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This Shower Staple Also Belongs in Your Kitchen

Shifrah Combiths
Shifrah Combiths
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town life in Tallahassee, Florida, which she now calls home. She's been writing professionally for twenty years and she loves lifestyle photography, memory keeping, gardening, reading, and going to the beach with her husband and children.
published Dec 23, 2020
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Credit: Rikki Snyder

When I was a child, we kept a small oval brush in the shower. We used the brush for scrubbing our fingernails and the other side, a porous gray stone, for rubbing out paint and marker stains. That’s the side that really stands out: the magic eraser. I know now that it was a pumice stone, something I hadn’t encountered since childhood—until recently.

I was searching for a way to clean super-stubborn hard water stains from one of our toilets. There, in the cleaning aisle at Walmart, was the familiar stone. Only this time it was in the shape of a skinny rectangle and it was called a Pumie.

I brought it home, along with some CLR, and went to work on the hard water stains. Although the “stone” dissolved before I was able to completely remove the stain, it worked like an absolute charm. It felt like such a powerful way to clean that it got me curious about where else this shower staple could be used in the house.

Why a Pumice Stone Belongs in Your Kitchen

While it should be kept far away from anything that would be damaged by an abrasive cleaner, a pumice stone works wonders on some of the kitchen’s toughest stains and grime, without harsh chemicals: It can be used to clear away those otherwise-impossible-to-remove burnt stains from glass Pyrex dishes. Years of baked-on grease and messes can also be cleaned from your oven interior with a pumice stone (just be careful to spot test first). Have you resigned yourself to forever blackened oven grates? Don’t give up hope. You guessed it: Try a pumice stone.

To use the pumice stone, just dampen the stone and gently scrub the areas you need to clean. The stone will gradually wear down, but you can use this to your advantage by shaping the stone to a point or other shape that fits in crevices or between grates.

Do you use a pumice stone as a kitchen cleaner?