How to Remove Stains from Plastic Cutting Boards

This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission.

I was making one of my favorite meals the other night-Burrito Bowls-when I noticed that my plastic cutting board had some major stains, even after I washed it.  A quick google search gave a lot of options for how to remove the stains but after trying multiple so called “solutions” without success I was getting irritated.  To combat the widespread misinformation I was finding I decided to share my results in hopes of saving you time when you need to remove stains from plastic cutting boards in the future! You might be surprised by the results!

If you are trying to remove permanent marker, read my guide for removing permanent marker from anything!

Solution #1: Lemon Juice

Real Simple magazine told me simply rubbing lemon juice on my cutting board and letting it soak would remove the stains.  Nope.  Nothing.

Solution #2: Lemon Oil

I found this tip from One Good Thing by Jillee but unfortunately it didn’t work for me either.  Granted she set hers in the sun after the oil was applied to help bleach it out and I wasn’t able to do that on a rainy winter day so that may be the difference.

Solution #3: Thieves Cleaner

I’m a Young Living junkie so I had to try my favorite cleaner before I started looking at more traditional cleaners once I realized the more natural approaches weren’t working. Again, no change at all.

Solution #4 Baking Soda & Vinegar

I use this combo to clean a lot of things, including my kitchen sink, so I figured it was worth a shot since it’s such a great cleaning and deodorizing method.  I thought there was a slight improvement but it was so subtle pictures didn’t even show it.

Solution #5 Clorox Clean Up Cleaner

Now it was time to break out the big guns-my Clorox Cleanup cleaner.  I thought this was going to be the answer but alas, NO IMPROVEMENT! I couldn’t believe it! I had one more idea to try before I was going to head to the store to buy a new cutting board…

Solution #6 Undiluted Bleach

I was off to the laundry room for some straight bleach.  I knew this was the last chance so I was very curious how it was going to work.  I poured the bleach on and let it sit for 30 minutes, then rinsed it off. You can see the results:

Not perfect but a HUGE improvement.  I decided to give it one more round and after that it came completely clean!! Yay!!

The undiluted bleach was obviously the clear winner here. While I had hoped to find a more natural method sometimes you have to go the traditional route.  I know my cutting board stains were pretty severe (poor thing is over ten years old!) so I can’t say definitively that the other methods I tried won’t work with lighter stains but I know they were no match for mine.

What do you think-do you have any other solutions I didn’t try?