Use A Craft Room Staple To Clean Mold From Tricky Drinkware Lids

Nothing is worse than opening a water bottle, travel tumbler, or sippy cup and finding mold. First you think about how gross it is, then you wonder how in the world you can clean the pesky specks from small spaces like the mouthpiece and the twist threads of a screw top lid. Luckily, there are some easy ways to clean mold. TikTok user @aims.lc shared a crafty solution to scrubbing mold from small spaces on drinkware lids: swapping the sponge for a paintbrush.

For this cleaning hack, distribute dish detergent on the lid and scrub the tiny spaces and holes with a small paintbrush. Any kind of brush that fits the space you are trying to clean should work. If you don't have one laying around, Amazon sells sets of stencil brushes made with nylon bristles or artist brushes meant for watercolor, acrylic, and oil painting. The ones with short or coarse bristles are likely to hold up to scrubbing better than soft ones. A toothbrush might also be a good alternative, especially for cleaning a lid's threads. Toothbrushes are meant for scrubbing, so they would be more durable for dish washing than a paintbrush, especially a cheap one. However, a paintbrush can reach the extremely small and narrow spots that a toothbrush cannot.

Before you bring your paintbrush from the craft room to the kitchen, determine whether you can actually clean your moldy drinkware. It is safer to throw away moldy items made of porous materials like wood and some plastics because the mold cannot be removed completely. For other materials, you can use dish soap and hot water. Make sure that your water is hot enough; hot water is better for dish washing. 

Soak the dish and then give it a good scrub before setting it in sunlight for at least a few hours to help kill mold and bacteria. You can also soak nonporous dishes in bleach to kill mold before washing with hot water and dish soap. Another option is to soak in vinegar before washing. You will know you saved your bottle if it does not have visible mold, a musty smell, or damage.

To prevent mold in the future, try not to let your drinkware sit with liquid inside it for too long, especially if the liquid is not plain water. Mold organisms can feed off of sugars and multiply even faster. If you can, wash your dishes as soon as you are done using them, and hand wash your dishes properly if you are not using a dishwasher. If it is an item you use every day, it is a good practice to wash it daily.