Doing dishes is already a trying chore, but cleaning bottles and sippy cups is a headache we all wish we could avoid.
(Have you ever torn apart those sippy cups? YIKES!)
If you are like me, you have scoured the internet for search of answers to cleaning those hard to reach areas of your precious one’s cup.
Well, after a lot of trial and error, I found a solution that not only saves money but works with many different cups.
Other Hacks That Were Total Whacks
I have tried buying those nipple cleaners. They work great for bottle nipples and if you find a small enough one you can use it to clean some straws. The hard bristles do work well in cleaning some of those hard to reach areas, but some don’t have enough bristles to really get it clean enough.
I have also noticed that the bristles start to fall off and you are left with just that metal piece. I don’t have the money to keep buying new ones when the old ones start to fall apart.
There is the trick with the pipe cleaners where you twirl multiple ones together. Pipe cleaners are pretty cheap and come in a pack, which is good because after a few uses they start to deteriorate.
Now you are wasting time to make a new one before you can continue cleaning. I have also found they only work on the straws and not in those nooks and crannies.
I decided to get creative and look for things in my own house to clean those nasty unreachable corners of my little one’s cups. I put my thinking cap on and thought of other soft surfaced items that I can turn into my next cleaning success.
Thanks to the many free sample toothbrushes given out for Halloween and dentist visits, I tried an unused toothbrush. The large head left me struggling to clean the straw and other small tiny spaces. It was back to the drawing board.
The Creative Win
The idea came to me when my children were water painting the back porch.
Paintbrushes!!
They come in various sizes so you can always find the right size to fit into all your tight corners and fairly cheap to purchase. Thankfully I had a handful of unused brushes and after boiling (to ensure they were clean) them I put them to the test.
It worked!
I was relieved to see how well they truly got into those yucky corners and didn’t waste a lot of dish soap to do it. If you are lucky enough to find a small enough sponge or foam brush they work best for the straws.
Next time you are out to pick up a pack of cheap brushes and test the sizes to see what works for you. With lots of trial and error, there is a solution to every problem sometimes you just have to think outside the box.
Happy cleaning!
1 Comments