Do You Donate or Give Away Stained Clothes?

Donate them anyway. Big places like Lutheran social services and goodwill take all donations. what is not usable in their stores they send to countries that make rag rugs. these clothing with stains are usable for so much more than just wearing. people buy things for the zippers / buttons, little bits of fabric make great quilt pieces. please don't throw them into a landfill

I donate most of the baby clothes to Vietnam Vets and they clearly state used clothing in good condition. I have also gotten things passed along that have stains. I have learned about OxyClean (can sometimes do wonders) and if there are items that are white - you can use the Clorox Bleach pen. It even works to use around color (like when a white outfit has writing or an emblem on it). I will try to get a stain out - but won't try more than once. Then it hits the garbage.

Good luck! C.

I use them as dust rags and to clean up things that I wouldn't want in my washing machine. If I use an old rag to clean up something gross, I can just throw it away. Sometimes I give a stack of them and a bucket of soapy water to the kids and let them "wash" my car. It keeps em busy, makes em feel good.

Keep the ones you can use for dust rags and throw the rest out.

Even people needing cheap or free clothes don't want to get stains.

If it's donated to a place where it will be up for resale - stains will not be accepted because the clothing won't sell.
If it's donated to a homeless or women s shelter - they'll take what ever they can get.

I think it was rotten of your friend to return your borrowed childrens clothing stained (especially without a HUGE apology). Sometimes that stuff will still come out if you soak it in OxyClean.

I would still pass the stuff along, and here is why: it's better than nothing. It's hard for us to think that way when our basic needs are met. But sometimes, people simply need the clothing. If it's completely, horribly ruined, you can probably still donated to the animal shelters, etc.

.

I know the donation center in my town doesn't take stained clothes. i usually use them as cleaning rags.

call a local pound or vets office and see if they would like them. At the hotel I worked at years ago they would take all the stained linens and sheets to the Humane Society for animals. There would be all kinds of people dropping off shirts and other clothing that was stained up for them to use.

You could also ask your local Salvation Army or Good Will if they have a free bin for those types of items. I haven't been to one for a long time but I know at one time when browsing around they had a bin off to the side for stained up items for free. There was always people taking the stained baby clothes out. I suppose when you don't have money to buy clothes you will take what you can get with in your budget even if its stained.

I have a neighbor who is constantly giving me her daughter's cast offs for my youngest child. They are disgusting. I don't just mean a little stain here or there...they look like they've been worn by several children who have done their best to ruin them. And I think to myself...does she not see this? Of course, I throw them all out later, and I feel guilty about it, but I would NEVER put my child in a bunch of nasty clothes like that.

If a shirt has a little jelly stain near the bottom or something little like that, I'll donate it. If it's a onesie that's got yellow stains all over it...nasty, I throw it away. I suppose there's a line...if it's not too bad, you could give it to the Salvation Army. If it's not up to their standards they'd throw it away.

I donate them if they are not horribly bad, but if they are really bad I throw them away.

I consign DD's old unstained clothes and donate the stained stuff. I figure that GoodWill can toss the stained clothes if they want.

I would never give stained clothes to a friend, but maybe your friend felt like since you had given these to her then she should give them back in any condition?

I would not give a friend clothes that had stains on them, even if I was returning clothes that had originally been given to me. That being said, I do donate clothes with stains on them. At least there's a chance someone can use them. Also there are a lot of people who are good at sewing their childrens' clothes but can't afford to buy cute fabrics all the time. So they can go to Goodwill and buy baby/childrens' clothes super super cheap, especially if they are stained, and cut out the good parts to use in sewing. Just a thought.

Anything you can tie dye, do it! Creates a new wardrobe, covers up the stains... so you're not overwhelmed with tie dye, donate some of THAT stuff :)

If they're too badly stained or torn, I toss them. I'm not going to give some person who desperately needs help awful clothes, they get the good hand me downs :)

I do not donate stained clothing for the most part (hubby uses them for outdoor rags). The one exception is that I am preparing to send my sister a bunch of clothes from my sons (if this current baby turns out to be a girl....fingers crossed) and I have a few outfits for toddler age that are in good shape with a few stains on them, but I am adding a letter letting her know that there are a few stained items that she might want to keep as outdoor play clothes...after all, that's how they got the stains on them in the first place! It certainly won't hurt my feelings if she tosses or passes on anything...even the nice things!

i throw out stained stuff even if i am not donating it UNLESS it is something VERY sentimental to me and I plan on keeping it forever

Throw them away. I would never donate stained clothes and I am sorry that your friend handed back a box of stained clothes!

