Self-disinfecting toilet brush

This is classic, a maker was so grossed out by a toilet brush he made a “better” version… Sean writes –

What the heck do you do with the toilet brush right after you use it? Hang it up? Lay it in the sink or bathtub to dry first? Or maybe you have one of those brushes with a built-in base that keeps the bristles corraled when not in use. All of these alternatives kinda skeenge me out, honestly, and whether it’s realistic or not I have a kind of horror of loose toilet brushes and the germs I imagine growing on them. So I often find myself standing over the commode with a freshly-used toilet brush wishing I had some more sanitary place to put it.

This is my Howard-Hughesian solution. A standard round plastic toilet brush is built into the lid of a barber’s disinfecting jar, so that the lid forms a sort of “guard” for the brush when it is withdrawn for use. When you’re done scrubbing, the dirty brush goes back down into the jar until the lid is back in place, submerging the bristles in disinfectant, where they are continuosly stored when not in use. I used generic barber’s disinfectant from the beauty store, which comes concentrated and is diluted many-fold for use. The disinfectant is cheap to begin with; add to that the fact that the closed-lid design reduces evaporative losses to essentially zero and the expense associated with the disinfectant becomes trivial. You can also add detergent to assist in cleaning the bowl.

Makers, post the things that freak you out and your DIY solutions – if someone posts a really good one I’ll send them out a Maker’s Notebook.