Cns,
Quit cleaning your wsm. Keep the grates clean and empty your ashes. The water pan is a pita to clean so I quit using water last year. Now, I cook everything either in pans or with a drip tray between the food and the empty water bowl (because you don't want the dripping to fall to the bottom of the water bowl and burn) and cleanup/maintenance is literally seconds.
Sincerely,
TCFS
The Virtual Weber Bullet bbs talks about burning the cooker out by lighting a bunch of charcoal at once and getting it super hot with no water or food in it to eliminate mold. This seems like a lot more work, time, and money than just scrubbing with an old kitchen brush with some soap and the hose. They don't reference doing it every time, just when you see mold. That said, working in an industry that is hyper sensitive to mold, you have a mold problem before it is prevalent enough for you to notice it being every where.
The worst part is the water bowl, which obviously does have to be changed. The rest is just another 15 min of my time. It sucks, but I'm going to keep doing it.
I do like the idea of using a pan for the water, but I would rather it be a disposable liner for the WSM water pan so that I could still put in the same amt of water and so that it doesn't take up room. using another kind of pan would take up a bunch of room, imo, and limit how much stuff I can smoke at a time.
Also, I don't put everything in a pan. I actually have only done that with loin so far. Everything else is on the grill directly.