Ring Around the Sippy: A Clean Fridge Hack

Scout is a milk junkie.  The child's unceasing demand for moo juice means her cup is in and out of the fridge all day long.  The refrigerator quickly starts looking worse for the wear as the grubby cup leaves rings and drops toddler cruft on the glass shelves.  Half full cups vanish into the no man's land of other perishables, not to be recovered until a scarcity of cups inspires a search party.  With organic milk at $5.99 a gallon, this disappearing act can be expensive.

When the ghostly Rorschach of milk rings finally spelled out "wash me," I launched a full-fridge Silkwood scrubdown.  The fridge gleamed as I went to return the slightly sticky sippy.  Would this cleanliness unravel faster than a celebrity marriage?  I couldn't bear the thought.

I grabbed a clean cottage cheese tub lid from the cabinet and we instituted the first Jones' fridge coaster.  What I thought would only prevent cup rings and grubbiness ended up giving us a single location for partial cups.  Far less milk goes to waste now, and we've vanquished the mystery cups lurking in the fridge's dark corners.

We recently added a second lid for baby bottles and breast milk bags.

***Baby Toolkit hacks family life from their now slightly-less-derelict Heartland HQ.  We work to bring you up-to-the-century, completely biased observations on geek parenting.