How To Get Tomato Sauce Out Of Clothes To Avoid Ruined Garments

You’re sitting down at the dinner table, about to take your first bite of the delicious, homemade spaghetti and meatballs, when your spaghetti-slurping results in tomato sauce all over your new t-shirt. Unfortunately, this can happen more often than not, and treating tomato sauce stains properly is crucial to avoiding ruined clothes. 

Below, we asked Zachary Pozniak, a professional dry cleaner and the owner of Jeeves NY, for his best tips on how to get tomato sauce out of clothes. 

Before Getting Started

Tomato stains can be tricky to remove because of lycopene, which is an organic pigment that causes the tomatoes to be a beautiful red color. That, paired with the addition of sugar in tomatoes, makes it a difficult stain to remove.

According to Pozniak, the best way to tackle this is to first go after the sugar with an enzymatic stain treatment (most stain-removing sprays will have enzymes like amylase, which is the one specific for sugar). Then you want to go after the color caused by lycopene with oxygen bleach. 

You want to act pretty quickly on a tomato sauce stain because you run the risk of a stain with sugar in it oxidizing over time, making it harder to remove. “It will turn yellow and brown, just like when an apple or avocado is cut into and exposed to oxygen,” explains Pozniak.  

What You'll Need

• Dish soap
• Enzymatic stain remover
• Powdered oxygen bleach
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Dawn dishwashing liquid
• Soft brush

How To Get Tomato Sauce Out Of Clothes

Method 1: Using Oxygen Bleach

1. Pretreat the stain with an enzymatic stain remover.
2. Work in the enzymatic stain remover with a soft brush. 
3. Allow it to sit for at least an hour. 
4. Wash the garment as recommended.
5. Soak the garment in hot water and powdered oxygen bleach.
6. Repeat if needed. 
7. Air dry the garment inside. 

Method 2: Using Dish Soap and Water

1. Pretreat the stain with water and dish soap.
2. Work in the dish soap with a soft brush. 
3. Allow it to sit for at least an hour. 
4. Wash the garment as recommended.
5. Repeat if needed. 
6. Air dry the garment inside. 
   

Method 3: Using Hydrogen Peroxide and Dishwashing Liquid

1. Pretreat the stain with dish soap.
2. Work in the dish soap with a soft brush. 
3. Allow it to sit for at least an hour. 
4. Spray with 3% hydrogen peroxide. 
5. Wash the garment as recommended.
6. Repeat if needed. 
7. Air dry the garment inside. 

Health And Safety Concerns

When using any type of cleaning solution, especially smoothing like bleach on colored or delicate fabrics, you should always test the product you plan to use on a small, hidden area to ensure the garment can handle it, suggests Pozniak.