The title of this blog post makes me giggle and snirk a bit. What gross thing that I love could I possibly be writing about? One of my kids? Some mostly-done-in-private bodily function? Watching a food-and-leaves mixture decompose down into rich compost?
Actually, this post is about cleaning my thermos. So, maybe the topic is not as gross as you might imagine . . . but hang with me, because I want to justify the satisfyingly-disgusting aspect of thermos cleaning that evokes both "gross" and "delight".
First, I introduce my insulated flask: I saw it in a Lost-and-Found pile in my building one summer, after classes had ended for the year and students had all left the campus. I figured this puppy needed to find a good home, so I adopted it and have taken good care of it ever since. I have even designed two planner bags to have flask-pockets that hold this bottle. We're a good team, me and this flask, and we go just about everywhere together.
Pretty much every morning, I fill this baby up with coffee and carry it off to work with me, where over the day it turns into theorems and graded papers. (As Alfréd Rényi said, "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." I do my part to be a good device.) When the coffee is done, I switch to water. I love my bottle.
Every once in a while, when I'm traveling with my family, my daughter will take a swig of water from my flask, and then she wrinkles her nose: "it tastes like coffee!" To me, the water tastes like water. But I guess the residual coffee build-up does kind of hang around in there even after the official coffee has become algorithms and lemmas . . .
. . . So now we get to thermos cleaning. I don't want to run this flask through the dishwasher, but my daughter's comments prodded me to think that maybe, after all, I ought to see if I could remove a couple of layers of sediment. Hot water didn't seem to do the trick. One night, I just decided, as an experiment, to toss in some baking soda and water and just leave everything sitting overnight.
The next morning, the most amazing thing happened. The water came out with flakes -- sheets, even -- of coffee paper. These flakes weren't tiny like snowflakes -- they were the size of small post-it notes. Flaky coffee, gurgling out of my flask. I saw that, and thought: Wait. I've been DRINKING from this thermos, and all THAT was in it?!? But at the same time, it was really cool: ooh, giant coffee flakes.
Even more interesting, after I did this, the inside of my flask was shiny. Instead of dark, like a cave. So, yeah, I guess my flask had accumulated quite a build-up.
Recently, after another year of turning coffee into books and journal articles, I decided to do the baking-soda-water experiment again. And again I got: giant coffee flakes. Kinda gross, like watching bugs run out of my flask. But also kinda awesome.
So there you go: a cleaning technique for your own thermos . . . unless instead, you just want to have a swig from mine!
Actually, this post is about cleaning my thermos. So, maybe the topic is not as gross as you might imagine . . . but hang with me, because I want to justify the satisfyingly-disgusting aspect of thermos cleaning that evokes both "gross" and "delight".
First, I introduce my insulated flask: I saw it in a Lost-and-Found pile in my building one summer, after classes had ended for the year and students had all left the campus. I figured this puppy needed to find a good home, so I adopted it and have taken good care of it ever since. I have even designed two planner bags to have flask-pockets that hold this bottle. We're a good team, me and this flask, and we go just about everywhere together.
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| My insulated bottle stands between my computer and my planner: three essential tools for getting through my work day. |
Every once in a while, when I'm traveling with my family, my daughter will take a swig of water from my flask, and then she wrinkles her nose: "it tastes like coffee!" To me, the water tastes like water. But I guess the residual coffee build-up does kind of hang around in there even after the official coffee has become algorithms and lemmas . . .
. . . So now we get to thermos cleaning. I don't want to run this flask through the dishwasher, but my daughter's comments prodded me to think that maybe, after all, I ought to see if I could remove a couple of layers of sediment. Hot water didn't seem to do the trick. One night, I just decided, as an experiment, to toss in some baking soda and water and just leave everything sitting overnight.
The next morning, the most amazing thing happened. The water came out with flakes -- sheets, even -- of coffee paper. These flakes weren't tiny like snowflakes -- they were the size of small post-it notes. Flaky coffee, gurgling out of my flask. I saw that, and thought: Wait. I've been DRINKING from this thermos, and all THAT was in it?!? But at the same time, it was really cool: ooh, giant coffee flakes.
Even more interesting, after I did this, the inside of my flask was shiny. Instead of dark, like a cave. So, yeah, I guess my flask had accumulated quite a build-up.
Recently, after another year of turning coffee into books and journal articles, I decided to do the baking-soda-water experiment again. And again I got: giant coffee flakes. Kinda gross, like watching bugs run out of my flask. But also kinda awesome.
So there you go: a cleaning technique for your own thermos . . . unless instead, you just want to have a swig from mine!
I will have to let DH know about this-- he usually uses vinegar and one of those cylindrical scrubby brushes.
ReplyDeleteTell him it's a lot more dramatic if you wait about a year before cleaning it . . .
Delete... he may already know that...
DeleteFirst thing tomorrow I'm doing this to PiC's thermos! He used it for coffee, then for milk when we hit the road for the holidays and so of course the kiddo was drinking milk that smelled or even tasted of coffee. Oops.
ReplyDelete