How do you clean sippy cup lids? No-spill sippy cups, while wonderful for keeping the inside of your diaper bag and your carpeting clean, are diabolical to get all the scummy milk out of. Especially when found under the couch a few days after they were used.

All the nooks and crannies inside a sippy cup’s valve attract milk, and that milk residue is a perfect breeding ground for germs. And most sippy cups seem like they are designed to be as difficult to clean as possible.

Some types of sippy cups are harder to clean than others. How good the sippy cup is at resisting spills is usually inversely proportional to how easy it is to clean.

The kind that has a lid with a spout, and a separate valve that fits inside it, the ones that don’t dribble, are the some of hardest to clean. The ones with a straw and a neat little flip-top lid are nigh on impossible.  The ones with a spout that pops up and down are reservoirs of gunk.  Disposable sippy cups are a bit easier, but don’t resist leaks as well.

Various mom solutions have been proposed, and the most popular seems to be “put them in the dishwasher and pray”.  Washing on a high temperature will kill any germs in the sippy cups, but won’t necessarily remove all of the milk. Here’s a couple more tips for cleaning those pesky sippy cup lids. Microwave sterilizers and stovetop sterilizers, the same ones you might have had for baby bottles, can also be used to the same end.

If you can’t wash a sippy cup right after it was used, rinse out the lid and valve to remove most of the milk residue to make cleaning easier.

Soaking sippy cup lids before washing loosens most of the milky grime. Then to get it out, dental cleaning brushes are good for getting inside a sippy cup spout and valve. Q tips and pipecleaners work too, or a dishwashing sponge cut into a blunt point that you can wiggle in and wipe the milk out.

Denture cleaning tablets are often proposed as a good way to clean sippy cup lids. This works best if you have a couple of kids at the sippy cup stage, to use the tablets most efficiently you’ll want to clean a big batch of lids at once. Add a couple of tablets to a sinkful of water and sippy cup lids, and let the fizz do the work. Rinse well afterwards.

My favorite brand of sippy cup to wash was Nuby. The flexible spouts flip inside out for easy cleaning and genuinely don’t leak. They are not perfect – they are just a bit too similar to bottles for my liking though, and toddlers with teeth can chew through the spouts, so not the best for babies making the transition from bottle to sippy.

So right now I’m using and washing the disposable types of sippy cup, and being extra vigilant to keep them the right way up in the car and checking under the couch for any stray cups.

What is your favorite type of sippy cup, and have you got any cleaning tips to share?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that it plans to study the effects of BPA in depth in the future.  Currently, the FDA says that BPA’s are safe.  According to experts, the FDA bases this on the results of two studies done by other groups.  These studies, which were funded by chemical industries, claim that BPA’s are safe.

The National Toxicology Program has determined from it’s research that BPA’s, even in small amounts, can cause changes in brain development and behavior in infants and small children.  BPA’s are most easily ingested when chemicals from plastic containers seep into food and drink.

I became concerned about this when I saw an article that the bottles that I’d used for my son had a high concentration of BPA’s.  I began to try to find products without the chemical and was shocked at the lack of choices I found.  Many companies that made infant bottles weren’t even forthcoming with information it seemed.

Several months have passed and while strolling down the baby aisle last week, I noticed several products that actually announced that their product was BPA free.  I bought several BPA free products that day for my son.

Call me cynical, but I don’t buy the FDA’s position that this chemical is safe.  I’m grateful that I now have choices for safer products to purchase for my son.

Do you seek out products that advertise that they are BPA free? Do you agree with the FDA that this chemical is safe?

Bisphenol A is a chemical present in plastics used to make, amongst other things, baby bottles and sippy cups. The effects Bisphenol A, or BPA, might have on our health has been of concern for years, and is at last getting attention from the heath authorities in the US.

BPA mimics the effects of reproductive hormones in the body. Animal studies have shown BPA damages rat eggs and chromosomes, and predisposes laboratory animals to certain cancers.

