Nothing ruins a beloved white T-shirt faster than yellow pit stains. But instead of throwing your clothes in the donation pile (or worse, the trash), one TikTok creator shared an easy, three-ingredient fix that can save your wardrobe and your wallet.
TikTok creator Baby Angel (@ohlittlebabyangel) shared a simple cleaning trick for restoring sweat-stained shirts using three common household staples: baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and blue dish soap.
To make the stain remover, she mixed the ingredients into a paste, applied it generously to the affected area, and let it sit before washing -- 30 to 60 minutes for whites and 15 to 30 for colored fabrics to prevent lightening. After a normal wash cycle, the yellowing disappears, leaving the fabric fresh and clean again.
"If your pit stains are... bad, you can definitely do this a second or third round," the creator says in her video.
"This has definitely saved so many pieces that I love and [helped] just the longevity of everything," she added.
This natural cleaning swap works because baking soda acts as a gentle abrasive and natural deodorizer, lifting residue from sweat and deodorant while neutralizing odor. Hydrogen peroxide helps to dissolve organic stains, and the dish soap cuts through oils.
By keeping clothing in rotation longer instead of tossing pieces that look worn or stained, simple tricks like this one can help reduce the amount of apparel that ends up in the trash. In the U.S., about 11 million tons of textiles go to landfills each year, and only around 13-15% of clothing is recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Beyond rescuing your favorite tees, this method is an inexpensive, low-waste alternative to buying specialty stain removers or new clothes. It relies on ingredients many people already have at home, saving both money and time.
Using baking soda-based cleaners also means fewer synthetic chemicals washing down the drain, which supports better indoor air quality and a healthier environment. Plus, DIY cleaning hacks like this one can help reduce plastic waste from disposable cleaning bottles.
The comments section quickly filled with people who'd clearly been there before: frustrated by stains, but hopeful about saving their favorite clothes.
"So many clothes I threw away because of this," one person commented.
"Thank you for saving my future clothes!" another person added.
Another commenter shared their own experiment: "I just did laundry and tried it with vinegar bc I didn't know what else... I'll wait until I wear it again and need to wash, I'll come back to this vid."
What started as a quick laundry fix ended up revealing something bigger: how much people want to make their clothes last a little longer.
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