You know I love the Magic Eraser for cleaning lots of things. It works REALLY, REALLY well on loads of things that you would expect it to work on. Like crayon off of walls, the inside of the microwave, plastic stuff. It’s awesome.
But I found a bunch of Mr. Clean Eraser hacks that looked pretty awesome, but also maybe, too good to be true.
So I tested them all. And I’m sharing the results with you.
How I Chose The Test Subjects
You don’t need me to tell you that the Magic Eraser will DEFINITELY get gunk off of your Tupperware.
We all know that and it totally makes sense that that would work, right?
But I kept seeing these other Magic Eraser hacks on Pinterest that seemed really cool and I wanted to try them. I wanted them all to work. Because the Magic Eraser really does make cleaning a lot easier.
It’s faster and more effective than a regular sponge almost all the time.
So for science and also because I just needed to clean some things, I decided to test the curious hacks I had found.
Here’s a list of what I tested:
- Glass Stove Top – I was a little concerned that this would scratch the glass stove top which only made me want to try it even more.
- The Oven Door – I had to try this because my oven door was dirty. We had a little oven fire a few weeks ago and I’ve been just not cooking in the oven since. True story.
- Silver – I have salad tongs that are silver. I don’t even know where they came from, I’m assuming they were a wedding gift, but they were a DISASTER of tarnish. But you can’t just throw them away, right?
- Rusted Cutlery – I have a nice knife set that apparently is supposed to be hand washed or it gets rust marks in the dishwasher. I don’t get what’s so special about the dishwasher that it rusts the knives, but I had some rusty knives that needed help.
- Sneakers – Yup, sneakers. For fun.
- Leather Bag – This one was the one that was kind of scary. I wanted to try this on my nice leather Coach bag which my husband bought me years ago for my birthday. If the Magic Eraser messed up that bag, I’d be doing some Brady Bunch style switcheroo so that my husband didn’t figure out I’d ruined it.
- The Ring Around the Toilet – This one is actually still happening as I’m writing this. Hopefully there’s an update soon. Just FYI, I’m not taking pictures of this one. You’re going to have to just trust me, okay?
Experiment #1 – Magic Eraser v. Glass Stove Top
I made pasta last night and the water boiled over which basically, you might as well throw your stove away if boiling water touches it. I have no earthly idea why boiling water is so disastrous to glass cooktops, but it is.
So, I figured there was little harm in trying the Magic Eraser on the Glass Stove Top at this point.
Here’s a before picture for you:
Ok, it didn’t look that dirty in real life, I swear. I would have done some pre-cleaning if I had thought it was going to look that bad. Oh well, that’s real life. At least my real life.
The front right burner is the one I cooked the pasta on that the water boiled over on. That’s what all of that weird white-ish gunk is.
I have no excuse for the rest of the mess on there.
To start, all I did was grab the Magic Eraser, wet it, ring it out and scrub.
Here’s what I got:
Ok, is it better? Yeah, it’s a lot better. But, I also have a theory that those rings and marks you see are just not ever going to come off. The glass is basically scratched or otherwise ruined on my stove top.
I may have to seek out more alternatives for cleaning the stove top and see if anything else REALLY works.
For now, I’m happy that the Magic Eraser at least made it a LOT better.
Experiment #2 – Magic Eraser v. The Oven Door Where There Was Recently a Fire
I’m trying to remember what I set on fire in this little top oven that I love to use because it heats up so fast.
I think it was chicken and I remember hucking a bunch of salt into the oven to put it out (which totally worked, fyi) and then ordering take out.
I haven’t used the top oven of the double oven since. Cause there’s salt everywhere and I really don’t see a convenient way of cleaning that.
But I think cleaning the window on the door is at least a step in the right direction.
Here’s the before picture:
Pretty, pretty gross. I think the black stuff must be soot from the fire? Right? I don’t really know. It’s dirt, whatever it is.
So, same deal as the cooktop, wet the Magic Eraser, wring it out and scrub.
Here’s an in process photo:
That’s the soot or whatever on the Magic Eraser. Whoooo-weee! Glad I cleaned this.
Here’s what I ended up with after 2 Magic Erasers and a lot of scrubbing:
So much better, right? Now I just have to tackle the INSIDE of the oven and I can cook in there again.
