The Surprising Kitchen Tool That Turns My Sink into One That Pro Chefs Will Envy
Caring for a family of seven means we have quite a bit more stuff to clean than smaller households might. Laundry, for instance, is a large task that requires constant attention to keep it from becoming overwhelming. The number of pairs of shoes we have requires more than one storage spot. And keeping on top of school papers requires a thought-out system so we don’t drown in paper.
But when it comes to kitchen gear, there’s another item that needs to be tended to that isn’t as obvious: water bottles. We use them every single day, and they really should be cleaned every single day. But this takes a long time and, for me, using bottle brushes (and tiny bottle brushes for straws), then making sure soap gets rinsed out thoroughly feels quite tedious — especially with my long to-do list. I actually timed how long it took me to wash all seven of our water bottles: 11 minutes, which definitely adds up. That’s over an hour of water bottle-washing a week! Who has time for that?
I had seen glass rinsers in restaurant kitchens and tucked it away in my memory as a great way to address this necessary but time-sucking chore. When we moved and had the opportunity to remodel the kitchen in our new house, I knew I wanted to look into how viable it was to install one.
It turns out that installing a glass rinser is actually pretty straightforward and simple. The hardest part about installing one is making sure you have a hole in your countertop. Because we were having a new countertop fabricated, we were luckily able to ask for one.
However, even if your kitchen isn’t undergoing a renovation, you can easily DIY it and convert your built-in soap dispenser into a glass rinser. I personally prefer to have my dish and hand soap in their own dispensers because they’re easier to clean and much easier to refill, so if you’re like me, you might take that route.
So once we decided on the one we wanted and got it installed, the new glass-cleaning era began. This is how I use the glass rinser: I put a tiny bit of dish soap into my water bottle and then overturn it onto the glass rinser. A strong, multi-directional stream of water sprays the interior of the cup or bottle. It even reaches the bottom of tall water bottles (I can feel it!). This simultaneously distributes the soap throughout the bottle’s interior and washes it out. I keep the water bottle on the rinser until the water runs clear.
I still have to use a straw brush for water bottles that have straws, but being able to automate and speed up the interior washing makes the chore far quicker and much less tedious. The glass rinser makes it possible to actually do this chore daily, although I do still do a deeper cleaning about once a week.
In addition to using the glass rinser to streamline our water bottle-washing, we routinely use it to rinse out glasses that we’ve used to drink smoothies and coffee mugs. The strong stream does a great job of cleaning out these sometimes tricky-to-clean dishes.
I loved the glass rinser right away, and after a year of using it (and approximately 52 hours saved), I can honestly say it’s one of my favorite parts of my kitchen. If you find yourself spending seemingly endless amounts of time cleaning water bottles, delicate glasses, or stained coffee mugs, your kitchen might need one, too.
Buy: Delta Faucet Glass Rinse, $100.98