Clean Your Flasks…with Denture Cleaner?
I had a problem. Tim and I have stainless steel flasks we use for carrying around tea when we are out and about. And of course, we have milk in our tea in the flasks. You can imagine where this is going, I’m sure.
Yes, I forgot about emptying the flasks the time before last. I dumped them outside and discovered we had made tea-flavoured cottage cheese (no, I was not about to eat it!), and left a film on the inside and bottom of the flasks. I thought I had cleaned them out, but the next time I made tea in them, my husband complained that it tasted funny.
I searched google to find a way to clean out my flask, and after wading through many sites about how to clean your hip flask, I was getting no where. I changed my search term to “clean steel Thermos”, even though ours aren’t Thermos brand flasks, and found several e-how articles. I tried the following:
-bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and hot water
-fill it halfway with white vinegar and top off with hot water
-mix hydrogen peroxide with bicarbonate of soda
-soak with regular dish soap
And nothing worked, so I went to a favourite LJ community of mine, Hip Domestic. I got lots of solutions that either didn’t make sense to me or that I didn’t have the supplies for, and then jackmaybenimble came forward with a great soloution – Steradent.
She instructed me to put the Steradent into the flasks (with water) and then to use pebbles. She suggested glass pebbles like the kind you can get to put in vases, but I just grabbed a handful of pea shingle from outside and washed them off. Seal up the flask and then shake. The combination of the fizzy Steradent tablet and the rocks act like an agitator to help scrape off the inside.
And you know what? Both flasks look brand new. I’m going to give them a re-wash to make sure all the Steradent is out, but there isn’t even a stain on the bottom! All the filmy stuff that was clinging to the sides of the flasks is gone, and we’re confident we will have tasty tea tomorrow!
Why isn’t this stuff listed on a cleaning website?
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I wouldn’t be surprised if most cleaning websites are sponsored by companies that sell cleaning products.
Had you not found this solution, I would have suggested a bottle brush…but I like your idea better. I’m stealing it. 🙂
I have some bottle brushes, but the problem was they weren’t long enough for the 1L flask….but we did wrap a jcloth around a wooden spoon handle to get some of it! I forgot to mention that part! But yeah, denture cleaner and some pebbles! The girl on LJ also said it would work on glass, so I plan on using it to try to get the tea stains out of my glass teapot, too.