Can you Steam Clothing to Clean it?
I recently bought a handheld steamer to make it easier to de-wrinkle and take better care of my new hand-made clothing. While researching what to buy I happened upon some articles touting the magic cleaning abilities of steam.
These articles suggested that I could steam my clothes to remove odor and freshen up the garment. Some even claimed that the steam could remove stains from garments too. It would be excellent if I could just steam my clothes to clean so there wouldn’t be as much wear and tear as they run through the washing machine.
So I decided to test it! I decided on two main tests with my steamer. The first one will include trying to eliminate a coffee stain from fabric using a steamer. The second one will be trying to remove armpit odor from one of my T-shirts.
The TLDR:
Based on these two experiments, I determined that steaming cannot fully replace the cleaning process for garments and fabric. In order to actually sterilize the material, you would need to apply steam directly to each section of the garment for more than 5 minutes (probably much longer), making the process time-consuming and likely to damage any delicate materials. Steaming did not remove odor or stains from the clothing.
The science: steam and its sterilization properties
When trying to research the science of steaming clothing, I actually could not find any sources that were not from the website of a company that produces clothing or household steamers. This on its own seemed kind of fishy to me and made me immediately question whether the ‘common knowledge’ that steamers sterilize clothes is even true.
Since I couldn’t find the research that discussed sterilization of clothing specifically, I decided to look for research about steam sterilization properties in general. Here I had a little more luck. There are many studies looking into the effectiveness of using steam to sterilize equipment and surfaces in medical settings.
I was able to find that, yes, steam is very effective at sterilization. However, it’s not immediate. It takes time for the steam to kill the bacteria on objects. The studies I read gave estimates between 5 and 60 minutes to completely sterilize the objects. Two major factors affect the amount of time it takes for the steam to completely sterilize an object:
- The environment in which the steam is used. Namely, whether it’s sterilized in a vacuum or not.
- How porous the object being sterilized is. The more porous the surface, the more time it takes.
Since clothes steamers are not used in a vacuum and the clothes themselves are quite porous, my research left me doubtful on whether or not a clothes steamer really could clean clothes. On the other hand, clothing does not need to be 100% sterilized for it to be cleaned. So maybe a lesser amount of time could still be somewhat effective in removing stains or odors.
Since I couldn’t find a definitive answer from the research, I decided to do some tests of my own. I’m not a scientist with a degree or way to measure the amount of bacteria or dirt left on the clothing. Instead, these are practical tests where I’m just using my own sight and smell to see how well the steamer works.
Does steaming clothes remove stains?
If we want a steamer to be able to clean clothes, it has to be able to remove stains too. There were some steamer companies that asserted that the steam will loosen the fibers in the cloth allowing the dirt to fall away when the garment is steamed.
The test: can steam remove a coffee stain from cotton?
To test the claim that steamers can remove stains, I decided to spill some coffee on a scrap of cotton fabric I had lying around. I then hung it up and used the steamer on the stain for 5 minutes to see if it had any effect.
As you can see from the image, the steamer did not really remove the stain. The only thing the steam did was make the stain spread out and absorb into the surrounding fabric area. On the plus side, it did make the edges of the stain a little less visible. I suppose this could work if you have a very small stain, but overall I can’t say it got the job done. You’re much better off trying to remove the stain by washing it out.
The other downside was that I had to keep my steamer in basically that one spot on the left side for 5 minutes to get even these measly results. While the cotton fabric could stand up to this, a more delicate fabric, like rayon or silk, probably should not be steamed in one area for that long at a time.
Does steam remove odors?
The other thing that steamers have to be able to do in order to clean clothes is remove odors. Theoretically, it should be able to do this by killing the odor-causing bacteria on the garment. However, it also has to be able to do this in a fairly short amount of time, since it rather defeats the purpose of steaming if you have to stand there for an hour for the steam to work.
The test: Can steam remove armpit odor from my T-shirt
To test the odor-removing power of a steamer, I used the sweaty cotton T-shirt that I was wearing for pajamas (ignore the gross pit stains, please! I use my old T-shirts as pajamas to give them a longer life before throwing them out). The armpits were quite smelly, so hopefully it could give me a good indication of whether the odor-making bacteria have been sufficiently killed.
I held the steamer underneath the armpit area for five minutes and then gave it another sniff test to see how well the steam did at cleaning the garment. I will say, five minutes feels like a long time when you’re just standing with the steamer in one place.
After the five minutes were up, I was hoping to have at least a reduction in the pit smell, even if it wasn’t completely gone. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice any difference. I compared the smell of the steamed armpit to the smell of the unsteamed, dirty one, and there was no difference. This one gets a big thumbs down from me.
Even after 5 minutes, the steamer did not kill enough bacteria to reduce the odor. With this result, I can only conclude that steaming is not a practical way to spruce up or sanitize a garment instead of washing it with soap and water.
Conclusion
A handheld steamer is not an effective replacement for washing (or dry cleaning) your clothes. While my experiments were limited (maybe it would work better on different types of material or lengths of time), they lead me to believe that the way clothes steamers are meant to be used is simply not effective in cleaning or deodorizing a garment.
Steaming is great for removing wrinkles from clothing, and I highly recommend using them for that purpose (learn more about my experiment with a steamer vs. an iron), but you should not try to steam something in lieu of cleaning it. Soap and water or dry cleaning is the way to go if your clothes are stained or smell.
Even though steamers are often advertised as bacteria killers and can help clean garments, it’s just not practical to use them for these purposes. Probably if you steam them long enough to kill the bacteria, you would also run the risk of ruining the material due to elongated use of the steam (not to mention that your arm would be quite tired).
Steaming could be a viable option for sturdy upholstery items or materials that cannot be machine washed or dry cleaned since it does have sterilizing properties given enough time. But if there is significant odor or stains on these items, you will probably have to steam them for a long period of time for the steam to actually be effective. Spot-cleaning products will probably be more useful.
Sources:
- Rae, Haniya. “Can a Steam Mop Kill Germs?” Consumer Reports. August 2, 2020. https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/steam-mops/can-steam-mop-kill-germs-a7785709835/
- Muhammad Sadeque, Saravana Kumar Balachandran. “Overview of medical device processing.” Trends in Development of Medical Devices. January 31, 2020. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128209608000101
- “Steam Sterilization.” Center for Disease Control and Prevention. September 16, 2016. https://www.cdc.gov/infectioncontrol/guidelines/disinfection/sterilization/steam.html
- “Steam Sterilization.” Science Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/steam-sterilization
