Coffee is great for waking you up in the morning, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that your first cup is inevitably handled while you are half asleep. Whether you’ve spilled coffee on your carpet (For more information on carpets, read The guide to carpet), clothes, or are just looking for an easy way to clean your old, stained coffee pot – you’ve found the right place!

How to Remove Coffee Stains from Fabrics

First things first, carefully read the care instructions for the piece of clothing you will be cleaning to make sure the instructions below will not damage it. If it’s dry clean only or you’re not sure, consider taking it to the dry cleaners instead of risking it’s destruction. You should also test the below procedure on an inconspicuous area before attacking the highly-visible stain. In most cases you can get a fresh coffee stain out with a regular laundry pre-treatment solution.

For old coffee stains, there are quite a few remedies floating around that include the use of egg whites, lemon juice and vinegar (More uses for vinegar, see 25 other uses for vinegar) but we’ve found that while these solutions work – there’s a faster and easier way. Go to your local grocery store and purchase a product called OxyClean. It comes in tubs and is a powder. Soak the garment in oxyclean and water overnight and then run it through a wash cycle and even old coffee stains will disappear.

Coffee Stain Removal from Carpets

1. Blot the coffee stain with towels to get as much of the coffee up as possible. If it’s an old stain then skip this step.
2. Saturate the coffee stain with an OxyClean/water solution (you can use regular dish detergent if you don’t have any OxyClean but it is much less effective) and let it soak for at least 10 minutes.

3. If you’re removing an old coffee stain, carefully scrub the area taking care not to spread the stain out. Skip this step for fresh spills.
4. Blot the area dry with towels. If the coffee stain is visibly diminishing, repeat the last 3 steps until it’s entirely gone.
5. If the above steps did not fade the stain at all, repeat steps 2 and 3 using a white vinegar solution (1 part white vinegar to 2 parts water).

Cleaning Stained Coffee Pots

Nothing’s worse than trying to stuff your hand through the neck of a coffee pot in order to clean the inside of stains. No more jabbing your dish sponge with a fork to try and scrub it either. All you have to do is fill the coffee pot about ¼ way full with crushed ice and swirl it until the stains disappear. As the ice is swirled it scrapes the stain from the sides leaving you with a nice, clean coffee pot! Whole ice cubes work, but not nearly as well as crushed ice.

Good luck – and if you have a coffee stain remedy to share, please add it below using the form at the bottom of this page! If you enjoyed reading this article, you'll surely enjoy reading how to get stains out.