Something Smells. Therefore, I Clean.

You must have about as many thermoses, insulated bottles, commuter cups, baby bottles, water bottles, and other vessels used to keep and consume some sort of food or beverage hot or cold as we do. Like these:

I CAN'T STAND CLEANING THEM!! 

Everyday, in our household we use:

1 insulated thermos for Christopher's milk

1 insulated thermos container for Christopher's lunch. (It has to match the milk thermos.)

3 baby bottles for Cory's milk

2 commuter cup for coffee on the go for the adults

1 Klean Kanteen for my water

That's 8 containers that need to be cleaned every night! Whew. Do I need to say again....

I CAN'T STAND CLEANING THEM!! 

I know these two can't help it...

...Someone has to clean their daily lunch time containers....and it's better to reuse them than to throw out plastic containers or buy a cup of coffee every day. 

At the end of the day, I just can't let them sit dirty. Otherwise, the food sticks to the container, they start to smell really bad -- especially the thermos that hold milk.  Have you ever forgotten to wash a thermos that had milk in it -- just to open it up and find a yogurt-like substance?

So, now, i got it down....I've gotten into this routine now of dumping all the remaining food/liquid out of the containers, washing them out and filling them with water with just a little bit of dish soap to soak overnight. I pop all the little straws and baby bottle nipples in the thermoses to let them soak too.

By morning time, they are clean! They don't smell and they're ready to to be used again that day. 

Any one else have tips on keeping these lunch containers clean?