic Tomato Stain Removal Tips

• Remove as much of the excess tomato as possible from the fabric. Run cold water through the back of the tomato stain as soon as you can. This will force the stain back out through the fabric. Afterwards, rub a liquid detergent into the stained portion of the fabric. Work it in gently.

• If the garment is white, or you have tested it for colorfastness, apply a mild bleaching agent like hydrogen peroxide or white vinegar with a sponge. You can also use lemon juice on white fabrics.

  Three-percent hydrogen peroxide is probably the stuff you want to use to get rid of tough stains from whites. Vinegar/lemon juice is a strong enough acid to remove the stain on contact, but weak enough to leave your skin intact when you use it.

  

  Whatever agent you’ve chosen to use, always make sure to rinse it off the fabric completely after application.

• If the tomato stain is still there even after getting treated with detergent/hydrogen peroxide/vinegar/lemon juice, then apply a stain remover stick, gel or spray and allow it to sit for at least five minutes. Wash the stained garment normally with detergent again. Before drying, double-check the tomato stain.

  If the tomato stain still remains, rub detergent into the stain and soak in warm water for thirty minutes. Rinse well. If there’s still some tomato stain left, apply the stain remover stick, gel or spray again and wash according to the earlier directions. Repeat the stain removing methods as necessary.

• You can also try pouring boiling water over the tomato stain before washing; preferably just as soon as the fabric received the stain (just to prevent it from setting in the fabric).

• Try using an enzyme pre-soak spray. An enzyme pre-soak spray is a stain remover that contains an enzyme that digests the stain in the same way that your body digests food.

• The sun works best on tomato stains on fabrics. Best of all, it’s free! Sunlight acts as bleach through a process leading to similar results: high energy photons of light, often in the violet or ultraviolet range, can disrupt the bonds in the chromophore, rendering the resulting substance colorless.

Warning: Extended sun exposure often leads to massive discoloration, usually reducing the colors to white and typically very faded blue spectrums.

• Sponge out serious stains like tomato ketchup, tomato juice and tomato sauce stains. Also, washable cotton blends with tomato stains, so they should be treated as soon as possible (that is, within a day). Sponge the area with undiluted vinegar and launder immediately afterwards. For severe cases, add one to two cups of vinegar to the wash cycle as well.

• Brake cleaner does a surprisingly quick job of removing tomato stains. Just put a small dab on a clean cloth, blot the stain, and rinse with soap and water. Did you know that brake cleaner has the same chemicals professional dry cleaners use to clean stains in clothing?

Commercial Tomato Stain Removers

• Oxygen Bleach is the quintessential bleach alternative you will find in almost every store. There are a number of solutions called "bleach alternatives" or "color safe" bleaches, but essentially they boil down to the release of oxygen molecules that then oxidize (or corrode) tomato stains.

• Borax, otherwise known as boric acid (sold as 20 Mule Team Borax) is a milder bleaching agent. It’s not often used as bleach, simply because it doesn’t have the oxidizing power of the more traditional bleach alternatives. If you’re looking for a good way to remove tomato stains from whites and restore colors, Borax is a good product to have in your laundry room.

• If you can find it, buy Mr. Muscle Oven Cleaner. You can use this product religiously on every stain imaginable and on any sort of surface. So if you work in the food industry and are in contact with tomato sauces, tomato catsup or tomato juice on a regular basis, then order this product at Home Depot immediately and you won’t be disappointed.

• Two commercial brand names of the enzyme pre-soak spray variety are Biz and Axion, although others are also available. When purchasing one, make sure it says enzyme on the label, and follow the directions.

• Spray Nine, which can be purchased in most hardware stores, is another great all-purpose stain remover. While it has cautions on the label against using it on fabrics, there are people who’ve been using it for upwards a decade on everything, without causing any harm to any material.

Stain Removal Tips by Material