The Unexpected Way To Clean Coffee Stains From Your Mugs

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When your favorite coffee mug winds up with unsightly brown stains on the inside, the last thing you want to do is damage the cup by cleaning it too harshly. To remove those stubborn stains without resorting to abrasive cleaners, denture tablets can come to the rescue. It sounds odd, but tons of tea and coffee lovers swear by the product for its stain-removing power.

As you can guess, these products are normally used to clean dentures, but they also work wonders to remove stains from kitchen dishes, including mugs made of plastic, ceramic, metal, glass, and porcelain. Denture tablets contain many of the same stain-fighting ingredients as laundry detergent and other cleaning products, but are gentler on surfaces, not to mention cheap and easy to find at drugstores or online. This 90-count box of Efferdent Denture Cleaner Tablets sells for around $4.50 on Amazon.

To clean your mugs, place one denture tablet inside (or two if you're cleaning a large or very heavily stained cup). Pour in some hot water, and the tablet should bubble and fizz to signify that it's been activated. Let the mixture sit overnight, then dump the water out. Gently clean the mug's interior with a sponge or cloth and rinse well, and it'll be sparkling-clean and ready to carry your homemade cafe lattes once more. This same technique also works on stained coffee pots, as well as plastic lids for tumblers and thermoses.

Coffee stains still stuck to your mugs? Try picking up some water bottle cleaning tablets. These work in the same way as denture tablets, but only require 15 to 30 minutes of soaking time. One popular version, Sudstainables Water Bottle Cleaning Tablets, also claims to prevent future residue buildup. However, these products are much more expensive than denture tablets, so your choice may depend on how many tablets you want for your dollar.

For those who would rather not buy a specialized product, a few household staples also do the job. You can clean pesky coffee stains from mugs with an ingredient lurking in your pantry: cream of tartar. This common baking ingredient is gentle yet effective on stained dishes. Baking soda or white vinegar are other useful tools to remove pesky coffee stains with pantry staples. Just make sure to use one or the other, as they cancel each other out when combined.

If your mugs aren't expensive, you can try your luck with more abrasive cleansers. Bar Keeper's Friend, a powerful powdered cleaner, is super effective on all kinds of stubborn stains. However, letting it sit on your mugs for more than a minute will certainly damage them, and it shouldn't be used on painted cups. Soaking mugs in bleach and hot water can also lighten stains, but may damage the finish on some cups and leave an unpleasant chemical smell on the interior.