If your dishes have developed reddish-brown iron stains, it’s often because you left water standing in them. It takes time for the mineral which produces the color — iron oxide, or rust — to settles from the water. The iron can come form your water source or from corroded steel pipes, and also after the stains kind, they do not come away easily. They will come off, though, with the ideal family products.
Get Them Early
The best approach to manage iron stains is to prevent their occurrence by washing your own dishes frequently. If you do that, any stains which have started developing come off readily with dish detergent and a bit of scrubbing. Even in the event that you forget to do the dishes and leave them standing for a day or two, you can typically get iron stains away without resorting to chemical intervention, presuming that you don’t expose the stain to your household cleaner that contains bleach. Bleach sets iron stains and makes them difficult to eliminate.
Household Stain Removers
The best way to handle mineral stains — including iron stains — on ceramic and glass will be to dissolve them with acid. Two common household acids, vinegar and lemon juice, function well, but not as quickly as a commercial cleaning product which contains a more powerful acid, like muriatic acid. The secret to success with slow-acting acids will be to keep them in touch with the stain for many hours. That’s easy to accomplish if the stain is within a container. Maintaining the acid in touch with the stain is a bit more challenging if the stain was left on the exterior of a bowl, plate or cup by your dishwasher.
Removing Stains by Hand
Removing iron stains from within a container is simple — just fill the container using lemon juice or white vinegar, making sure the fluid completely covers the stain, and await. Empty the container when the stain is gone. To remove stains from the exterior of a dish or cup, create a paste with borax and lemon juice or vinegar and then spread it liberally on the stain. Scrub the stain when the glue dries out, and in the event that you can still see discoloration, then repeat the procedure. You may also remove rust stains in the exterior of a dish or cup using spray lubricant and scrubbing, however, that isn’t recommended for removing it from inside.
Removing Stains from the Dishwasher
If you frequently wash your dishes in the fridge, and they’ve rust stains, you’ll probably also notice discoloration on the inside of the fridge. You may treat all the stains in precisely the same time by filling the fridge’s detergent dispenser with citric acid crystals, putting all the stained dishes inside and running the fridge through a cycle. Repeat if needed. As a supplement or alternative, put a bowl of vinegar in the bottom of the fridge when you run it during its cycle with all the stained dishes in it. If rust stains are a continual problem, the only effective way to stop them is to set up a filter in your own water source.