Okay, be honest! As nasty as it is…. if you have any toddlers in your house…. at some point, you have come across that mystery sippy cup that sat for a day…. or a few in a hidden hole in your house!
Well, I’m going to be honest too! It happens a lot in our house. The couch and under the beds love to eat toddler cups. Let’s not forget to mention the cups that get thrown in the toy box during clean-up!
I hate finding them! I don’t want to deal with them and in fact, it is one of Alex’s least favorite things to do – clean out those cups that have been sitting and warming the milk inside of the cup for days.
Alex wants to just throw them away when that happens. But in an attempt to be thrifty, we don’t. So I deal with them. I use to wash, rewash, soak with dishsoap, wait, scrub, wait more, scrub more and eventually be fine with using it again…. but still questioning the odor.
I don’t want to use chemicals to clean it…. these are my babies we are talking about!
Well, one day I was in the kitchen with not ONE but TWO nasty, smelly sippy cups that were found in the course of the morning chores. I was getting tired of cleaning them and thought I would just throw them away.
But then I saw my basket of essential oils on the counter as I had just used them to make more homemade cleaners. I thought to myself, “essential oils are natural, safe, safe for consumption in many cases, actually healing and therapeutic for the body, but I use them in my cleaners because they naturally kill and deodorize whatever they touch… HELLO!”
So, I have been cleaning these sippy cups like this since. In minutes, the odors are 100% gone! No long soaking, no long cleaning, no chemicals and better than before!
Basically, these are the steps:
- I just rinse out the cup in hot water.
- I then add hot water and a bit of a natural/homemade dish soap.
- I then add a drop or two of one of these 4 essential oils.
- I put the lid on and shake for about a minute or two.
- I then leave the cup on the counter for a few minutes (5-15 depending on how bad the cup was).
- Dump it out.
- Wash like normal and it is PERFECT!
Honestly, the first time I did this, I was a bit skeptical. Even though I love my essential oils and know there are doing a good job naturally, I was a skeptic because these cups get bad. I expected to still smell a foul odor. I reluctantly smelled it with a little sniff. NOTHING. So I gave it a big sniff…. still NOTHING. So I really, really took as big of a deep whiff as I could and a big smile came to my face!
So, the oils I love to use for this purpose are any of these:
- Peppermint
- Lavender
- Cinnamon/Cassia
- Any blend immune boosting essential oil blend
I have talked about how to very inexpensively get the first three, that I also use for my 26 homemade cleaners. For that information again, you can see this post here on a Hot Deal on those essential oils!
Well thrifty friends…. for those of you that have these sippy cups to deal with, we hope this healthful tip was helpful to you!
See more Daily Dose of Thrifty Tips HERE
J'net
Curious….I’ve always read that EOs were not to be used in plastic as it breaks it down to leach the ‘bad’ stuff out of the plastic. Have you heard this?? I would just be concerned especially since this is for children’s item.
Cassie
I think it depends on the plastic and the oil. We use the higher quality consumable oils as noted above. In addition, our sippy cups are BPA-free as this is important to me. We are also not soaking for nearly enough time. You are talking about days/weeks before any leaching would occur on those bad plastics. For this reason – we have ditched ALL plastics in our home anyway that are not BPA-free as it is not just essential oils, but the microwave and many other things that cause a leaching problem in those bad plastics. We also put essential oils in our water to drink (only consumable essential oils) and was informed that a BPA-free high quality plastic would have no issues.
I have way more concern about the bacteria the warming milk caused in this case. Oils zap them like crazy 🙂 I do use a BPA-Free plastic spray bottles for my homemade cleaners that contain essential oils and I have never noticed a smell or change in the formula. Many years ago, I just used cheap plastic bottles and after about 3-4 months, I did notice a change. I also use small glass bottles when I make my homemade antibaterial sprays, my purify blend, my influenza/cold blend and my nighttime calming blend that are all made with essential oils. Since we are spraying those on ourselves and they sit in the bottles for many months at a time, I do use glass for those 🙂
Roxie
I have the same problem here X’s about 6. I do in my home daycare. The cups disappear here all the time. I use a bottle brush, some baking soda, and Dawn dish shop. I scrub with the brush, let it sit, and then run through the dishwasher with the other dishes. They do not smell at all.
nancy mcconnell
H, a answer about putting EO”s in Plastic, that is just not to store them in plastic, but just using them mixed with water will not be a problem, just don’t store the EO:s in glass Hope that helps. Nancy
Cathy Jo
You can also use vanilla extract. I use that when cleaning out coolers.