How to remove brown stains from tea cups in 5 minutes without scrubbing for 3p

Tea stains, while they do not do any harm, certainly look hideous and can make a cup look dirty, even when it has been cleaned. 

The reason why tea stains cups is due to the high levels of tannic acid which are not water soluble. Neither are they easy to wash out of cups and mugs.

Having a designated cup that I use daily for tea, it’s only normal that it had soon built up with these brown stains.

After failing miserably trying to remove the stains with just dish soap and a washing-up sponge, I was in need of a better solution.

After constantly seeing Mrs Hinch fans rave over denture tablets for getting their tea and coffee cups “sparkling”, I had to see for myself if this actually works.

I started by putting the kettle on to boil and adding one denture tablet to the stained cup.

According to cleaning enthusiasts, any brand of denture tablets will give the same results. 

I used Steradent denture tablets which retail for £1 in . This comes in a pack of 30 so it works out as 3p per tablet.

As soon as the kettle had boiled, I poured the water into the cup making sure the the stains were all covered by the water.

I then left the denture tablet solution to sit for around five minutes. As soon as the water made contact with the tablet it started to fizz and get to work.

Once the five minutes were up, all that was left to do was empty the water and rinse the cup out. 

Eager to see how the inside of the cup was looking, I noticed that the brown stains had completely vanished and I didn’t need to scrub or wipe anything away.

The main reason denture tablets work so well for this task is because they contain baking soda and citric acid.

Both these ingredients act together and make the tablet fizz and dissolve the stains.

Denture tablets have other cleaning uses, such as descaling kettle, removing burnt-on food from pans and cleaning shower heads.