How do you wash off "ring around the collar?"
 

I have a couple of white dress shirts and, embarrassingly enough, they're all dirty around the collar and there appears to be nothing I can do about it.

So, my sister's wedding happened this weekend so I bought myself a nice, brand new, white dress shirt for the occasion. At the end of the day, I was surprised to find that my collar had already been stained! How does one get "ring around the collar" from one day's worth of wear?

Perhaps more importantly, how does one get rid of it now that I've stained my shirt?
Thank you for your suggestions...

Wash your neck with soap, can't get dirt and oil on a collar if there is no dirt and oil there. Shampoo your hair as well as its a big holder of dirt and oil.

For white shirts, you can't beat bleach.

Get one of those bleach pens, scrub it a bit, and wash.

A thin Oxy Clean paste would work too, and probably be less damaging to your fabric.

OOOO the Vanish bar! That thing is AMAZING! It's like those Arm and Hammer eraser sponges, but for clothes!

Soak the shirts in vinegar, then scrub with baking soda... that's what I've always heard. You gotta break down the oil that's causing the stain.

Vinigar has always seemed to work well for me. Soak the clothes in a solution of vinigar 50/50 or when the collar rings are really bad I have used straight vinigar. I've soaked it overnight usually. Then wash as usual. Oxyclean also does seem to go a very good job on general stains. When I have a more dirty load that I'm washing and I don't want to pre-treat everything I just throw in some Oxyclean with my detergent (dunno if your supposed to do that - can't remember what the instructions said) and wash them. I'll check a few and if they're not satisfactorily clean I'll do them once more in it. That's usually enough to get the stains out though.

You could always just make a paste with some warm water and your detergent, and rub it into the stained area thoroughly. Leave it on for a few hours before washing as normal.

Worked for me.

I always use some extra spray that's designed to remove stains before putting them in the washing machine. That always worked for me.

In my old theatre company we used ordinary (top quality) hand-dishwashing detergent to get rid of all the grease paint and sundry dirt that gathered round the collar. The trick is to wash up as soon as possible to not let the stains settle in. We pretty much ripped the shirts off the actors as soon as they got off-stage. ;) Just squirt the detergent on the stains and rub rub rub in scalding hot water.

I'm not joking about the as soon as possible. It's grease. It gets rancid. Rancid grease does nasty things to the fabric, and if you let it stew for too long the stains will never ever go away. Blood and grease stains should always be dealt with ASAP.

this site is pretty cool, has tips for removing all kinds of stains from all kinds of things, check it out.

Oxyclean and Era are great for this. I keep a squirt bottle of era in the laundry room for just this purpose. The squirt bottle was an empty dish washing liquid bottle that I just put the era in so that I can target the stains as needed. Era has gotten out red wine, grease, coffee, and red food coloring stains from clothes that would have other wise been ruined. For the whites I'd try the Oxyclean soak and then use tide with bleach in the hottest wash cycle you think the shirt will handle.

I work at a McDonalds, and trust me - I know about grease stains. Once, I dropped something (only technically my fault) in one of the fryer vats and was splashed with 350F vegetable oil. It got all over my uniform shirt (and burned the underside of my forearm a little, but I didn't whine or bitch about it, because it was partially my fault...). When I got home, there was a dark area all over the front of it. After letting it sit for like three days (it's a McDonalds shirt, who the fuck cares ;) ) I decided to finally wash it. All I did was put in the normal clothes-washing detergent (Tide with Bleach was what we had at the time) and squirted a bit of [manual] dish-washing liquid (I think we had Palmolive at the time, but I figure anything decent would do. Maybe look for something that says it's good with grease?) into the wash along with the detergent. When I took my shirt out, it was as good as new.

Trying to think of this somewhat scientifically, I think that grease/oils are non-polar (for an example, water is polar, alcohol is polar - look it up on google), so any sort of non-polar solvent (benzene, ether, chloroform, and I think [because it contains benzene and some other things] gasoline. So, going scientifically, I would think that soaking the shirt in gasoline (or, if you can get ahold of it, benzene of chloroform would probably work better, and be less flammable) then **thoroughly rinsing it with water** (I wouldn't just throw it in the wash. I doubt there would be any sparks in your washing machine, but play it safe!), after the rinse, see if the stain is still there - if it is, try either a different non-polar solvent, or just throw it in the wash and see what happens. If the stain is still there, don't dry the shirt yet - drying it often makes the stain 'set' and even if you can get the oils out of it, it will have already damaged the material. I'm sure you'll figure out something. Just keep in mind that oils are fats and the whole idea is that non-polar means lipisoluable (which means fat-soluable, ie... dissolves fat - oils are fats, so it should dissolve oils).

By all means though - test a little bit of your solvent on an area of the shirt which isn't very visible (ie... if you normally tuck it into your pants, try somewhere near the bottom, otherwise maybe in the armpit or something), just to be certain that it won't stain it yellow or something. Given a white shirt, I would think that it would be safe, but better safe than sorry.

The makers of Whisk used to make a killing in the ring around the collar department. In the 70s, men were the victims of this ring around the collar problem and the women were left to find a solution. Then one day in the 80s it seems the entire problem went away. Now it seems ring around the collar is back. Of course there have always been pit stains but nobody seems to talk about those.