As an alternative to cleaning the unit you could perhaps just try using distilled water. This is really only a reasonable option if you have a cheap source of distilled water of course…my wife has a water distiller so distilled water is cheap for us. If hard water were an issue for me I think using distilled water would be feasible approach to avoid the need for cleaning completely, and I’d just keep reusing the water. (I don’t bother to do this because the water where I live is soft.).