This $8 Find Will Do Your Dishes While You Sleep

I hate doing dishes. I also don’t have a dishwasher, which is a good thing because I hate doing dishes so much, I’d probably just throw everything in there and hope for the best. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not super willing to stand at the sink and scrub a pan—especially after a tough day!

All that’s to say that I’m always looking for ways to cut my dishwashing time. Unfortunately, I haven’t really found anything worth writing home (or here) about. Until now! Let me introduce you to my laziest lazy-girl cleaning product: Bottle Bright. The company’s tagline is “Fizz your way to clean.” If it sounds easy, that’s because it is!

Technically meant to clean reusable water bottles, I’ve found that using these tablets to clean my messiest pots is the best off-label use for them.

Buy: Bottle Bright, $7.99 for 12

I’m not advocating you clean every single dirty skillet with these individually wrapped, little miracle tablets. They’re not cheap—a 12-pack is $8 on Amazon. For what it’s worth, my guess is that the high price has something to do with the fact that they’re naturally derived, non-toxic, biodegradable, and chlorine-free—all things I want out of my cleaners these days. (The main ingredients are hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, citric acid, and salt, plus a few other plant-based agents like cellulose.)

These effervescent tablets were designed to de-grime and kill the bacteria on things you normally can’t put in the dishwasher (think: S’well and other water bottles, straws, travel coffee mugs, etc.). You fill the bottle with water, plop in a tablet, and wait 15 minutes while the tablet fizzes and does its thing. I first discovered them in this context and I tried some on my funkiest water bottles. (I went through a smoothie phase, and it’s difficult to get that old fruit stank out; let’s just say the bottoms were, um, disgusting.) But after a quick fizz, each bottle was as good as new.

So, late one night after cooking steaks when I probably should have just ordered in, I decided to see if a tablet could clean my greasy, gunky cast iron grill pan. The pan was cheap and not something I’d spent decades seasoning, so the stakes weren’t high if something went wrong. The Bottle Bright instructions say, for tougher stains, to fill the vessel with hot water, drop in a tablet and let things sit overnight. That’s what I did—but truthfully, I think it would have worked in less time. The tablet quickly bubbled up and, when I checked in the morning, it had lifted pretty much all of the gunk off the pan. I dumped the water, dried off the pan, and was good to go. And my cast iron was fine, although Bottle Bright officially recommends using it on stainless steel, plastic, glass, porcelain, silicone, and metal.

Since this successful experiment, I’ve used the tablets on stainless steel pans and glass casserole dishes with similar results. I’ve also heard they’re pretty clutch for camping. Oh and maybe use one on your water bottle, too—it could probably use it.

Have you used Bottle Bright? What’d you think?

This post originally ran on Kitchn. See it there: The Magical Product That Cleans My Pots While I Sleep