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Smoking cannabis is gross. Not the act of smoking, but the mess it leaves behind.
Remember how your first little glass pipe looked the first time you broke it in? When you noticed that grey-yellow film already coating the inside of the glass after one smoke sesh? Every puff dirties our pipe, bong, vaporizer a bit more, and the resin builds up and hardens over time, making it more difficult to clean.
I was always under the impression that rubbing alcohol, salt and elbow grease were the best way to clean a dirty glass piece. It made a disgusting brown mess of my sink that I'd need to clean with Clorox afterwards, and the bitter scent of alcohol and bong resin made me wince, but it did the job.
Then I was sent a sample of ResÖlution gel.
At first glance, I assumed this was one of those smoke shop glass cleaning solutions like Formula 420, which work fine but not much better than rubbing alcohol and salt, and smell a lot more like chemicals. I was wrong.
Maybe it's been too long since I visited the shelves of glass cleaners at a glass shop, but the reusable, non-toxic ResÖlution gel is a game-changer. The resealable bag of liquid cleaner has a Ziploc top to drop in a small glass pipe, downstem, or bowl, reseal, and shake the shit out of it. You can let it sit for five-thirty minutes, depending on the last time you cleaned your piece, and remove your piece from the bag. Finish with rinsing it well with warm water. The solution in the bag may look a little dirtier, but you can repeat those steps with the same bag of liquid several times. It saves you money on alcohol and salt, and saves your plumbing from routine dumps of gunky resin down the drains.
They include a clever selection of silicone discs in various sizes that fit in the mouthpiece of your bong so you can Shake Weight a cup or so of the liquid around without worrying about it flying out the top of the bong. It's a far superior approach than my usual practice of shoving a wadded paper towel into each end and praying to the cannabis goddesses that they hold. The caps alone have brought attention to the Colorado company, as they come in handy keeping water and smell contained when traveling with your glass pieces. You can get a 200ml bag of ResÖlution and a set of cleaning caps for $17 on their site.
Fortunately this cleaning formula doesn't contain any alcohol or abrasives and has a pleasant, slight scent of laundry detergent, so even if it's too gross to reuse the solution that I dumped into my bong, it's less of a threat to your plumbing and sinuses to dispose of it.
If you're too old school to change your ways now, please at least buy 91% alcohol. It really makes a difference.
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