Removing fragrance
- Baking Soda. Add a half cup of vinegar and a half cup of baking soda to your regular unscented detergent, let it agitate in the washer, and then stop it so it soaks for a while. (Dissolve the baking soda in the water before adding the vinegar or the clothes or you could end up with pasty clothes.) We use it in our refrigerators for this very purpose - it's great at neutralizing odors.
- Coffee. (I know what you're thinking...and I don't mean for you to soak your clothes in it!
) Get a cardboard shirt box or shoe box, sprinkle in some dry fresh coffee grounds, put several layers of tissue paper on top (so that the oils from the coffee grounds don't stain your clothes) and put a lid on it. If you're allergic, you may not have seen this before, but a lot of perfume counters have little dishes of coffee grounds sitting out so that shoppers can "cleanse the palate." (You could also try this same technique with dry baking soda, making the shoe box into a tiny little refrigerator.) I have no idea why coffee works, but it really does seem to!
- Sunshine. I know, it's March and sunshine is at a premium right now, but if you have a sunny day sometime soon, hang the clothing out in the sun. You can try the baking soda & vinegar thing first and then use the sun to dry it, or just try it without. If there's an organic component to the fragrance, sunlight might help break the fragrance molecules down faster. The essential oils that go into a natural fragrance are fairly volatile, and when you buy them they're usually sold in amber or cobalt glass to keep the light out.
- If the source of the fragrance is oil-based (like a body oil rather than an alcohol-based perfume), try a tiny bit of Dawn dish soap dissolved in water. Dawn really does cut grease better than just about everything else, so if the reason the fragrance is lingering is that the soaps you're using can't pry the oil away from the fabric, Dawn might just have that extra bit of "oomph" you need.
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