The Clever Water Bottle-Cleaning Trick We Wish We’d Known About Sooner

There's no denying that one of the hottest accessories in the last few years is a metal water bottle . Whether you pick up an inexpensive one from Five Below , or you love to collect all the Stanley tumblers , you most probably have more than a few water bottles in your life. They're great for keeping cold water handy so you can live your best- hydrated life, but they aren't always easy to clean thoroughly.

If you find that your water bottle is starting to become a little stinky, it's definitely time to give it a good scrub. You can wash it with dish soap and a bottle brush and also mix a solution of baking soda and water and shake it in the bottle, letting it sit for 15 minutes to kill any odors.

But if you have done all of that and your bottle is still smelly, you may be dealing with some hard-to-reach mold and/or may have a water bottle that's more difficult to clean, like the models with the narrow necks. Content creator @lynsey_queenofclean shared this genius water bottle cleaning hack on Instagram and we can't believe it's this easy.

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According to Lynsey, you need to "grab some hard rice and fill the bottle so it covers the bottom. Then, half-fill the bottle with water and add a good drop of washing-up liquid." Once you have the rice and soapy water in the bottle, put the lid on and give it a hard shake. You're going to then let it sit overnight.

"The hard rice acts as an abrasive, scrubbing away those black marks and cleaning all the sides of the bottle," she said in her Instagram post. This will leave you "with a fresh, clean water bottle, ready for use!"

This trick is perfect for those of us who have used baking soda, denture tablets and alka seltzer but still have smelly water bottles. Lynsey says that's because these types of cleaners "will struggle with the mold." This rice trick, however, does some light scrubbing work for you and works overnight to help clean away all the bacteria and mold that may be causing your water bottle to smell less than pleasant.

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