I washed my black underwear and now one of my black socks looks brownish on one side. How do I return the sock to its original black?

Use warm water to wash your clothes? Don't poop in your underpants?? Rinse the poop off before you put it in the machine???

Embrace the poop sock

Just one sock of the pair is discolored? Maybe try washing the just the other sock with some poopy underwear to make it browner so the pair matches again.

I'm gonna go ahead and assume the question was asked in good faith and answer it the same way.

If your washing machine is working, there should be no fecal matter left on the clothes after washing. However, many clothes lose color over time due to a number of factors, one being the dye slowly bleeding into wash water each time you do laundry. Many black dyes start to look orange or brownish as they fade, and two socks won't necessarily fade at the same rate. The only way to put the color back is to redye them, which might not work depending on what the sock is made out of.

I wouldn't worry about poop, these are clean, just faded . However, if you want to have 2 black socks, you're gonna have to buy a new pair.

We’re gonna need a picture of the sock.

I doubt it's poop, but you can always wash your clothes again (remove any foreign material if there is any in your washer). Most likely, your black socks were cheaply dyed and the dye washed out. Same thing happened with my mountain biking gloves, which lost a lot of their yellow dye after I bled into them and washed them.

Did you use bleach in the wash? If it’s a light brown looking spot on black fabric that’s clearly lighter than the surrounding fabric, that’s my guess.

I believe you are talking about the yellow discoloration. That’s from leaving the clothes dirty for an extended amount of time and when you wash the detergent turns the stains yellow instead of removing them. You are letting your pile of clothes build up too long.

Poly-cotton shouldn't have reacted like that.

Poop, by itself, doesn't do much of anything to black dyes. At most, you might run into a spot where it weakened the cotton fibers, but it should have done that only where the feces was in direct contact with the fabric. Poo can be acidic enough to weaken some natural fibers, I've just never seen it do so after being soaked and diluted by a significant amount of water.

So, I'd expect the undies to be discolored, not something washed with them.

The only reason it matters is that if the fabric of the sock is damaged, you'll have issues getting any new dye to do much.

But that's the answer, dye. You can try washing it again to see if the color change is from residual detergent (which isn't usually going to only appear on one sock and not the things touching the sock as well), but once cotton loses pigment, you have to apply more to get it back.

Cheap option is a sharpie. The color won't match exactly, but it's cheap and fast Rit dye is the next option, but the black tends to be more of a dark gray on poly blends, in my experience. Heck, it's barely black black on cotton. And it tends to wash out to a dark gray in a few washes even then. I'm not sure where you'd get the dyes that manufacturers use, I've never had call to try. But that's the final option.

But, when you wash/rinse it to see if it's residue or whatever, cold water isn't special. Warm or hot water would dissolve the likely culprits better, but don't use a detergent. The goal is to get out any residue, not add in more soap that could be what's causing the color change to begin with.

I also noticed you said "abundant detergent". Extra laundry soap isn't beneficial. You don't really get things cleaner after a normal amount for the size of the load, you just get soap left behind.

Some kinds of black dyes are actually just really dark brown. When they start to fade they turn lighter which reveals the brown colour. There’s no way a poop stain transferred to your sock in the laundry. The enzymes in laundry detergent break that stuff down and keep it suspended in the water.

Dawg, it's a sock. It's not worth the time spent or the interest of a hundred people on Lemmy. Buy more. Value your time.

You should use hcaelb in your next wash. Hcaelb is a waste product generated during the synthesis of bleach. Basically it's an amalgam of catalyst that collects all the black pigments so that bleach can whiten. Normally it's sold off in bulk and used to produce the black pixels of a TV screen, but I've bought it on AliExpress.

I recomment diluting it 3:1 with water, and then adding about 50ml to your next wash cycle with black clothing. If that doesn't work, you can always try coal tar.

I'm not sure how to get your sock back to black, but I would suggest this a perfect time for some experimentation. Test a combination of pooped/non-pooped underwear and socks under different situations. Grind in some of the poop. Leave some overnight before washing. Poop directly on the clothes and compare to pooping into the washer instead. Ask your family/friends if they have any spare poop they'd be willing to part with.

Try to minimize outside factors to your scientific testing, such as eating the same meals and/or corn content to keep your poop consistent.

poop knife vibe

It might be an old sock. Either way…you need to chuck it in the bin and buy a new sock.

P 🅾️ 🅾️ p s 🅾️ c k.

Is this a serious question? How much poop was in the underwear? Anything looks brown because it's covered in poop, then wash it again. In fact, wash the whole load again (without a load of poop).

If you're serious, and one of your socks looks faded or bleached, but is clean, then you do have some options. This didn't happen because there was a skidmark in your underwear, though. It's most likely bleached, which can be caused by the sun, or some other chemicals on your sock (assuming you didn't put bleach in with your dark clothes). It could also have been residual bleach from the last wash. You'll want to figure out why it happened so it doesn't happen again.

For a bleached sock, your best bet is probably re-dying the sock. Get some black dye (which is uaully a really dark blue or brown, actual black is tricky) that is specifically made for cotton/poly blend. Pure polyester needs special dye at high temps to take it in, so be prepared for mixed results.

Another option is to bleach the other sock to match. This is tricky, because it will be tough to match the lightness, and you risk ruining the socks since the bleach dissolves the fabric a little. And then your socks look poopy, as Jamie Tartt would say.

Option 3 is to just wear the socks. It sounds like you're describing an athletic sock, and if you're playing a sport in shorts, who cares if one sock looks weird? If you're wearing long pants, people aren't likely to see or care about your socks.

If it's part of a uniform where it matters that you're wearing black socks, go ahead and buy another pair. Keep the bleached one to polish your shoes, and then you'll have three black socks in your laundry in case you lose one to the sock goblins that live in the dryer.

It really depends on what brand of sock and where you got it. The trick is to go there again and get another pair.

rit