My daughter got a nice white dress for her birthday, tried it on, and then had some birthday cake and immediately spilled blue frosting on the dress. Since frosting is a fat I figured that the best way to remove the stain was to use an alkaline agent. So I mixed a tablespoon of Oxo Brite in some cold water. Oxo Brite is mostly made of sodium percorbonate and sodium carbonate.
When you mix sodium percarbonate into water it breaks down into hydrogen peroxide and sodium carbonate. And since Oxo Brite already has sodium carbonate in it, the pH is about 11 which makes it pretty alkaline. Hydrogen peroxide by itself is slightly acidic, so while it's a good cleaner it wouldn't work as well on the blue frosting. The high alkalinity together with the hydrogen peroxide combines to make a nice bleaching agent.
So I soaked the stained part of the dress in my mix and five minutes later you couldn't even tell that anything happened. I rinsed the dress and then later washed it. So a birthday disaster was averted. Of course, since this has a bleaching effect you would need to check for color fastness before you tried this with anything but a white garment. It will also work for stains on carpet or furniture, but again, check for color fastness.
See also:
Organic Chemistry Portal
Ecos.com
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