Super-Cleaning Contigo Mugs
Megan 
loves her Contigo mugs for drinking coffee in the car every day. I’ve been hand-cleaning them for a while and the insides kept getting more and more brown despite scrubbing. An abrasive pad and a lot of elbow grease worked well enough but I wasn’t keen on doing that again. So I tried soaking the mug in Oxi Clean for an hour and it worked super duper great! The inside of the mug got to sparkling silver clean! Actually, it worked too great, the little bits of Oxi-Clean that spilled over to the outside made the paint bubble off the mug! As a last ditch effort, I used Oxi Clean to remove the paint completely and it actually looks pretty cool.
The best part is something I just read from Contigo…
Contigo travel mug lids and any unpainted stainless steel bodies are top-rack dishwasher safe for a quick, easy clean. Painted stainless steel bodies are hand wash only.
The mug is now fully dishwasher safe! Woot!
In the image, notice the last remnants of the purple paint embedded in the word “Contigo” on the one on the right.
I love my Contigo! It keeps the hot hot and the cold cold for hours. I put my lid in the dishwasher regularly, using the “tines” on the top rack to hold the hole open. You can also fill it with hot water and put a denture tablet in it for deep cleaning of crevices.
Update: I cleaned another Contigo with Oxiclean. This time I was careful not to let the cleaner touch the outside finish. In about 4 hours of soaking, the Contigo was good as new!
Watch out: I filled the mug 3/4 full with hot water and about 1/4″ of Oxiclean. When I came back after 2 hours, it had foamed over the top. The foam touched the outside of the mug but didn’t wreck it.