Clean Grease Stains on Leather

Grease is the worst. Nasty spills on your favorite jacket, purse, or leather furniture can seem insurmountable, but there are workable cleaning methods with the right timing and ingredients. You can rejuvenate your leather items to their once-lustrous sheen quickly and effectively with a homemade remedy. See Step 1 for more information.

Steps

Doing a Quick Fix

  1. Assemble your ingredients. If you've just spilled some butter or your boots or gotten bacon grease on the couch, it's best to leap into action right away. If you catch it quick enough, all you need to clean your leather item is:
    • A microfiber cloth
    • Talcum powder
  2. Dab as much of the grease as possible with the cloth. Gently blot at the grease stain, trying to absorb as much of it as possible as quickly as possible. The trouble with cleaning leather is that it tends to absorb liquid, especially grease, making it difficult to clean topically once it's been absorbed.
    • Avoid scrubbing the leather. This can damage the fine grains of the leather, making the stain worse. Blot gently and use some kind of lint-free microfiber cloth.
  3. Find the grain of the leather. Just like wood, leather has a direction of texture. You'll have more success in applying any cleaner if you apply it along the lie, as opposed to across it. In other words, any time you wipe or blot at the leather, you want to do it with the grain.
    • If you're having trouble finding the grain, try to work from the "outside" of the stain in to the center. At the very least, you'll be able to shrink the stain this way.[1]
  4. Spread talcum powder on the item. Use regular household baby powder to soak up the grease. Be liberal with your application of the powder. It works particularly well at drawing the grease out without damaging the leather because it's more absorbent than the leather is, as long as you get there in time.
    • Let the powder sit overnight, or at least several hours to do its work.
  5. Gently brush the talcum powder off the item. Using a cloth, gently brush off the talcum powder. Be careful not to scrub the powder back into the leather, working the grease back out.

Using Liquid Detergent

  1. Assemble your ingredients. One particularly effective method of cleaning grease from smaller items is to use a bit of dish soap and distilled water to create a lather and clean the item. You'll need a couple of clean micro-fiber cloths, the soap, and water. Consider using a spray bottle to make the job easier.
  2. Apply the detergent. Dip the cloth into the liquid detergent. Dab the patch test area with the cloth, being gentle to work with the grain of the leather.
  3. Soak the leather with the distilled water. Use your clean fingers to rub the patch test area until you work up a gentle lather. Apply more water as needed to clean the stain.
  4. Blot dry with a clean cloth. Allow the piece to dry fully before attempting to clean again. You might have to attempt several applications before the stain is shrunken significantly or completely removed from the item. Give it time to dry before attempting to clean it again.

Using Homemade Cleaning Solution

  1. Assemble your ingredients. To create a simple and effective homemade leather cleaning solution, you'll just need the basic ingredients to make a loaf of bread:
    • 3/8 cup of distilled water
    • 1/8 cup of sea salt
    • 1/2 teaspoon white flour
    • 1 tablespoon baking soda
  2. Mix the ingredients thoroughly in a bowl. Use a spoon or fork and work your salt water, flour, and baking soda into a kind of a paste. This is highly effective in gently lifting grease from leather without affecting the leather grains of your item.
    • Alternatively, you can try a mixture
  3. Do a patch test. Find a less visible spot on your item to "patch test" the cleaning solution of choice. If your leather is dyed in any way, any kind of cleaner can affect the color, so pick an out-of-the-way patch to test it on.
  4. Dip the cloth into the pasty mixture and dab the test area. Use a small amount of the mixture on the cloth and be extremely gentle. You want to use the same basic principle as the quick-fix method, gently dabbing and letting the cleaner do the work. Don't make it worse by scrubbing.
  5. Pat the area dry with another cloth. Be gentle and allow the area to dry completely before attempting to clean again. It might take several applications to completely eradicate the stain, or shrink it considerably, but allow the leather time to rejuvenate before you clean it again.
  6. Try alternatives. There are many different cleaning solution recipes used with varying degrees of success. Try different recipes if you can't get the spot as clean as you'd like. Use the same basic method for cleaning, but try different combinations of natural products you've got on hand.[2] Some have reported success using:
    • Equal parts water and white vinegar
    • Equal parts lemon juice and cream of tartar
    • One part of vinegar to two parts of linseed oil



Ingredients

  • Cloth similar in color to stained item, plus two additional cloths
  • Spray bottle for Solution B
  • Patience

Homemade Cleaning Paste

  • 1/2 cup salt water (3/8 cup distilled water and 1/8 pure sea salt)
  • 1/2 teaspoon refined white flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking soda

Soap Method

  • Mild liquid detergent (i.e. Ivory, Zero, etc)
  • Distilled water in a spray bottle

Tips

  • The grease stain may look very bad in the beginning, but tend to disappear all by itself because the grease will be absorbed by the leather.
  • Cleaning won't work on aniline style leather. You would need special degreasing products to achieve any success cleaning this type of leather.
  • There is always more grease in the back of the leather than you can see in the front
  • If you have pigmented (coated) leather then a good foam water based leather cleaner (LTT) should fix the problem as this will remove any residues from the surface.
  • Using a good fluoro-chemical leather protector will help to make problems like this easier to clean in the future on any leather as it will inhibit the absorption of oils and dirt.

Warnings

  • Always perform a patch test when cleaning delicate textiles. You want to ensure that the cleaning solution doesn't affect the dye of your leather.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://www.howtocleanstuff.net/how-to-remove-grease-stains-from-leather/
  2. ↑ http://www.diynetwork.com/decorating/tips-for-cleaning-leather/index.html
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