Attempted Humidifier Cleaning
Was it worth it
Operating my humidifier, a two-part machine that emits mist through a tube, is easy. Detach the upper component, fill it with water, place it on the base component, and turn the knob.
Cleaning it is harder. The tube’s been accumulating a dirtlike substance on its inner surface, and there’s no obvious way to reach most of the gunk.
I don’t have a long-handled brush. So instead, over the course of half an hour, I end up assembling a troupe of esoteric tools in the bathroom across from my college suite:
A box of alcoholic wipes;
A boba straw from The Whale Tea;
A dinner knife from the box of silverware my mom insisted I bring to college;
An electronic water floss.
The wipes
I begin by bringing a box of alcoholic wipes and the upper component—a vaguely bowl-shaped apparatus made from transparent blue plastic—to the bathroom sink. The tube runs through the upper component, capped on one end, and somewhat obstructed on the other by pieces of plastic that clamp onto the base component. I unscrew the cap, open the box of wipes, wrap one around my index and middle fingers, and shove them as far down the tube as possible.
My fingers barely reach the halfway point. I wriggle them, make little circles and back-and-forths, rotate the whole apparatus over and over again. The lower half goes unwiped. The brute-force method will not suffice.
The boba straw
Channeling the well-documented tool-making prowess of our closest evolutionary relatives, I scour my suite for long objects, procuring the following:
a few depleted pens;
plastic utensils;
and a boba straw.
The latter is the widest, and probably most amenable to serving as the handle of the world’s flimsiest DIY brush. Alcoholic wipes, which I attach to the straw with painter’s tape, seem an acceptable substitute for bristles and dish detergent.
At the sink, I discover that one layer of alcoholic-wipe wrapping isn’t thick enough to properly scrub the tube.
Well, I did come to college to experiment and try new things.
Seven layers later, my makeshift Swiffer looks like a bloated, rectangular lollipop, which I stab into the tube, over, and over, and over, again and again and again. The jabs stop having any noticeable effect and the innards are still covered with gunk. Bristles have resistance; alcoholic wipes don’t. I need something sturdy to scrape the sides. Back to the lab again.
The dinner knife
This time, I nab a dinner knife from our cutlery box. Treating it like a shovel, I scoop tiny chunks of gunk, wipe the knife, and repeat. It’s a slow, ineffectual process, and the knife also doesn’t fully reach the bottom of the tube, the obstructed entrance.
Monkey mindset isn’t working. Fortunately, humanity as a whole has invented better tools and methods than I as an individual have. Time to head to the floor’s other bathroom.
The water floss
There I retrieve my water floss, a neat gadget that shoots rapid bursts of water.
I hold the humidifier component over the sink, the tube facing the drain; point the water floss down the open end; and let loose.
For a few seconds, the water chips away at the gunk, but then the rate slows. A sophomore from the suite next door walks in the door and finds me standing at the sink, aiming a water floss at a humidifier tube, surrounded by humidifier parts, a deformed boba-straw-wipe lollipop-swiffer, a knife, and alcoholic wipes. “I’m just trying to clean this thing!”
She laughs, and while she washes her hands she catches a few stray spritzes—the plastic obstructions at the tube’s other end spray the excess water everywhere. I apologize and she brushes it off.
There’s only one more fix necessary. The angle is wrong: to ensure that the water (mostly) ends up in the sink, I’ve been pointing the floss downwards. This inadvertently has led to a reduction in water pressure.
I step into the shower, hold the humidifier component as far away as possible, and wield the water floss like a decidedly-less-than-lethal pistol. The pressure is much higher this way! The gunk recedes faster than before, but some of it’s getting trapped in the other end, so I reverse the humidifier and aim through the somewhat-obstructed side. The plastic clears up.
A few more refills of the water floss’s tank later and I’m done!—the tube is transparent again. Relief envelops me: I’m bad at focusing on anything if I have an immediate task to complete, and now I’m free. I gather my supplies and bring them back to my suite, fill my humidifier with water, and plug it into the outlet by my desk.
Here are some pictures of the machine that gave me so much trouble that day:
The next day I’m moving out, and there’s no space left in my storage boxes and no room left in my suitcases. The humidifier ends up in the trash.
(Maybe I should have figured that out before I spent half an hour cleaning it?)
F for the humidifier
i maintain that you should've made the innuendo