Restore Your Plastic Food Containers Using Lemons, Here's How

While many families across the globe share the burden of a cupboard full of stained plastic containers used to preserve leftovers, there are actually a few remedies to get those nasty red sauce stains out in order to restore any container back to its original color. Baking soda is one of the more popular choices used to remove stains from plastic containers, but there is actually an even more natural way to get rid of the spaghetti remanence.

The key is a lemon! By cutting a lemon in half, then rubbing it on top of the stains and allowing it to sit in the sun for a day or two, the lemon's naturally acidic qualities will loosen the stain enough for it to be easily scrubbed away with soap and water. For extra tough stains, squirting some of the lemon juice directly onto them and into the bottom of the empty container can help break them down more quickly.

The reason that lemons and sunlight work so perfectly together when it comes to removing stains is that they are both able to naturally bleach certain items. A lemon, as mentioned before, is able to loosen a stain by adding a charge to its molecules. The sun similarly breaks down a stain's molecular bonds in a practice commonly referred to as "sun-bleaching." Together, the duo works in harmony to loosen a stain enough for it to be easily wiped away with the help of soap and water.

However, those trying to remove stains from a particularly important container should be cautious if it isn't originally white or clear, though many Tupperware sets are. Because lemon juice is a natural bleaching agent, using it on colored items like plastic containers or stained clothing could fade its color. Allowing an item to sun-bleach for too long could also cause adverse effects, so using this method on white or clear items is the safest option to conserve a product's natural hue.