The $8 Miracle Product That Actually Cleans My Water Bottles

I have a confession to make. Up until very recently, I used to reuse my reusable water bottles… a little too often. To be specific, I’d reuse them for days in a row without washing them in between. I know, I know. In my defense, I thought it couldn’t hurt—I was only using them for water, after all. How could it get gross or dirty if it was just water inside the bottle?

Well… pretty gross and dirty, apparently. As Lisa Cuchara, a professor at Quinnipiac University, told Food Network, this habit can ultimately lead to bacteria including E. coli growing on the bottle from things like “backwash and sweat.” So, not just water inside the bottle, then. Luckily, though, I discovered a product recently that stopped my gross water bottle habit—and really easily, too. 

After seeing Emma Golden, the blogger behind Emma’sThing.com, recommend BottleBright’s bottle cleaning tablets on Instagram, I bought a pack of the fizzing tablets and tried them out at home. Reader, I’ll never go back to my old ways. Before the tablets, I was admittedly not washing my water bottles enough due to, let’s be honest, sheer laziness. However, another factor was that the idea of putting a gross kitchen sponge and/or big dollop of gross-tasting dish washing liquid into my water bottles seemed… like a bad idea. Not to mention, the inside of them was impossible to fully reach without a bottle brush, anyway. The BottleBright tablets eliminate all of those problems.

So how do they work? Well, it’s pretty much as simple as you might think. I filled my water bottle (these work on stainless steel, plastic, TPU, glass, porcelain, silicone, and metal bottles, so you should be good to go no matter what you’re using) with warm water, dropped a tablet in, let it do its thing for 15-30 minutes, and then rinsed the bottle out. After that, the bottle was bacteria-free and good to go. Laziness, you’ve met your match.

According to the brand’s Amazon page, the tablets are made of a combination of hydrogen peroxide, citric acid, salts, wood pulp, and minerals. When the product breaks down in the warm water, the effervescent bubbles it produces “power through those stubborn stains and odors” that your bottle may or may not have (it probably does, though, let’s be honest).

The best part? The product is only $8 for 12 tablets. This means that you could spend less than $20 a month and have enough tablets for almost every single day of the month. If that seems on the pricey side for a regularly used cleaning product, the scores of positive reviews might just change your mind. There’s a reason why people like Golden sing this products’ praises on social media. 

One of BottleBright’s thousands of five-star reviews on Amazon reads, “Can I give Bottle Bright 10 stars? This is a MIRACLE product.” Another says, “I seriously can’t believe how well these little tablets work. I had the most disgusting HydroFlask coffee mug — I tried everything. Bottle brush, different kinds of soap, vinegar, EVERYTHING, and there was still a seemingly impenetrable layer of black sludge inside. It grossed me out so much that I bought ANOTHER HydroFlask to replace it. Now eventually they both got black inside, so I tried these little magic tablets. I let a tablet sit in each of my mugs for an hour or two, and the black sludge rinsed out COMPLETELY, without even scrubbing. They look brand new. What a magical product. No weird smell or taste afterward, either.”

Needless to say: This stuff works. Not only did I notice a difference in how clean my water bottle and coffee mugs were right away (the surface of my plastic water bottle was no longer slightly cloudy, for example), but knowing that something I use every day was clean instead of just hoping for the best made me feel much better about using it. I happily said goodbye to my worries (and germs).