"cleaning products" news and stories

Brushes, detergent, coffee pot: Partners in grime. Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the eighth in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

First storage, now cleanliness? I guess I'm getting a little domestic on y'all.

Coffee machine cleanliness is super important and, sadly, all too easily overlooked in both the café and the kitchen. The coffee oils that become your French press' ring around the collar are incredibly tenacious little suckers -- think of them as the caffeinated cousins to the crust in a skillet after cooking with oil. If left there, they can turn rancid (yuck!) and infiltrate every cup you make.

But don't pop open that vinegar bottle yet, friends: Vinegar's strong flavor and scent can overpower coffee by lingering if you don't rinse and rinse (and rinse and rinse). Not only that, but it probably won't banish all that stubborn residue on its own.

How to get rid of coffee oils after the jump.

Burnt foods leave stubborn spots in pots and pans that could take hours to remove. Luckily, a few essentials in your pantry can help restore your pans to practically new.

Plastic food storage containers invariably turn red. One tomato based dish hastily stored in Tupperware is enough to leave a permanent scarlet scar.

The red never seems to go away, even after multiple trips through the dishwasher. However, if you wash your plastic with Plastic Booster, the red disappears. It's just that easy. Captain Plastic Booster to the rescue!

Plastic booster was sold at our local grocery store and the plastics in our home were so happy. When they stopped selling it - I have no idea why they would do such a crazy thing - our plastics again looked sad and red. Luckily, Plastic Booster is available at drugstore.com.

Check it out if you want to see the magic for yourself.