Bottle manufacturers have tried to play down evidence from animal studies, saying that it’s not possible to prove BPA is harmful in babies just by looking at lab rats. Until now, no conclusive studies have ever shown that BPA is harmful to humans.

A study released today from Exeter University in the United Kingdom has found that adults with high levels of BPA in their bodies have higher rates of certain diseases: heart disease, diabetes, and liver disease. People with the highest levels of BPA were three times as likely to suffer from heart disease. The study examined adults, not babies, but serious effects in adults can’t be ignored as easily as health problems in laboratory animals.

Canada is already doing something about the problem of BPA. Canadian legislation is set to ban BPA in baby bottles sold in the country.

The results of the Exeter University study will now be examined by the Food and Drug Administration who will decide if any action needs to be taken in the US.

Whatever the FDA decides, major retailers like Target, Walmart and Babies-R-Us have already taken action. Many retailers have responded to parental demands for BPA-free bottles, and have stopped selling, or are in the process of phasing out BPA-containing bottles.

It’s not publicized by the company, but Babies-R-Us will refund or exchange BPA bottles, including used bottles, and even without a receipt. If you bought your baby’s bottles from Babies-R-Us, and they are the type which contain BPA, Babies R Us will give you a store credit or exchange them for bottles without BPA. As it’s not an official program, you might need to speak to a manager to get an exchange for your old bottles, but I know several moms who have replaced their entire bottle collection with BPA-free bottles at Babies-R-Us.

And, here’s a list of BPA-free baby bottles and sippy cups.

I’ve already revealed in a previous post that my house is a bit of a mess. I keep up with the housework as best as I can, but working from home leaves me with little time to scrub the floors and dust in all those hard to reach spots. I’ve accepted this, and I figure when the kids start school I’ll get it all together.

Then there’s my car. Sometimes the inside of my car gets more cluttered than my house does. The problem with that is the fact that not only is the car cluttered, but I can’t escape it. We go to the store, the clutter comes with me. We go to the park, the clutter comes with me. It’s awful.

I try to get it cleaned out as often as possible but the kids have a tendency to load it back up no matter what I do. For a while, I banned any toys in the car and only allowed books, but that only lasted for so long. Don’t even get me started with how many Goldfish and Teddy Grahams are in crevices I can’t reach. (shudder)

It’s certainly better now than it used to be, and it sure seems as though the car gets just a little cleaner the older the kids get. At least now that we’re past the sippy cup phase, I don’t find sippies filled with mystery liquid under the seats anymore.

Every so often my husband will mention getting a new car, and each time I ask him to wait. Why get a new car if we’re only going to junk it up? Let’s wait until we’ve sufficiently wear this one out with the constant assault of toys, mud, and snacks and then we’ll talk about getting another one.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ll have heard all about Bisphenol A, or BPA, the potentially harmful chemical found in many baby bottles and sippy cups. And probably, you’ve been wondering why the government allows baby bottles to contain BPA.

Several manufacturers, like Playtex and Nalgen, are phasing out BPA-containing products, due to customer demand. Playtex is offering a free BPA-free bottle liner on it’s website to promote it’s BPA-free products. And stores like Wal-Mart are planning to stop selling BPA-containing products by early 2009.

The Canadian governement is going one step further, and is in the process of legislation that will outright ban the sale of bottles containing BPA.

BPA is a chemical that mimics the effect of hormones in the body. It’s been proven to cause damage to rat and mouse eggs and chromosomes, and predispose them to certain cancers. No studies have ever conclusively shown BPA to cause damage in humans, but since it is clearly harmful to lab rats, who wants to take chances with our babies?

Here in the US, the federal National Toxicology Program is studying the chemical, and their preliminary reports agree that BPA may be linked to serious problems in humans. Let’s hope that the US government follows Canada’s lead, and BPA is banned here too.