Keeping birdfeeders clean

Reading this month's GW, it recommends cleaning bird feeders weekly. Now, I'm very keen not to be doing anything that will harm our birds, but I'm struggling with how on erth to manage such a regular cleaning cycle! I clean them a couple of times each year or if seed gets damp & mouldy - which I'm aware may not be enough.
Problem is, not only are squirrel proof feeders a bit of a pain to clean, there's no way they'd dry during the winter in anything like reasonable time. Am i missing some tricks?
Problem is, not only are squirrel proof feeders a bit of a pain to clean, there's no way they'd dry during the winter in anything like reasonable time. Am i missing some tricks?
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Dismantling the feeders, soaking in Milton fluid while you go off and do other things, brushing with a bottlebrush, rinsing and drying on the top of a radiator take very little time.
We clean ours regularly because sometimes the food gets half eaten and left for the next bird to pick up. Chaffinches round here suffer from two horrible diseases - one is a sort of pox that both blinds them and clogs up they mouths with lesions - they can’t swallow the food and spit it out leaving it for other birds to eat and catch the disease. The other disease attacks their feet, initially making them look as if they are encased in cement. The feet then drop off and they hop around on stumps until caught and eaten by a predator. They catch this disease by walking in dirty feeding areas where affected birds congregate.
So even though we keep our feeders scrupulously clean, we still have the sad sight of dying and diseased birds in our garden.
A little time is all it takes to keep the feeders clean. After all, you would wash a pet’s bowl on a daily basis, wouldn’t you?
@pansyface Didn't know that about Chaffinches. Sounds horrendous.
Both very ugly and slow to kill.
So sad about the chaffinches.
feeders were quite disgusting but my husband is working his way through them, giving them a good clean and finishing with disinfectant. The feeders which remained in the best condition were those attached to a huge laurel which are protected from the worst of the weather and which enabled the birds to slip into hiding quickly also the ones very close to a privet where again the birds slip easily and quickly in and out. The cleaning is turning into a big job but going forward we will probably just do two a week. Either way the article was a wake up call.