For those of you that drink loose-leaf tea, how do you clean the tea strainer? I have a small metal tea strainer (similar to
this one from Amazon.com). When I use it, it very quickly gets discolored from either the tea or the minerals in our water (we have very hard water). The discoloration bothers me; I hate feeling like I'm soaking a dirty utensil in my cup of tea.
But it's virtually impossible to clean. I've tried soaking it in mixture of vinegar and water and that did nothing. If I scrub it really really hard with an abrasive sponge, I can get some of the discoloration off, but I can't get the stuff in the cracks and crevices and I still can't get it back to the bright and sparkling color it was when it was new.
Is there a better way to be cleaning the tea strainer? Should I stop being such a freak about it (my SO thinks I'm nuts)? Is there a better tool that I could be using to strain my tea?