So. Let’s suggest that a person owns a perfectly ordinary beverage container, holding two quarts (64 oz.), with a mouth about two inches in diameter, and a rectangular body about, oh, five inches by three and a half or so. It would be nine inches high, more or less. Clear plastic, sturdy, good for continued use.
Furthermore, let’s suggest that a person might have stored in said container a beverage, thus using it to its intended purpose. This beverage might have been something not entirely clear or for that matter perfectly free of solids. Say, iced tea. Or lemonade. An innocuous beverage, but not water. And let’s say that the beverage in question (perhaps apple cider) sat in the container for longer than had been foreseen. And furthermore, let’s suggest that the owner of the container in question had at last dumped out the dregs of the beverage, and wanted to clean the container for renewed use.
The opening, as we have seen, is too small to admit a hand, or even a medium-sized brush. A smallish brush could be introduced, but smallish brushes tend to have slender, short handles, so although the brush could perhaps be persuaded to lightly slide along the bottom of the container, dislodging the odd bit of gunk (gunk, here, is a technical term, meaning something like disgusting detritus of some foul substance, not easily now identifiable, clinging to the stained plastic like the Very Persisent Gappers of Fripp stick to goats but with greater specificity, as technical terms tend to be translated out of the jargon of their technicians only with a regrettable loss of specificity), there is no way to use force to actually scrub the interior surface clean.
So. A question for the class. Is the 2-quart container (still, I hasten to remind Gentle Readers, structurally sound) a loss? Show your work.
Answers involving vinegar and baking soda should include all appropriate environmental assessments. Answers involving OXO gear retailing more than four times the replacement cost of the original container should include links to appropriate government or private (foundation) grants. Answers involving not having left the whatever-it-was to rot in the fridge through exploitation of eddies in the space-time continuum should have already been submitted. Partial credit will be allotted to Gentle Readers who have a nice hot cup of cider for Your Humble Blogger ready to hand.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Partial filling with a cleaning substance (such as a mixture of dish soap and water), covering, and vigorous shaking? Perhaps a soaking stage in the middle there to allow the surfactants to surfactify?
Soaking and shaking, as above, but also: I possess a pair of long-handled dish-cleaning scrub brushes, whose heads are too large to fit in the orifice of the container you describe, but which, under similar circumstances, I have employed as assisstants in the pushing around and fishing out again of bits of sponge (should entire sponges be too large for the task). These brushes happen to have hook-like metal bits on their ends, by which they are intended to hang, but which also are of great help in the fishing portion of the above process.
Suddenly I feel like working on our grant application again. Oh dear.
sail a clipper ship inside and have the crew do the swabbing.
no wait. spray sugared water inside the bottle and leave it near an ant hill. they’ll clean it thoroughly.
I’m having some trouble picturing said container, but could not one force, say, a piece of a scrubby pad or even a paper towel through the mouth, and then use, say, a chopstick to push it around inside?
Alternately, one fills the container partway with fine, clean sand, and shakes vigourously.
Or, one glues a scrubby pad to the outside of a balloon, inserts through the mouth, inflates, and twists.
(By “scrubby pad” above I mean one of these.)
Does your kitchen sink have one of those sprayer hose things? If so, can you turn the bottle upside-down over the sink, and spray the inside with hot hot water? A couple of applications of soap, soaking, and hot water, might do the trick.
The partial-filling, covering, and shaking was tried and discarded as insufficiently active on the interfacial tension. The scrubby pad-and-chopstick (or back end of mixing spoon) was tried, but did not work, due to the difficulty in maneuvering the scrubby pad against the corners of the bottom. Clearly, what YHB needs is the brush with the hook on the back end, although it would undoubtedly lead to multiple injuries whilst doing ordinary bottle scrubbing.
The balloon is an interesting idea, although as the container has rectangular footprint, I’m not convinced that friction would apply to the necessary bits. Also, the tiny schooner, or, alternately, a translocating art-lover of no more than 2″ diameter, clad in a canvas sack permeated with detergents, while both excellent ideas, lack a certain pragmatic whatsit. Still, I’m leaving them in the party platform, and would like to subscribe to your newsletters.
Current research involves a scrubby pad and an unbent wire hanger. Good to find some use for a wire hanger, other than Joan Crawford gags.
Thanks,
-V.
I have heard that crushed eggshells (1-2 eggs’ worth should be sufficient), dumped into the bottle along with some hot water and appropriate surfactants, and shaken vigorously, can be effective. But I’ve never tried it.
I would imagine that sand would have the same effect, if eggs are hard to come by.
Also, I’m totally using “surfactify” as a verb at my very next opportunity. Possible before then.
It seems to me that what you need is a long-handled bottle brush, of the sort pictured in the photo at the top of the equipment list for beginning brewers page.
I don’t know offhand where to obtain such an item, and I’m not immediately seeing any online sources. But I bet if you have any local stores that sell brewing equipment, and/or lab equipment, you could find such an item there.
…Aha! You can buy a variety of brushes from Seven Bridges Cooperative.
One advantage of this approach is that it resolves the other issue I was going to bring up, which is that if you want to keep this particular bottle, you probably want an approach you can use again another time, since this issue seems likely to recur. (Not this specific issue necessarily; just the issue that cleaning the inside of a bottle with a very small mouth is difficult. And yes, I could rephrase that sentence to remove the humorous ambiguity, but this way is funnier.)
If you want a supplier on your coast, you could also try Fall Bright.
I have seen bottle brushes for sale in the sections of grocery stores where one finds baby bottles. I don’t know if they would be long enough for your purposes, mostly because I can’t recall how big the brushes were.