I think that no matter how destitute someone is, that they deserve clean unstained clothes. One day I had a garage sale and an elderly woman came and spent an HOUR going through all the onesies that I had, holding them to the light, checking for the slightest stain. She was buying things for the layette that her church regularly sends to war torn countries. The truth is that many of the mothers who would receive the clothes would be grateful for whatever, but this woman wanted to the BEST. I will never forget that sweet elderly woman and her heart for impoverished new moms. She is my example for donating!

Maybe your friend thinks you have magic stain eraser type soap and could therefore get the stains out of the clothes, b/c the clothes you gave her originally were in such stain-free condition???

Just guessing...ditto Cathy T

Our county landfill has a box for linens. The usable fabric can be recycled.
I also soak stained clothes in Oxy and it can do wonders.

I do NOT donate stained clothes. I use them as rags (we are building our house and ALWAYS need rags, esp good cotton ones. Can you believe I had to go buy some rags a while back?)

If I were you, I'd spray all the spots with your best stain remover, then stick them in the sun to dry (to help bleach them out). Those that look better (stain-free) I'd keep and the rest I'd use as rags.

I also toss stained clothing.

I put my daughter's clothes away unstained and when I pulled them out to give away years later (my second child is a boy), I noticed some yellow stains had appeared. Some stains take a while to show up. Maybe she didn't know.

Donate them anyway, anonymously. Clothes in good condition can be given to friends or sold on Craigslist and eBay.

I always use stained clothes for rags...

Stained clothing become dust and cleaning rags, or go straight in the trash. Never donated.
Just tell your friend "thank you" and toss them.

I'd toss those clothes like I did when a girlfriend did the same thing to me!!! I was actually offended!!!! Why in the world would you give something to someone else that's stained??? I may make my own kids' stained clothes play clothes but never would I give it to another person for their child.

Purple Heart. They take even rags and reuse them. If nothing else, they get reused as rags instead of ending up in the landfill.

I donate all my stained clothes to the veterans (they even pick up). It's my understanding that they will do their best to get stains out and then they resell the clothes for a small price. The money goes to veterans so I think it's win-win.

Also, you can donate to a local charity who gives stuff away to local families. Better to have a sweatchirt with a stain and be warm then not to have one at all.

Donate them. Clothes that are not used by donation centers due to severe stains/damage are recycled into cloth rags, craft scraps and fiber. Otherwise they sit in a landfill.

I also toss or donate stained clothes. I figure if Good Will or where ever doesn't like it, they can pitch it. I had a friend give me a bunch of clothes when I had my son. Very sweet of her to do, but most of them were stained. This was my first (and only) baby and I didn't want to put a bunch of dirty, stained stuff on him. I am still a bit "uppity" about clothes. I like to buy his new and he actually enjoys shopping with me. I figure that since I only have 1 I can afford to make him a little stud. He is also compulsively neat (he's 6) so he would probably have a problem at this point if I put a stained shirt on him.

At our Good Will nobody knows who dropped off what, so you won't be branded as the stained clothes lady! haha. I think that was kind of rude for your friend to "return" those clothes all stained. If I'm giving clothes to anyone I usually make sure they are decent. Who knows, different people have different opinions, maybe she thought they were okay? :-)

Seems to be some definition confusion here...

I pass along good quality, un-stained clothes to girlfiends with kiddos.

I donate (i.e. a clothes drop or Goodwill) anything that I do not deem "pass-alongable".

Lastly, I toss or cut up for rags anything that is ripped or has holes in it.

I would sort through the box and see what is worth keeping, what is worth passing along again, what is donatable and what is tossable/rags. If you don't have the time or desire, just drop the whole thing off in a donation bin. You'll be surprised what creative folks can do with those items you find undesirable.

~C.

This happened to me. I had a friend send back the clothes that I had given her so that I could pass them on. Quite a few of them had little yellow stains. Formula, Spit up. what have you. The first thing I tried was to wash them in MY baby detergent. Out of the 30 outfits washed, only 3 came out with stains on them. I was able to save 27 outfits!

So my first advice is to wash them and see what happens. If there are still stains, I would either use them as cleaning clothes or toss them. I do not give away or donate stained clothes

I list them on "Freecycle" as "stained children's clothing"

You'd be surprised what stuff people will take and re-use/re-purpose

I would toss them myself, but a painter told me he buys all his work clothes at Goodwill. Also, I noticed a very poor M. who was digging through the trash at Goodwill and taking ripped, stained clothes.

Um no, I throw them out. Same thing for shoes. And I am an active donator and shopper at places like Goodwill. I look at it and think, will I buy this? If not, I put it in the trash instead of donating.

Donate them. Just because you won't use them doesn't mean that someone else who is worse off won't!