How to Clean Baby Bottles

How to clean baby bottles

It's important to determine if the baby bottles you are using are dishwasher safe. If they are, follow these simple steps:

• Take apart your bottle.
• Rinse all parts of the bottle.
• Put the parts in the dishwasher. We recommend running the cycle with hot water and a heated dry to kill more bacteria.
• Remove the bottles using clean hands and air dry if needed.

If your bottles are not dishwasher safe, here are some steps for washing your bottles by hand:

• Make sure your hands are washed.
• Take the bottle apart.
• Thoroughly rinse all parts of the bottle.
• Scrub all parts of the bottle with a clean brush, hot water, and soap. 
• Let the bottles air dry on a clean towel.
• Hand-wash or use a dishwasher to clean the brush you used to scrub the bottles.

Disinfecting: a necessary step

Cleaning often isn't enough, especially when the well-being of your child is at stake. Disinfecting is an important and essential step when it comes to items you use often. The heat of your dishwasher or the water you use to hand-wash your bottles does kill some bacteria, but sometimes heat can pull harmful chemicals out of the plastic. With our HomeSoap, you can kill 99.9% of harmful germs* without heat, just the germicidal power of UV-C light. And you can do it in 10 minutes.

You should clean and disinfect your baby bottles after every use. A bottle will typically stay sterile for about 24 hours. 

Choosing a soap

Ideally, you want to avoid name-brand dish soaps like Dawn and use soft and gentle soaps, especially ones made specifically for babies. Many dish soaps have potentially harmful ingredients in them. Here are some ingredients to avoid:

• Unnecessary numbered dyes (Blue #1)
• Formaldehyde or formaldehyde-releasing chemicals
• Anything ending in -paraben (like methylparaben)
• Antibacterial agents
• SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate) and SLES (Sodium Laureth Sulfate)
• Fragrance

When you buying soaps, look at the ingredients on the label. Find soaps that don't have what we listed above and have minimal ingredients. Natural, organic soaps are a great choice. You can also buy specific soaps for babies like Dr. Bronner's Pure Baby Unscented Soap. The nice thing about Dr. Bronner's is that it can be used for hair, hands, and dishes as well as baby bottles. 

Is bleach an option?

According to the CDC, you can use bleach on your baby bottles, but it should be used as a last option for sanitizing. If you use bleach, the CDC recommends using 2 teaspoons per 16 cups of water and let the bottle soak for 2 minutes.

Make sure that the bottles you use to feed your baby aren't spreading harmful bacteria. Follow our tips for cleaning and make sure to pick up a HomeSoap so you can easily and safely disinfect your bottles.

*HomeSoap has been tested by an independent, third-party laboratory to be 99.9% effective against Salmonella, E. coli, MRSA, Staphylococcus, Coronavirus 229Ein. It has been tested on headphones, jewelry and baby bottles. HomeSoap has also been tested to be 99.9% effective against salmonella using ASTM 3535 for efficacy of UV light on hard non-porous surfaces such as glass, metals, and plastics.