Mom shares simple cleaning hack to get hidden mold out of water bottle lids: 'Doing this tonight'

Your damp and dark reusable cups are the perfect place for mold — here's how to properly clean them.

The scoop

"Out of sight, out of mind" isn't always a good thing. TikToker and mother Moriah (@mjoyjester) demonstrated a quick and easy way to properly clean reusable cups to avoid hidden mold.

@mjoyjester If you are not cleaning the lids of you and your kids cups, you're probably drinking mold 🤢 #EduTok #TikTokLearningCampaign #foryoupage #momhack #parenthack #momtok #momlife #parentinghack #cleantok #cleaninghacks ♬ original sound - Moriah |The Eclectic Mom|👟🖤

"If you're not doing this one thing, you and your children are drinking mold," she says.

Mold can easily grow in hard-to-clean areas of your cup, like under lid seals or in straws. To thoroughly clean your cup, start by removing the silicone rings from inside the lid. Fill a large bowl with a 1:1 solution of warm water and vinegar. Then, soak the cups, lids, silicone seals, and straws in the solution for at least an hour. 

After soaking, rinse everything with warm, soapy water and allow it to completely dry. You can repeat this process every two weeks, but a daily rinse with warm soapy water and a good dry should prevent mold from growing.

How it's helping

While drinking from a cup with a bit of mold is unlikely to cause significant harm, regular exposure can cause gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea or stomach pain, especially in people with mold allergies.

Mold isn't just bad for you — it's bad for your cup. Keeping your reusable water bottle clean will prolong its lifespan. Mold can stain cups, create hard-to-remove odors, and even break down certain additives in plastic. 

Stainless steel cups are durable, hygienic, and more sustainable than plastic cups, especially single-use plastic water bottles.

Plastic water bottles are a big problem. Globally, over one million plastic water bottles are sold every minute, according to a 2023 study by the UN University Institute for Water.

These water bottles, made from a plastic derived from crude oil, will take 500 years to decompose. That's if they end up in a landfill — millions of tons of plastic water bottles end up in our planet's oceans every year.

How often do you buy plastic water bottles? Every day 😬 A few times a week 😥 A few times a month 😕 Almost never 😎 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

Drinking from plastic water bottles may also be harmful to your health. Several studies have found that drinking from single-use plastic water bottles exposes you to microplastics, which can damage organs, cause inflammation and reproductive issues, and raise the risk of cancer.

Microplastics are everywhere, but you can avoid excess exposure by ditching single-use water bottles and using less plastic.

What everyone's saying

Commenters were shocked to find out their bottles may not be as clean as they'd thought.

"Very helpful video! I've never done this. Thanks," one user wrote.

"Doing this tonight," another said.

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