When your winter home is inside a van you need things to take up as little room as possible. For this reason most RVers prefer items that can be used for more than one purpose. But, occasionally, you need a specific item for a specific purpose.
Like this little gadget:
That’s a brush. Specifically, as shown on the left, it is a brush for cleaning the inside of a drinking straw.
I have two insulated glasses with screw on lids with acrylic straws. These are what I drink from when driving. Sometimes those glasses, lids, and straws need to be washed. I found cleaning the straws to be VERY challenging. They are too thin to run a corner of a dishcloth down the length of them. I could wash each end but not the middle.
So when I stumbled across these brushes on Amazon I order a package of two of them. I left one at home but brought one with me. A very special, single use, but much appreciated item.
Until today.
I found a second use for my brush.
You see, my kitchen sink backed up. Would not drain. We all know what that means. There was something stuck in the plumbing. I puzzled about that for awhile and wished I had bought a Zip-it as I said I would in case my shower drain got clogged from washing my hair. It never occurred to me it would be my kitchen sink that would clog. Which didn’t really matter since I never bought the Zip-it.
Then I remembered my drinking straw brush. Long and slender it would go down the drain just fine. Maybe, just maybe, the brush would grab onto whatever was plugging the drain and drag it out of there.
Success. After several tries a hair ball came up with the brush. And the water went down. And this single purpose item now has two purposes.
Once I wash it well, that is.
I wonder if I ever would have found a second use for a Zip-it?
TTYL,
Linda
Isn’t Amazon great!!! You should see all the little things I find while stowing or receiving things in at Amazon. I always have a pad in my fanny pack and a pen that I can right down the upc code and them come home and put it in my cart at Amazon.com.
Don’t you love it when you find you already have the tool you need? Necessity, as they say, etc ….
I would have never thought of buying a brush to clean those straws. I probably would have tried a toothpick. Good thinking!
I’m a faithful customer of Amazon. I’ve found all kinds of must-haves from there. The service is great too!
how cool is that! Never thought about such a thing!
I broke off the head of a sink stopper using a Zip It (bathroom sink with a levered stopper). Maybe your brush would be more gentle for trap cleaning.
I have avoided buying those cups with straws because I couldn’t figure out how to clean the straw. Never knew there was such a thing as a straw brush. I also use one of those mesh drain covers in my sink to keep small items from going down the drain and causing a possible clog.
I also think that brush might be good for cleaning the ports on my hummingbird feeder.
I had no idea that there was such a thing as straw brushes! What an awesome product! I’m going to be putting in an order on amazon for those. I like to use straws as well for smoothies or shakes but cleaning them is always a challenge. Thanks for sharing!
Having successfully used a Zip-It to clear a slow shower drain, I think its dual purpose nature would tend to be as a safer replacement for ipecac, for accidental poisoning. One look at that thing after coming out of the drain nearly did it for me!