How to Clean the Coffee Maker and Why Are You Wearing a Sweater in the Summer?

I have a coffee maker with a white plastic water hopper.  I don’t pour coffee into the hopper, only clean water. So it is beyond me why the inside walls of the hopper get brown and icky.

How to clean a coffee maker hopper

Well, that shouldn’t be that hard to clean, I thought.  I tried a cloth and it wiped off just fine. For the first three inches down the sides; I couldn’t reach further in.

Well, that shouldn’t be a problem, I thought, I’ll just get a brush of some sort and clean that up no problem. So I tried 3 different handled scrubby brushes.

I tried an old-fashioned string cleaning thingy, I tried bottle brushes. I Googled a bajillion ways to Sunday  and even registered on a site for people wanting things invented. 

I could get the stuff off the sides of the hopper, but not off the bottom or from in the very edges. Made me NUTS. 

Light-bulb moment happened when I was  thinking about scrubbies made from nylon net, or tulle. Off to Fabricland, bought a meter of tulle, got it wet (and that isn’t easy to do, by the way) and crammed it into the hopper, twisted it around a bit and ta da!! All, yes ALL the gunk came off. Just amazing.

T-shirts are sweaters

 

And now to one of my pet peeves. Again. I feel sorry for people who suffer in the summer heat. I don’t feel sorry for people who suffer in the summer heat but who insist on wearing polyester and knits.

A T-shirt is a knit –  just like a sweater, only thinner. Poly-cotton blouses, shirts, skirts and pants hold heat against your body.  You may be wrinkle-free but you will feel the heat more than if you wear natural fibers in a woven fabric. Anyone who wears just natural fibers in the summer knows this.

So now, here is the proof. From the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health:   Quoting one of several studies: “It was found that local sweating, and thus thermal stress, was higher with polyester fabrics than cotton fabrics…

The onset of sweating was earlier, self-reported thermal sensation was warmer, pulse rate was higher, and changes in body temperature were greater among subjects wearing polyester versus cotton clothing. Subjects also felt wetter in polyester…. Skin temperatures were higher with polyester.”

Did you get that?  Your heart rate goes up, your skin surface temperature goes up, you sweat sooner and you feel hotter than if you wore cotton. Read the study, and check out their sources at https://ncceh.ca/content/clothing.