Dark Stain (If You’re Not Interested in Laundry Mysteries, Skip This One)

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We have one black bath mat and we used it for our last guest (a woman).

After washing and drying it, my husband noticed that it had a small stain that was a slightly blacker black than the overall fabric. About an inch long and a half inch wide.

He poured hydrogen peroxide on it, and it reacted like mad, and in many areas where no stain was visible.

He ended up treating the mat three times with the hydrogen peroxide. It reacted ferociously the first two times and then finally fizzled out the third time.

He washed and dried the mat again, and the blacker stain is gone.

But we’re wondering: What on earth could have caused the peroxide to react all over the place, when there was just one small stain?

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God knows…just get a new bath mat. :slight_smile:

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Blood…

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Well, that’s pretty nasty. I guess we’ll follow @Helsi’s advice.

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I’m not a big fan of buying more stuff if the existing stain can be banished. (all respect to Helsi)

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I would agree @KKC I am all about waste minimisation, recycling and reuse where I can. Maybe I misunderstood the OP but I thought they meant the treatment they used had made things worse and the mat was no longer useable.

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I read it as simply wondering what the darker stain was. They didn’t ask what to do about it at all.

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I agree with KKC - hydrogen peroxide fizzes like crazy on blood, and dried blood on a black mat would look darker.

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A lot of things.
Mould for example, something all bathmats pick up over time.

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From Google: “Hydrogen peroxide reacts [fizzes] with catalase. Most cells in the body contain catalase”. So pretty much any bodily fluid or parts (skin, etc) would cause the hydrogen peroxide to fizz.

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Could be residue from your laundry detergent that didn’t completely rinse out. Could be dryer sheet residue. Could be your washing machine needs a cleaning.

But it stopped fizzing, so all is good.

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Hydrogen peroxide fizzes anywhere it encounters these things and anywhere there is a any bacteria (Doesn’t necessarily have to be some horrid bacteria that would make you sick) so I should think that after someone using a bathmat a few times, it would fizz all over. Not all that mysterious.

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Right, but this one had been washed and dried before we applied the hydrogen peroxide.

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Maybe the guest noticed that she had bled on it and tried to clean it but just ended up rubbing it all over the mat?

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Then probably blood. Doesn’t easily wash out. A cut when shaving on the leg - and water mixed in, then standing on the bathmat and it runs down her leg and pools next to her foot - she uses her hand to brush it off and shakes the blood off her hand onto the bathmat. Mystery solved!

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