Leftovers are a wonderful thing, but your clear containers may not agree. If you’ve noticed that your food storage containers have a stubborn orange tint to them no matter how much you scrub them, you might wonder if you’ll be left with leftovers from your favorite curry or tomato-based pasta forever.
In an article for BBC Science Focus, Dr. Emma Davies explained that the bright red pigment in tomatoes, lycopene, is hydrophobic – just like your plastic containers. This means that the sauce and containers repel water, causing the pigment to stick to the plastic. “Lycopene’s hydrophobic nature also means it resists attempts to clean with soapy water, and the high temperatures in the dishwasher can drive stains even deeper into your plastic containers,” Davies wrote.
Not on Bobby Berk’s watch, though. The interior designer and TV personality shared a super simple hack that will clean your dirty dishes in seconds – no scrubbing required!
Sharing the Reel with his followers on Instagram, Berk showed how you can get rid of those pesky stains once and for all with the help of three things you’ll already have in your kitchen: water, dish soap and paper towel.
“And here I was thinking I’d have to deal with stained curry Tupperware for the rest of my life🥲🫙🧼,” he wrote in the caption.
This simple trick, as Berk demonstrates in the video, involves adding dish soap (Berk uses Dawn), water, and a folded paper towel to the stained dish. Then open the lid and shake the container vigorously before draining and rinsing with water. The result? The squeaky clean clear looking containers almost like new. Sure, it might not remove all stains, especially if they’re super old and slick, but it still does a pretty good job while saving you time and money in the long run.
It’s such an easy hack that some of Berk’s followers were skeptical. The Queer Eye alum posted the clip on April 1st, so it’s reasonable to think it could be an April Fool’s joke. You can’t fool anyone, though, as others have backed Berk and clarified that the hack actually works.
“It’s not a joke at all. I do this all the time. That’s my favorite hack!” one person commented. Another person added: “This actually works, I do it all the time!!” while a third wrote: “I literally did this, it’s one of my favorite cleaning tricks!”
So the next time you’re close to admitting defeat and looking for brand new containers, look to Berk for expert advice.