Scientists at Purdue University have devised a new coating for glass, plastic and other surfaces that lets you wipe away oil stains with plain water.

“You add water, and the oil just comes right off like magic,” said Jeffrey Youngblood, Ph.D., lead researcher on the project, in a prepared statement that one day could also serve as a sales pitch. Oh, Billy Mays, how we miss you.

Easier-to-clean surfaces would ultimately reduce demand for harsh industrial household cleaners. A paper on the material, delivered at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), asserts that the same coatings can be added to window cleaning sprays and used to prevent bathroom mirrors or automobile windshields from fogging up. The trick is that the material itself is coated with an upper layer of a Teflon-like substance that causes oil to slip away.

Others have experimented with putting nano-scale bumps onto a surface to cause water drops to roll off. Some animals in Africa's harsh deserts have microscopic bumps in their skin to capture dew from breezes, which the animal then drinks.