We’ve all been there. You spring $120 for a new Country Road silk blouse and spill oily salad dressing on it on the first wear (just me? oh). Or somehow manage to randomly get olive oil on your jumper while you’re cooking dinner (me again). I’m a klutz, but I discovered a little trick that saves me every time I get in an oily accident.

Regular old baby powder. I discovered this trick when I got oily dressing on the aforementioned Country Road silk, but have since found it works on most fabrics. You need to get onto it as quickly as possible – within a few hours, or as soon as you get home from work. Pile the patch up with powder and leave it overnight to work its magic, then rinse the powder off and wash the item as normal. It’s essentially the same premise as dry shampoo – the powder sucks the oil up. That said, dry shampoo doesn’t work on fabric – I tried it when I had run out of powder and it was a little bit of a fail.

Anyway, I got my little bottle of Johnson’s baby powder from Coles – $1.94 for 100g. I had to buy a replacement bottle after I had another little “accident” yesterday. Such a klutz!