Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

I use one litre milk bottles for my ice so my cooler doesn't get all wet & gross inside. I have tried repeatedly to clean them, but I just cannot get the milk smell out of them.

I don't drink much milk when I'm camping, just a little when cooking, so when I travel, I fill a 500mL (pint, I guess?) Nalgene bottle with milk (so it doesn't leak in the cooler) and now it has a faint milk smell no matter how many times I clean it.

Any ideas?

I use either one of these but not both together!...baking soda and water OR a small amount of Clorox and water. I use both of these methods a lot to get odors out and it has worked.

vinegar cleans my coffee pot really well... maybe that will work on the milk odor too!

1/2 gallon bottle in each corner and a shelf to keep the non-waterproof stuff out of the ice/water

Maybe it is the material the bottles are made of. We have milk delivered and they use refillable bottles like in the old days. The bottles they use are made of a different plastic and doesn't usually smell of milk after I rinse them out for return. There is also another dairy here that uses glass bottles.

Maybe you should try a true Nalgene water bottle, or soda bottles and see what kind of results you get.

Just a suggest but use water bottles to freeze for ice. I take my lunch everyday and was doing like you were but had same smell so I switched to using 1ltr bottles of Aquafina water and solved the problem. When camping we buy the cheap 1 gal jugs and freeze them several days a head of time and then as they melt we use the water for cooking. I also clean all my coolers with bleach atleast every other trip so no funky smells.

Just a suggestion.

Cliff

First hand science experiment.............

Had a McDonald's milk chub I had lost track of on my desk top.

While milk is not supposed to be a solid this was.... pheeewww !

I save these handy little bottles for spices and such for the teardrop galley so I decided to try and clean this one. A small splash of bleach and some hot water. Shook untill the solides were moving . Dumped and rinsed. Put in 2 - 3 drops of dishwashing detergent and hot water. Shook again and rinsed. Let it air dry and no smell.

Try using some 2 litre plastic soda bottles. The seem to fit better in a cooler too. ( no handle) They clean up good also. Good luck.

Thanks for your help. The baking soda worked like a charm. I have a really tiny setup and a small cooler. The milk bottles that I use are long and thin and works in my small cooler.



If I bring my big one bigger bottles might work better.