Cleaning a Baby Bottle Sterilizer

 

Avent 3-in-1 Electric Sterilizer

Most of us using baby bottle sterilizers have faced the problem of deposits on the heating element. The deposits may range from light cream in color to black spots. If left uncleaned for long these deposits can cause sterilizer to emit a smell into the bottles and may even make your baby reject the bottle. Also not much information is available for this important part of using an electric sterilizer. Let's take a look at reasons for the deposits and how to clean them: 

There may be two broad reasons for deposits on the heating element:

Poor water quality

Use only drinking water while sterilizing baby bottles. As regular tap water may be hard and thus leave calcium and magnesium deposits. These deposits are generally white in color and particularly hard to remove.
 

Insufficient quantity of water used

Put the exact measured quantity of water on the heating element. Less than required quantity would mean that water will evaporate prematurely during the sterilization cycle leaving the element burning. This would lead to deposits that are black in color and seem to be a nasty thing to have on equipment meant to sterilize the baby bottles.

One more thing to note is, even if you are putting in the right quantity of water, if your sterilizer is not leveled, it would lead to burning up of one side(higher side) of the element as the water will go down towards the side at a lower level.

See for yourself:

Element Before Cleaning

 

I realized the problem of improperly leveled table when I found the element burnt up from one side while the other side just had hard water deposits.
 

Cleaning the sterilizer element 

Now to clean the sterilizers element put a mixture of vinegar and water 1:3 proportion in the sterilizer and leave it for at least 15 minutes. This should loosen up the deposits and then can be removed by rubbing with a rough cloth. It would take some time as the deposits are stuck firm to the element but 30 minutes of hardwork and you would have a clean sterilizer ready to take on the bottles of the world:

Element After Cleaning

 Such cleaning needs to be done every 4 weeks or whenever you find deposits on the element. 

Happy Parenting :)