Fixation of the Week: How often should I wash my Hydroflask?

How bad could the mold be, anyway?

Like most people who grew up in the generation of pro-ana Tumblr, I am as attached to my water bottle as I am my vestigial tail. Though I no longer feel the need to drink 24 ounces each morning before I indulge in any “chew foods,” (as Kelly Ripa calls them in her absolutely bonkers 2020 What I Eat In a Day ), I still wield my bottle as a talisman to ward off bad skin and UTIs.

Which brings me to what’s been keeping me up this week. How do you know when to wash your water bottle?

When my boyfriend gifted me the water bottle of my dreams: an orange Hydroflask with a flex straw cap; a permanent fix for my jarring habit of dumping water into the bed during the night; I was warned by friends that the bottles with straws are a breeding ground for a sinister life form. Mold.

I’ve never washed my Hydroflask.

It’s become a meme that the girlies don’t wash their bottles. I’ve seen Tik Toks sketches of bottles begging to be washed as their oblivious guardian does the dishes. I’ve even seen a video of a girl with an Owala water bottle (the newest craze in water vessels, coming to dethrone the almighty Stanley) claiming to have gotten some type of mold-borne illness because she didn’t know the bottle had a removable silicone tab. When she finally peeled it off was coated in humanity’s only natural predator. Mold.

I give my trusty Hydroflask a swish with some tap water now and then, but even LA tap water feels dirtier than the filtered water I fill it with for drinking purposes. But then there’s the factor of my human mouth, full of bacteria. How much water washes back from my straw into the bottle? Then there’s my bottle brushes. I have one that is the correct diameter to clean out my straw, but I hesitate, because that bottle brush has been raw-dogging it in my miscellaneous utensil drawer for at least six months, and we all know about the toothbrush-and-fecal matter horrorshow occurring in our bathrooms each day. What microbes are stowed away on these mysterious bristles, and why should I trust them to clean anything?

What if I clean my bottle, and on my first sip from the scrubbed straw and scoured interior, it just tastes different?