How Do You Remove Laundry Starch From Shirts?

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Written by Rich Fitzmorris

Question: How do you remove laundry starch from shirts that have been starched? They are a 60/40-cotton//poly blend. They have been through the laundry several times and the starch remains, this was a commercial application. Is there something that will neutralize it? Thanks.
- Catherine Dmochowski

Answer: The sizing or starch should have washed out even using home-style laundry detergents. If the item is white and can be bleached try bleaching at 1.5 times the amount you would normally use, and use hot water for the washing with warm rinses. For colored items, let the textile soak in a warm bath of detergent for a few hours and wash as you normally would. Both starch products and sizing products are water soluble, so they should be removed generally quite easily. Certainly check with whomever did the starching to determine what they did. If some chemical product was used that is not water soluble, you might try having the textile dry cleaned.