How to Clean Yellowed Plastic Refrigerator Handles

New fridges are not exactly cheap anymore. They can come with a high price tag. For the amount of money you spent, you would expect the handles to not discolor or turn yellow.

Unfortunately, even when you give the store a lot of money, your expensive fridge can have plastic handles that do not keep their color. When they turn yellow, you need to restore them to their original look.

To find out how to do that, just continue to read our article. It provides those steps and cleaning options so you will not feel you wasted a lot of money. Keep reading to find solutions to your yellow fridge handle problem.

How to Clean Your Yellow Fridge Door Handles

There are a lot of different reasons why your fridge door handles turned yellow. Here are some solutions to help you get those handles looking almost new again.

1. Clean the Dirt

Sometimes fridge door handles turn yellow simply because they get dirty. This is the reason you wish for as the clean-up is not that hard to do. The dirt and grime from dirty fingers, cigarette smoke, cooking grease, and other sources add up and turns your handles a yellowish color.

One way to remove this type of dirt is to use a magic eraser and rub the dirt away. This is done just like rubbing out a bad pencil mark on the paper. Many top cleanser brands should have these erasers on sale in your local stores.

If you cannot find this magic eraser you can use other household products to do the job. Here is a shortlist of those products:

• Vinegar and Water – A 1 To 1 Part Mixture
• Water and Baking Soda Paste – 2 Cups of Water And 2 Tbsp of Baking Soda Approx.
• Denture Cleaners – Remove the Handles and Soak Like You Would Your Dentures
• Alka Seltzer – Same as Above

2. Use A Chemical Reaction

That might be a technical name for it, but plastic fridge door handles are made from chemicals and those chemicals turn your handles yellow due to exposure to the sun’s rays.

When a chemical reaction occurs, the above solutions will not work because a chemical reaction is not dirt nor grime. To reverse the effects of this chemical reaction, you have to do your own in return. The steps are simple:

Step 1: Remove the door handles from your fridge.

Step 2: Give the handles a good cleaning to remove any dirt and grime.

Step 3: Brush on some hydrogen peroxide cream and do it evenly.

Step 4: Wrap the handle in plastic, either wrap or bags that are resealable, and put them outside in the sun.

Step 5: Wait 6 hours approx. But rotate the handles 90 degrees after every hour has passed.

Step 6: After that time frame has passed remove the handles and rinse completely.

Step 7: Repeat this process if necessary

3. There Is Always Paint

It is the last-ditch effort of desperate fridge owners. paint will cover almost anything when prepped right and applied correctly. To do this, find a paint color that will match your fridge’s color as well as your kitchen’s color scheme.

Then remove the handles and you may want to clean them with a degreasing agent or cleanser. Next, use masking tape to cover those spots you do not want paint covering. Then place the handles on paper in a position where you can spray paint without hassles.

Make sure the paint will cover plastic or is an appliance paint. Hold the can about 8 inches away from those handles and spray evenly with a steady hand. Go with thin coats to avoid over-spray and runs. Allow each coat to dry before putting the handles back on the fridge.

4. Buy New Handles

You can save yourself the trouble of the previous solutions and simply buy new handles and take the yellowed ones off. If you do this, figure out how the old handles yellowed and take some steps to prevent the same event from happening again.

Use your fridge’s model number to find the right replacement handles. That number should be in your owner’s manual or on a sticker or metal plate on the door or the back of the fridge.

Yellowed fridge door handles are not the end of the world. But they do not have to be tolerated either. Use one of the solutions given above so that your fridge will look better, and you won’t feel like you wasted your money.