Photo by Whoisjohngalt (Wikimedia)

Sometimes, when dealing with a mess, you have to bring out the big guns. In the cleaning world, one of the big guns is super-powerful melamine foam, known to all of us as Procter & Gamble’s Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Using a bit of chemistry (rather than magic), the company has created the sorcerer’s stone of cleaning supplies. If you’ve been in a cleaning situation where nothing seems to work, chances are good that a Magic Eraser might. This list contains some of the usual uses along with some lesser-known applications.

1. Use it for its original purpose: Deep-clean set-in grease stains on your stove top. (Do this if you haven’t tried it yet: It’s just a great feeling when you swipe and everything’s gone.)
2. Clean your shoes and remove grass stains.
3. Remove tarnish from silver.
4. Remove rust from pretty much anything.
5. Polish jewelry.
6. Did your child go nuts with crayons on your walls? Remove the marks quickly with a Magic Eraser.
7. Use an eraser to scuff up that nasty, dried soap scum or bath ring in your tub or shower.
8. In a bigger body of water, you can clean a water mark on a pool liner.
9. In a smaller body of water, cut off a little piece of foam and let it sit in the toilet bowl overnight to clean it.
10. It can clean grout! (How often can a cleaning product actually clean grout?)
11. Fix your car’s finish after a minor run-in: Remove a scratch on your car’s paint job. You can also clean the steering wheel, the tires, and the hubcaps.
12. Get out the most impossible-to-remove stains, like nail polish, hair dye, paint, and ink.
13. If you like to do DIY projects that require old glass jars, get started by removing the labels and price tags and removing the sticky gunk left behind by rubbing with a Magic Eraser.
14. Leather couches, jackets, purses, and upholstery can be cleaned with a Magic Eraser.
15. Clean your outdoor plastic furniture.
16. In your most difficult dish-washing situations, like tomato stains in plastic containers, rings in casserole dishes, or tea stains in mugs, try gently rubbing a Magic Eraser on it. (Make sure to wash out the container with regular dish soap afterward.)
17. I personally find this very disgusting: cleaning bird droppings. But you can do it with this magical product.
18. A close second in top disgusting things to clean up is removing dried-on dead bugs on a car windshield. That can also include bugs on siding on a house or on RV awnings.
19. A great way to attack the built-up gunk made of mysterious condiments stuck on the inside of your refrigerator is with one of these.
20. Clean window screens.
21. Gently wipe down your electronics, like your computer monitor, flat-screen TV, smartphones, tablets, and keyboard.
22. Get up scuff marks from baseboards and floors.
23. If someone drew on your dry-erase surface with a permanent marker, don’t throw it out: Just try rubbing it off with a Magic Eraser!