Quick cleaning tips

1. To clean a coffee grinder, put 1/4 cup of uncooked rice in and run the cycle. All the built-up coffee and gunk comes right out!

2. For the coffee pot itself--run the entire cycle with vinegar instead of water, and of course no coffee. If your coffee pot is extremely dirty, you may need to do this a couple of times. Follow up with plain water.

3. Alternately, you can use alka-seltzer to clean your coffee pot. Fill the reservoir with water and drop in 2 alka seltzer. Once the fizzing stops, run the cycle. Again, follow with plain water.

4. Those alka seltzer can also be used to clean a toilet. Drop in 3-4 tablets and let it work for about 20 minutes. A quick swish with the toilet brush and you'll be set! This is a great way to clean your toilet before using the Scrubbing Bubbles Toilet Cleaner gel disks, which I LOVE.