How To Clean Old Lace Doilies

Since Hubby and Kalissa have their antique booth in Harmony, and Hubby is busy with field work, I've am trying to fill in his spot of him. In light of that I've thrifted a little more lately and garage saled too. At one sale I bought a BIG box of doilies for $10. I am sure there were likely 25-30 doilies in the box.

I sorted through them pricing them good ones and tossing the bad ones in a basket with plans to try to clean them. These are the ones that needed cleaning.

There were all sorts of stains. Some looked like coffee stains….others looked like food stains.

I loved this doily and really hoped I could get it to clean.

I watched a youtube video that suggested rubbing the cleaner "Zout" into the stains. Then soaking and washing in Woolite. I decided to give it a try. I started during nap time one day thinking it wouldn't take long. UGH. I had more doilies to clean than I thought.

Well the kids woke up so I abandoned the doilies….and then the school bus came and chaos broke out. Then all the parents started picking up their kids. There were three kids left when this first grader saw doilies draped over the sink. She asked what they were and what I was doing. Before I knew it chairs were around the sink and this little one wanted to clean a doily. Here she is scrubbing….

We soon discovered that we liked this product MUCH better than Zout. It's called Grandma's Secret Spot Remover.

As she worked, I told her that long ago there were no washing machines…and the evolution of laundry. It's fun to have the bigger kids around. I sometime laugh at all the "after school curriculum" that are encouraged. No curriculum here….some impromptu doily cleaning was what we did. She had fun and I think learned something too!

She loved dipping and squeezing and scrubbing on the stains. The doily she was working on wasn't hand made so she could be a little more rough with it. She ended up getting ALL of her stains out…see?

She was so proud of herself and was super disappointed that I didn't have more doilies to clean.

I came out about 50/50 on getting stains out. This one that was my favorite that I intended to keep…it didn't come clean. You can see one flower on the outside at the 8 o'clock position that still has a touch of yellowing. UGH. Oh well. I'm happy half of them came clean.

I think I'll be keeping Grandma's Secret Spot Remover on hand. I really liked it…and as for doily cleaning, I hope we don't have to do it again soon. It wasn't my favorite task.

Does anyone have a sure fire solution on removing stained doilies?