I Tried TikTok's Spoon Trick To Clean My Sieve, And I'm Never Going Back

As a former cleaner, I have a lot of opinions about online housekeeping “hacks” (I didn’t, for instance, enjoy prime-era CleanTok’s five-product loo cleans, which spell chemical disaster). 

But I’m not against learning new tricks. A Reddit lemon juice descaling trick proved surprisingly effective on my scaly kettle; I swear by the same cleaning pastes and scrubbing sponges every cleaning influencer seems to love, too. 

So when I saw a TikTok from site user Arek Striech showing how his grandmother taught him to clean a sieve, I was intrigued. 

After all, though I know to bang the notoriously hard-to-clean utensil against my sink to dislodge any stubborn chunks, I still find it impossible to get the mesh material clean using my regular soap-and-tap-stream method. 

What’s the trick?

The poster said that instead of sudsing up the back of your sieve and creating snake-like clear spots using the stream of a tap, you should add a spoon to the mix. 

The trick is to invert the bowl of the spoon and place it directly under the running water, helping to disperse the droplets and turning the deluge into a sprinkler-like shower. 

You can use that on the back and front of the sieve. 

I was a little sceptical of the advice at first, fearing splashes with little reward; but having tried it, I can confirm that a carefully-positioned spoon really does make all the difference. 

I no longer have those grim squares of starch in the back of my sieve when it dries after cooking pasta; a recent post-coulis rinse saw all the seeds disappear.

For what it’s worth, it works great for my grater too. 

Any other tips?

Bon Appétit recommends using a toothbrush for particularly hard-to-budge patches. 

They also say you should soak your sieve in very hot, soapy water for 15 minutes “right away” after using it. 

Some white vinegar can make even faster work of any residual crumbs, they add. 

Still, since learning the spoon trick, I haven’t had to do any extra steps.