How to clean water bottles?

My apologies if this issue has been addressed before, but i'm about to go to bed and my eyes are too tired to look through hundreds of threads...

How do you guys deal with your smelly water bottles? I have two polar bottles, and one of them just started to stink. Like wet dog. It is gross. I found mold in it and scrubbed it out. I also realized BF put his dirty bottle top on mine while he took my clean one :mad:!

How do you clean these things? With vinegar? Dishwasher? I let it soak in soapy hot water for an hour, and the smell went away. I let it air dry, made sure to double check it was dry before I put it away, and I just pulled it out and it smells again!

I really should buy new ones, but these aren't even a year old. And I had to order them online because I couldn't find the pink ones anywhere in stores here.

TIA.

Ah yes..the scungy water bottle or hydration pack :eek:

We use a bottle brush (sure hope that's the correct term!) and hot soapy water. The gunk & smell disappears :)

http://forums.teamestrogen.com/showt...hlight=bottles

I find denture cleaning tablets work quite well. (Although if I had juice in them, the smell does tend to linger)

water bottles go in the dishwasher. Hydration pack bladder gets rinsed out (I only use water in it) and I store it in the freezer.

I use vinegar and baking soda. If it's a nightmare, I use a denture tablet, then soap and cold water, then rinse til I can't smell it. Hot water holds the soap smell.
The bottle brush also goes in the dishwasher!

Thanks everybody!

I just looked in the spout area and oh my goodness it's a nightmare. I managed to get most of it out with vinegar but there are some hard to reach spots and I ran out of vinegar in the process.

I think I will just throw that bottle away.

Funny thing is, it's the bottle I use for water. The bottle I use for my sugary drinks is fine. Only it smells a bit like grape, but i'm not complaining about that!

+1 on the dishwasher. Plus, when not in use, I always make sure to leave the tops off so they can air dry on the inside.

Fuji - I recently noticed there was a pink (cytomax) gunky build up on my H20 bottle spouts too. My solution was to soak them in hydrogen peroxide with the spout in both the open and closed position, and scrub the crevices with a toothbrush. I have vowed to clean my bottle tops promptly now, so the cytomax gunk doesn't solidify so seriously. but the hydrogen peroxide was great. Tokie

If mine get bad, I fill with water and add a TBS of bleach, cap them, shake well, and then let it sit overnight. In the morning, I squeeze the bottle so that some of the bleach water goes through the spout. Rinse, rinse, rinse and they are good to go. I do try really hard to wash each one well after every ride but sometimes.... Hope this works for you!

Is there a particular brand of bleach you ladies use?

I always associate bleach with that nasty smell, I can't imagine drinking from my bottle after I bleached it?

I've used vinegar and my bottles and spouts are clean! Plus I realized you can pull the black rubbery spout part from the top of the cap on the Polar bottles. I was amazed to find so much icky stuff in there! It was actually fun cleaning them :)

I use just a generic, and it is a very small amount. There is no smell after rinsing. It really kills the bugs if you leave it over night.

I believe that the spouts on a polar bottle come apart for cleaning, do they not? I would remove them and soak them in a bleach disenfecting solution. 1 T bleach to 1 gallon of water should work - 5 minute soak about all you need. (this is what we use to disinfect our dairy bottles & equipment for fresh milk - no bleach smell remains once the items have dried completely)

We just put ours water bottles in the dishwasher every once in awhile and we store them with the spouts open. I've never had a mold/smell issue.

Is there a magical bottle brush for Polar Bottles? I love my pretty pink ones but they are such a pain to clean because of the indents inside of them. I'm currently trying the denture tab thing. 85 of them for about $2.50 at Wal-Mart can't be beat. I'm using two for the big Polars and even then it's worth it for my time if they work.