Experiment #3 – Magic Eraser v. The Tarnished Silver Salad Tongs
Here are the mysterious Salad Tongs. I don’t really know why I’ve kept them as long as I have. They’ve moved with me from house to house to house. I won’t use them because, gross. They were all tarnish.
I just feel this guilt looking at those. I should have taken care of them. Maybe I would have eaten more salad over the past 18 years if I had nice salad tongs to use. Maybe I’d be a super slim fit supermom if I’d just taken care of these damn tongs.
Maybe today would turn that all around. Maybe they’d shine right up with the Magic Eraser and the whole trajectory of my life would change.
Spoiler Alert. Neither of those things happened. The Magic Eraser didn’t work. It basically shined the tarnish. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
See, it’s like, shinier, but still black-ish with tarnish.
So, it looked like the end for the salad tongs, right?
But I have a stubborn streak a mile wide, so I found a different hack for cleaning silver that didn’t involve a Magic Eraser.
This time it worked. You boil water with a tablespoon of Baking powder and a piece of tin foil (reminds me of Stone Soup!) and then drop your silver in.
My tongs were too big for the pot, but check out how the end of the tongs came out:
Kind of good enough to eat salad from, right? They probably need a few more dunks in that boiling concoction, but I’m glad to know that it actually works.
Experiment #4 – Rusted Cutlery
I cook steak a lot. It’s one of the few things I can really nail, like every time. I was definitely not cooking steak when I had the oven fire.
You really need steak knives when you eat steak. Even my steak which is never super tough and always cooked perfectly (ish).
But I made the mistake of buying steak knives that you aren’t supposed to put in the dishwasher and I always put them in the dishwasher
So they end up with these rust stains:
And no one wants to eat off of rusty knives.
I read that the Magic Eraser works on rust, so I gave it a try.
It worked. It’s kind of embarrassing how really quick and easy it was. Barely any scrubbing.
Experiment #5 – Magic Eraser v. Beat up Sneakers
I love this picture of my dirty old sneaker. It’s sort of very moody, isn’t it? It gives the sneakers more personality than they really have.
But we’re here to talk about the dirt. The white plastic-y part is super scuffed and dirty. So isn’t the cloth of the sneaker. I was really, really hoping the Magic Eraser would work on both of those.
It did a fantastic job on the plastic-y part. So that’s a win.
The rest of the sneaker, however, is still dingy after I vigorously rubbed it with the Magic Eraser repeatedly.
So I went with the old faithful method of cleaning sneakers. I threw them in the washing machine.
Glorious, right!
And then this happened:
Puppy: 1
Sneakers: 0
Experiment #6 – Magic Eraser v. Expensive (ish) Leather Bag
So here’s the handsome Coach leather bag my husband got me for my birthday ages and ages ago.
I love this bag. But it gets super dirty. I usually only use it in the fall/winter, so it’s actually not particularly dirty at the moment, but it had some spots that needed to be touched up.
I was a little scared of using the Magic Eraser on the bag. I really was.
And then I used it and I was terrified. It looked like I had destroyed the bag. I set it aside and decided to just move on and do something else while it dried and said little Hail Marys in the back of my mind that it would be fine.
It kind of wasn’t.
I think I probably just rubbed a little too hard and took some of the color out of that spot. It’s not terrible. It is cleaner and part of the charm of a leather bag is that it gets a worn look.
That’s what I keep telling myself.
If you try this, please test it carefully on an inconspicuous spot.
Experiment #7 – Magic Eraser v. Ring Around the Toilet
I have a theory on why the ring around the toilet happens. It only happens in our downstairs bathroom that we don’t use that much. So my theory is that it is because the water is just standing for too long.
I don’t know, it makes sense in my head.
Anyway, it’s there and I do not want it to be there. So, I tried the Magic Eraser trick.
Which is basically just throw the Magic Eraser in the toilet and let it dissolve and allegedly the ring goes away.
Sadly this hack did not work. At all. Not even after vigorously scrubbing with the toilet brush. Clearly the only viable option now is to buy a new toilet. Weekly.
Magic Eraser Experiment Results
Basically, use the Magic Eraser on the things it is meant for whenever you want. If you want to try to use it on things it isn’t intended for, be prepared for it to either not do a great job, harm your favorite bag a tiny bit OR perform really well.
It’s a crap shoot. I’ll keep Magic Erasing things and update this list as I go.