Fish Oil in Laundry

[akichan]

My son spilled fish oil on his shirt, which I threw in with a load of other dark, cold wash clothes without thinking. Needless to say, even after 2 washes with Tide, rinse with vinegar, and drying out on the line, some of the clothes still reek.

Please tell me I'm not the only idiot who's done this. What can I do? I don't want to throw away all those clothes!

[tinuviel_k]

I really hate to be the downer here, but... I've done this before, and NOTHING worked. I accidentally left 4 fish oil gel caps in my pockets and ran a big load of laundry. Oh, it reeked.

I posted a thread here and had many, many wonderful suggestions on how to get the fish oil and smell out. Among other things I tried:

Cold washes
Hot washes
Soaking in lemon juice
Soaking in water with Dawn
Soaking in Bioclean
Soaking in BacOut
Washing with different detergents
Washing with baking soda
Washing with vinegar
Washing with color safe bleach
Washing with Dawn dish liquid
Washing 10 times (or more)

I think there were more things I tried.

Nothing worked. While the smell did fade out a BIT, it STILL always smelled like a bait tank. I had to throw out $300 worth of clothing. I couldn't bring myself to donate them or use them for rags, thy still stank of fish.

[linguistmama]

You're not alone! Nothing worked for me either I tried all kinds of things including a wash with borax, Shout, vinegar, baking soda, costco natural detergent and a few other things. I was just lucky it didn't ruin too many of our clothes.

[karne]

Same thing here. I presoaked, hot washed, used smelly detergent, natural detergents, etc. I eneded up throwing the whole load out. The fish smell never completely left. It's exceptionally bad to be riding in the car with the heat on, activating the smell of the fish oil on your clothing, in a confined space. Yuck!! It wasn't worth it to do anything but toss everything.

Sorry. Not what you wanted to hear, I'm sure.

[azdesertrn]

I did it recently when I used a cloth napkin to blot a small fish oil spill. Luckily the load was just napkins and towels. The smell on most things faded after several hot washes and a soak with lemon dish soap, really hot water and olive oil and tee tree oil (my theory was that the olive oil would dilute the fish oil and then I could wash that out)

I don't know about using other oils on clothes though- might leave oil spots (it didn't on my towels)

The one original napkin I blotted with still has a trace of smell. I ended up hanging it out in the sun for a few days which helped a lot. Now I can smell just a little bit when it comes out of the dryer, but it smells ok at room temperature.

Good luck.

[akichan]

Bummer. Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one. I guess I'll just toss or use whatever still smells for rags. Boo.