You don’t need to throw your beloved dinner plates away just because they have some unsightly grey marks on them.
According to TikTok cleaning sensation Anne Russell, who regularly shares life hacks on her social media page, there’s an easy way to rescue them.
Those spots on your plates are actually metal marks from your cutlery, and because they are just on the surface, they can be removed – if you know how.
Sharing a picture on her profile of a plate with grey marks, she explained: “See those grey marks in the middle of the plate? You often see those. That looks like an IKEA plate, they’re not shiny, but you do see them on other plates.
“They are unsightly, and they are very easy to remove. They are marks from your cutlery, where your cutlery has acted like a crayon.”
So how do you get rid of the marks?
Firstly, Anne recommends trying Bar Keepers Friend Original Powder, which is a multi-purpose surface cleaner that “cleans, restores and polishes numerous surfaces”. Or you could try “a little bit of Cif” cream “on a sponge”.
Alternatively, the cleaning pro said Vim Clorex Powder could work, which is a scouring powder with “extra whitening”. She added: “Scouring powder. Anything like that. Damp sponge. On there. Good scrub.”
Anne’s social media followers were blown away by the tip, as many thought it meant they had permanently damanged their plates. One person wrote: “I thought the knife was scratching up the surface, thought I’d have to just live with scratched plates.”
While another added: “I never knew we could remove those!” and a third said: “I just learnt something, I always assumed the plate was scratched.”
In another video, a mum-of-three from Yorkshire called Alice suggested using a £1.50 cleaning product called The Pink Stuff to get rid of the marks.
She explained you just needed a cloth, some The Link Stuff paste and wipe around your bowl or plate. “After that you rinse it off and it’s good as new,” she explained in a video.
Alice added: “This is gonna save you a fortune literally. Look at the shine on that. How have I only just found this out.”