Turns out my "lucky" work coffee mug was growing mold in the handle gap for 5 years

I was scrolling through a cleaning tips thread on Reddit (big mistake, honestly) and someone mentioned that ceramic mugs with hollow handles are basically mold hotels. I flipped mine over and found this tiny drainage hole I never noticed, and sure enough, black gunk was seeping out when I squeezed it. I've been drinking from that Revere Ware mug since 2019 without ever washing the inside of the handle. Has anyone else found nastiness in something they used every single day?

3 comments

3 Comments

jesse_craig2614d ago

Doubt that mug had anything worse in it than what's crawling around on your phone screen right now. People act like a little mold is the end of the world when half of us eat lunch at our desks without washing our hands.

morgan_butler14d ago

Back in 2019 I left a half-eaten apple in my backpack for like three weeks because I forgot it was in there. When I finally pulled it out, the thing had basically dissolved into this brown liquid with these fuzzy green islands floating on top. I still think about that smell sometimes, it was like dead grass and sour yogurt mixed together. Honestly though your point about phone screens is probably right, I've seen those blacklight pictures of phones and they look way worse than any coffee mug I've ever owned. We're all just walking around in our own little filth bubbles and pretending a spec of mold is where we draw the line.

maryh9612d ago

Figure the real issue is that we've all got different definitions of "clean" in our heads... Like, some people wipe their whole phone down with alcohol wipes every night and others just kinda let it marinate in whatever they touch at the gas station. The mold on a coffee mug is visible, sure, but it's also this obvious sign that you dropped the ball somewhere. The bacteria on a phone screen is invisible until someone pulls out a blacklight, so it feels like it doesn't count. It's kinda like how people freak out over a cockroach but don't think twice about the dust mites living in their mattress... just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.