How To Remove Counter Stains, Even Rust

I have to tell you about the time a Walmart bag sat on my kitchen counter for a few days before I had time to move it. It must have been laid in a wet spot too because the writing on the bag dyed my counter top.

Isn’t that lovely?

My counter top had “Walmart”, in reverse, plastered on it and it would not come off.

Not something I want displayed forever, lol. Before running to the store to buy a chemical that would possibly take it off, I decided to try a few things.

I’ve had great cleaning success in the past using the combination of vinegar and baking soda (in fact one of my cleaning tips on How To Make Your Slow Cooker Clean Itself has been one of my most popular posts thus far…it uses baking soda and vinegar).

Anyway, I tried that combo again and it worked = to solve not only my Walmart dye dilemma, but it also removed the rust stains that my counters have been sporting since before I moved into this place. Yay!!! Here are a couple of before and afters.

Before I show you how exactly I do it, I wanted to share with you links to five of my other popular cleaning tips:

Now back to learning How To Remove Counter Stains, Even Rust!

So here’s how I do it:

*Oh, and please note that this is a cleaning tip for plain cheap countertops…not for granite or stone of any kind and I’m not suggesting that you do this to stone…however, if you do try it on stone please comment below how it turned out. *

I start by sprinkling a fair amount of Baking Soda over the stain.

Next, I put down a clean dry rag and completely saturate it with Cleaning Vinegar (between 1/2 and 3/4 cups usually).

Cleaning vinegar is less diluted so it gives you a stronger/better result. If you want to try some and can’t find it at your local grocery store (sometimes in the cleaning section), you can get some here.

Then just let it sit and do its thing for a while… I checked it at 30 minutes and it still required a lot of elbow grease, so I laid the rag back down and let it soak for another hour or two.

Once it had plenty of time to soak, I took the rag and, in circular motions, soft-scrubbed the stain right off. Letting it soak for a couple of hours really loosened up the stain so it came right off.

Sometimes it does require sprinkling on a little bit more baking soda…just depending on how bad the stain is. Once the stain is gone you just wash the remaining baking soda off and you’re done.

Anyway, my counters were looking pretty horrible, so throughout the course of a day I was able to soak and clean the whole counter top!

Which is fantastic because I wanted them looking as clean as possible so that they don’t need to be replaced as quickly.

If you want to take it one more step, you can follow this up by polishing your counters with something like this stuff.

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P.S. Here is a link to my entire cleaning section. You will also like my life hacks section as well.

Here are five of my other cleaning posts that you’re not going to want to miss (the pics are links):

*Reposts: Please note that this idea/post was originally posted to this website on 10/30/2015 but it was in great need of a refresh so it now is more user friendly/shareable.

*Hey there, thanks for stopping by my website. This article is super old, so it has been archived as I no longer update it…so proceed if you wish…but it is definitely not my best work. Please stop by my home page, here, and see some of my better content. Thanks! ~Sarah*