Warning: The bloodstain removal tips are intended to remove visible blood from periods and minor accidents like scraped knees. It is not intended to be a method to remove all traces of DNA from clothing. If you have murdered someone and are looking for ways to get their blood out of your clothes, leave this page and turn yourself into the police immediately.
I was initially hesitant to write this post because I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that even though I've been dealing with periods for fifteen years, I still bleed through from time to time. This most recent incident was particularly messy because it began as I was about to teach a two hour lab section, so I didn't have the opportunity to clean up until I was back at home. Usually I'll throw a little OxyClean into the wash and it'll come right out, but this time it didn't work. I didn't bother to check them until the jeans were already dry because OxyClean is usually effective, and by then it was too late. I had set-in bloodstains not just on the crotch of my jeans, but also by the knee?
I'd been wanting to try making rainbow cutoffs, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I cut the legs off my jeans to make them into cutoffs. I know you can sand them and whatnot to make them fray more and give them more of a worn look, but I figured that if I wear them a few times, they'll eventually fray on their own, so I literally just cut the legs off and wound up with this:
My next step was bleaching the shorts. I put them in some water and Brian threw in some bleach. Bleach is a harsh base which can damage fabrics and Brian was insistent that we err on the side of caution, so we started out with only two capfuls of bleach mixed in with the water. We let the shorts sit and nothing happened. We added more bleach and a little more, eventually reaching a concentration of maybe 1 part bleach to 3 or 4 parts water. I let that sit for half an hour. I still wasn't seeing any changes, but I decided to put them through the wash to see if maybe the washing process would remove some of the color. The dye did not come out, but the bloodstain did, leaving me with a nice pair of denim cutoffs.
Bloodstain Removal Tools
*Hydrogen peroxide - works well for fresh bloodstains. Put stained clothes in a tub of cold water (hot water helps set the stains) and add a few capfuls of hydrogen peroxide. Alternately, you could put the clothes in the wash and throw a little peroxide in with them.
*OxyClean - works well for fresh bloodstains. The active ingredient in OxyClean is hydrogen peroxide, but I've had better luck removing stains with OxyClean than with hydrogen peroxide on its own. Add some to the wash and your clothes will most likely come out clean, as long as the blood is fresh and there isn't too much of it.
*Bleach - works for set in stains. Bleach really should be used as a last resort because of the potential it has to damage your clothes. Start out using only a small concentration of bleach, probably no more than 1 part bleach to 4 parts water. Let set for half an hour and then wash immediately. Denim is a fairly rugged material, so if you're cleaning something less robust, start with even more dilute concentrations of bleach and keep them in the bleach water for an even shorter amount of time. No matter how cautious you are, you are risking bleaching out the fabric and perhaps even damaging the fibers of the item, so be aware of that.
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