Stained plates or mugs?

Have you ever stained your dinner plates? Usually it happens from red sauce...the acidity in tomatoes seeps in and the next thing you know, your once white plate is stained red!

Or maybe you have a favorite coffee/tea mug but it's looking rather dreary these days. If you're anything like me, it can take you all day to drink that cup of tea you made at 7am when the baby got up (distracted much?). My favorite mug has a permanent tea stain on the inside.

Because we don't have a dishwasher, I'm sometimes guilty of putting a little warm water in said mug or in my white plate and leaving it in the sink for the next morning (I usually only do this if it's late and I just want to go to bed rather than wash dishes). And sometimes this means I get stains on plates or cups.

I found myself with a gross stain on a plate from the pizza we had eaten. Ok...so I may have left this plate in the sink with warm soapy water in it for 2 days. I forgot to wash it and went to visit one of my best friends 2 1/2 hours away for 2 days. I came back and realized my pizza plate was still in the sink. I washed it after getting the car unloaded (you know, with all the baby stuff you have to take on even a short 2 day trip). Much to my dismay, the darn pizza sauce left a dime-sized mark on my pretty West Elm plate! I knew I had heard somewhere that baking soda was good for stains. So I grabbed it out of the cupboard, poured it directly on the stain and added a little water to form a "paste." I made sure the "paste" was covering the stain and let it sit for about 20 minutes. I came back and re-washed my plate...and like magic, the stain was gone! So then I decided to do the same with my tea mug. It's like new again! Whew!

You all may not be as excited about this as I am, but I thought I'd pass it along in case anyone else without a dishwasher is as lazy as I am :)