Here's How to Get Lube Stains Out of Your Clothes

Yes, you read that right.


Can you suggest a (some?) way (ways?) to get silicon-based lubricants off of clothing, sheets, Tupperware, etc.?

I sure can! And may I say thank you for posing such a racy question? I mean, I could talk about how to clean a refrigerator all the livelong day, but it's much more fun for literally everyone involved when I get to work blue.

It's been a minute since I've written about lube stains, which meant I was due up for another round of research to see if there were any miracle products that had newly come to market, which is how I found myself on a site called condom-sizes dot org at 7:45 on a recent Monday morning. Before we get into my findings, let me treat you to my general spiel about lubricant choices vis-à-vis stain removal.

The two most common types of personal lubricant are water-based lubes and silicone-based lubes. There are other types, but for our purposes we're going to stick to the two biggies. When it comes to stain-yness, water-based lubes have a huge advantage over silicone-based lubes, in that water-based lube stains are really easy to remove from sheets and other textiles. Just go with your regular laundering process, ideally in conjunction with pretreating the lube stains with a product like Zout, which is a good general stain remover that's also excellent on protein stains like sexual fluids that often commingle with lube to create a combination stain.

When it comes to silicone-based lube stains, things become a lot (a lot, a lot, a lot) trickier. So much so that I'm going to go ahead and make the BOLD STATEMENT that you should avoid silicone lubes altogether, because they will absolutely destroy your sheets. With that said, however, it should absolutely be acknowledged that many people find silicone lubes to be so superior, performance-wise, to water-based lubes that it's worth suffering stained sheets for a better sexual experience. That is fine and, of course, entirely a matter of personal choice.

Another important thing to know about lube is that you should consider the stains that it generates in the same way you would a grease stain, in that it's a very good idea not to put a lube-stained item in the dryer, post-washing. A common issue with grease, oil, lube, etc. stains is that it's easy to overlook residual staining when the fabric is wet, because the change in hue caused by dampness will obscure a grease stain. So! It's wise to not automatically put a lube-stained set of sheets into the dryer lest you set stains in that didn't come out entirely in the wash.

With all of that out of the way, let's talk about some products you might use to treat those lube stains.

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According to lube purveyor ID Lubricants, a recherché stain remover called Soilove is excellent at removing silicone . You can buy two bottles of the stuff on Amazon for about ten bucks. I read through 22 pages of Amazon reviews—such is my devotion to you—to see if I could find testimonials on Soilove's efficacy when it comes to removing lube stains, and here's what I came up with:

I read online that this product would remove silicone based stains. It doesn't. Back to the drawing board!

This stuff is amazing. Those silicone lubricant stains I thought I had baked into some fabric by washing and drying them in the regular wash were all gone when I used this product.

Got the silicone stain out of a shirt in which I ordered this product to help with. It took two washings and I had to drench the stain in the solvent. but it came out so I am pleased.

A thing I noticed that may explain why one person didn't have success with Soilove is that a number of people reported getting bum bottles of the stuff (the ones that were bad seem to have a mild smell, while the ones that were good had a distinctly strong odor). Given all that, I feel good about recommending it but would absolutely love to get feedback from any of you who try it out. Please and thank you!

Toy Cleaner

Here, I don't mean Lego cleaner. I mean cleaner that is designed for use on sex toys, like Pjur Med Intimate & Toy Cleaner. It stands to reason, in a way, that toy cleaner—which is formulated to remove not just sexual fluids, but also lubricant—can be used to effectively remove lubricant from fabric as well. Use it just like you would a laundry pretreatment product, by applying it to the stain prior to washing.


Degreasers like Zep Citrus Degreaser or De-Solv-It can also be pressed into double-duty as laundry pretreatment products that can eliminate tricky stains caused by silicone lubes.


Another good choice for treating stubborn, set-in stains is Cascade dishwashing detergent. We've talked about this before in discussions of ring around the collar and whites that have turned impossibly dingy; the idea is to soak heavily-soiled items in a cup of Cascade powder that's been diluted in several gallons of hot water. After the items have soaked for an hour up to overnight, launder them as usual.

As for that Tupperware, if dish soap doesn't do the trick, you can try to remove silicone lubricant from them using one of those degreasers, followed by a thorough washing with dish soap and hot water. Or you could decide that trying to salvage lube stained-Tupperware isn't worth throwing good money after bad. Entirely up to you! While you're weighing your options, I'll be over here letting my imagination run wild considering what exactly it was that you got up to that resulted in lube-covered food storage containers.

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