*Getting the Stench of Gasoline Out of My Clothes*
By: John1lt
29 February 2020

Last week while changing the fuel filter on my pickup my right arm and side were soaked with gasoline. After finishing the job I didn't want the stench of gasoline in the house and I didn't want to contaminate more clothes or the washer by washing the gasoline soaked clothes with other clothes. Past experience with 90 weight oil had a load of clothes stinking of 90 weight gear oil due to a pair of pants that had a little gear oil on them. So I took the opportunity to try a couple of ways to get the stench of gasoline out of the clothes.

The first thing I tried was to put the shirt and pants on top of the snow in the sun for a couple of days. Result no reduction in stench of gasoline; didn't evaporate as I hoped.

The next thing I tried was to take a bucket of cool, not cold, tap water and dip the shirt and pants, shirt completely paints just the part that had gasoline on, in the water and then scrub with some Fast Orange hand cleaner. A Rubie who is a former mechanic suggested this when I asked about getting the stench of 90 weight out of clothes, didn't try it at the time as my wife washed the paints several times with vinegar and was able to clean the paints sufficiently. The Rubie said he would put his work clothes in a 5 gallon bucket, add water and a hand full of Fast Orange, place the lid on the bucket and roll it around for a bit before washing the clothes. The bucket I had for this project was square and the lid is not the kind that seals water tight, kitty litter bucket, so I opted to dip the clothes and scrub in the Fast Orange instead of rolling the bucket around which would have been easier. I used about 2/3 of a 28 oz, tub of hand cleaner mostly on the shirt because it had the most gasoline on it and smelled the worst. After scrubbing in the Fast Orange I put the clothes in the bath tub, sprinkled a small box of baking soda over them and let them sit covered in water overnight.

After allowing the clothes to self drain in the bathtub for several hours so I didn't drip water through the house on the way to the laundry room the clothes were ready for the washer. I told my wife to wash the clothes by themselves in case it didn't work I didn't want a load of clothes stinking like gasoline. She thought that was wasteful so all my dirty work clothes from the past two days went into the washer machine.

When the clothes were done washing the pants still smelled like Fast Orange and the shirt didn't smell like gasoline anymore. So we put the load of clothes into the dryer. All the clothes came out smelling clean.

I'm guessing that I didn't have to use so much Fast Orange and the baking soda soak in the tub was just an extra measure that probably wasn't needed but hand cleaner and baking soda are cheaper than new clothes or multiple washes.

After doing this I found Fast Orange Mechanics Laundry detergent on Amazon when I was checking to see if Fast Orange was cheaper on Amazon or locally. I might buy some for future use; if I do I'll let everyone know if it works as well as using the hand cleaner did.

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