How To Clean Vintage Bottles

I love finding old bottles at the thrift stores, but they aren’t always in the best shape. Here’s how to clean vintage bottles easily!

Do you love vintage bottles like me?

I would think so, if you’re reading this post. 😉

Every time I am out junking or thrifting, I look to add to my collection.

I just adore that vintage blue color and grab one whenever I find a steal.

But cleaning them has been a challenge!

Until I found a trick that finally worked. Here’s how to clean vintage bottles the easy way!

How to Clean Vintage Bottles

(Some affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here.)

SUPPLIES

Vintage Bottles
Stain Away Denture Cleaner
Wine Bottle Cleaning Brush
Funnel

I don’t know what it is about vintage bottles, but they are not the easiest to clean.

I tried soap and water, soap and boiling water, running them through the dishwasher, vinegar and baking soda, and all of those methods failed.

Then my brother’s girlfriend heard about using denture cleaner. She had just been given a box of old soda bottles that were caked with dirt.

When she told me it worked, I had to give this a try for myself.

So I took my bottles to my sink and hoped for the best.

I filled each bottle with water about 2/3 full and added a cap full of the denture cleaner to each bottle.

Using a funnel makes this process much easier!

It will foam up after you add the cleanser, so you want to leave enough space for the denture cleaner to do it’s work.

Watching it foam up is rather satisfying!

I let each bottle sit for the entire day to make sure the cleaner did it’s job.

Every now and then, I would pick up each bottle and agitate the liquid to see how it was removing the dirt.

There were two bottles that were rather stubborn, so I repeated the process on those, using a little hotter water.

After the denture cleaner got most of the dirt, I took the bottle brush and scrubbed away.

Here’s the before and after!

What a difference!

Some of the bottles were a bit scratched and those don’t clean up well, but a huge improvement from before!

And it was so simple!

So the good thing about finding old, dirty bottles is that they are many times much cheaper than those already cleaned!

Now that you know this trick, maybe this will save you some money the next time you find some vintage bottles!

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