Thursday, June 19, 2008

Rubbing Alcohal Removes Ink From Fabric And Other Items

Today I learned that rubbing alcohol is an excellent solvent when removing ball point pen ink from carpet, sofa fabric and various other items including skin.

A pen broke in our pen canister yesterday. I discovered this when I pulled out a pen and promptly discovered blobs of sticky blue ink on my hands. I immediately threw that broken pen away, but foolishly left the rest of the pens in the canister, along with the inky mess in the bottom.

Later that day I discovered a big blob of ink on the cream colored carpet in the master bedroom and the following day I found several smudges of ink on my vintage sofa. I am the only one that likes this sofa, but I am sentimental about it. It is not ugly; it is just out of style…well, other people’s style because it is exactly my style. I fell in love with it when I saw it and when I learned that is was for sale for only $25 I had to have it. It is really a love seat, but my living space is very small so it is perfect. It is covered with varying shades of a textured, gold floral print. Some parts have a satiny sort of look and others have a rougher look. It reminds me of my beloved grandmother’s blue and green furniture before she upgraded to an ugly tan and brown plaid sleeper sofa. As you can imagine I was very upset to see my lovely sofa damaged.

I immediately Googled “how to remove ball point pen ink” and discovered many ways of cleaning this mess. Most people recommended spraying the area with aerosol hair spray and blotting the area, repeating until it is clean. I had hair spray but not aerosol kind. I decided to try rubbing alcohol.

I filled the cap with alcohol then poured a bit on the stain then blotted it with a paper towel being careful to use a clean area of towel every with every dab so I would not re-stain the carpet. I continued to wet the area with more alcohol when it became dry or the towel appeared clean when I dabbed it. When I finished, I fluffed the carpet a bit and I could not tell that there had ever been ink there.

Since that worked so well I thought I would attempt to clean my beloved sofa. Thankfully it came completely clean too! And, it did not discolor my sofa or carpet.
My next job was to clean the canister that started this whole mess. I put the pens on a paper towel and poured a bit of rubbing alcohol in the bottom of the canister and swished it around a bit. The canister is a vintage Kodak D-78 Developer can left over from my fathers dark room when I was a child so I did not want to throw it away. As the alcohol continued to do its work dissolving the ink in the canister I cleaned the pens and markers.

Several pens had a lot of ink gooped on the bottom so I soaked those in the alcohol in the canister while I cleaned the other, less inky pens. I moistened a paper towel with rubbing alcohol and rubbed each one until they were all clean. I used about half a roll of paper towel and half a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

After cleaning the pens I carefully ( this is a vintage can so the inner edges are sharp!) wiped the inside of the can. I did not have the patience to get every speck of ink off the bottom. I put a sponge in the bottom of the can to prevent the damage of future pens so I am not worried about more mess right now.

I did manage to stain my fingers and hands, but scrubbing them with alcohol and a clean paper towel removed all the ink except a tiny bit around the edges of my fingernails. I will attempt to remove that ink with q-tips and alcohol tonight.
mess.

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