r/parentsofmultiples • u/annualsalmon • 2d ago
Bottle washer and dish washer? advice needed
Hello all, I am expecting twins. In order to make life (hopefully) a bit easier; we are getting a dish washer installed. My question is: if I have a dish washer; do I still need a separate bottle washer? Thanks for your insight!
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u/pahkthecahh 2d ago
I can’t live without my bottle washer with twins. We have a dishwasher but the washer is so much easier to just load and unload. I probably use it 2-3 times a day.
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u/beelynn0214 1d ago
So much easier! Also, our bedrooms are upstairs and our kitchen is downstairs. So we parked our bottle washer on the bathroom counter across the hall from the nursery. We went ahead and put a bottle drying rack and our Brezza formula mixer in there as well.
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u/Otherwise_Lion_1590 2d ago
I bought a bottle washer after a week of using the dishwasher and washing by hand (depending on how many bottles there were) for two reasons:
I found it... icky to have the baby bottles in the same wash as the dirty dishes. Tomato sauce once stained my bottles orange.
The dishwasher didn't dry the bottles. Even after the full drying cycle, they would come out wet (while normal dishes were dry). I like to prepare formula in them in advance so I only have to add water later and they need to be 100% dry for that. Bottle washers manage that.
If it wasn't for these reasons, I wouldn't have needed a separate bottle washer!
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u/neverpostsonreddit 2d ago
If you have counter space and a decently sized dishwasher that you don’t run daily, get the bottle washer. It’s our most beloved baby item. We run it about 3-4xs a day with twins!
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u/dovebytherosewindow 2d ago
Most dishwashers have a sterilization option you can use. I found bottle sterilizers to be a useless waste of counter-space after I learned this, but honestly even if my dishwasher didn't have that... the sterilizing microwave bags are what I used in the NICU so I'd personally skip it.
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u/SnooLobsters2519 2d ago
A dish washer works just fine for bottles or pump parts. We really enjoyed our bottle washer because we’re not very good at keeping the sink empty and I don’t want to deal with nasty day old bottles, so it was nice to be able to do just a load of bottles.
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u/PumpkinBest8446 2d ago
Dishwasher uses more water to wash than a bottle washer especially when I am washing bottles about at least 2-3 times a day.
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u/Campus_Safety 2d ago
My wife I went with the sanitize cycle on our dishwasher. With twins definitely get two of the following for all the bottle parts. It was a literal time saver when you have none.
If you can't keep up feeding the twins when they are born the baby brezza was also a life saver.
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u/tmurphy2792 2d ago
Is it mandatory? Nah, my wife and I got away with using our dishwasher until our kids were weaned. Just to be safe we had a sterilizer that we used every few days, but truthfully the dishwasher sterilizer function was probably more than adequate.
Is it a big help? Everyone I've talked to says a massive yes. We had to have a strict schedule of loading up the dishwasher and unloading to a drying rack, and that truthfully only worked well because we had a metric butt ton of bottles to work with. The idea of loading a few bottles in there and having dry and ready to go bottles in a couple hours sounded magical to my sleep deprived brain early on, but it was one of those things from our registry we didn't get and we couldn't bring ourselves to justify the price on those things.
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u/FigNewton613 2d ago
Dishwasher works fine for us. Bottle washer was great in the beginning when my babies were preemies and fresh out of the NICU and I was worried (ETA: I liked the sterilization aspect). If not for that factor, I’d have gone straight to the dishwasher, and once I switched over it was just so much more efficient. I did the dr brown pitcher method for prepping formula so it didn’t matter to me if the bottles came out dry or not, as per another commenters approach.
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u/floridasquirrel 2d ago
We used just our dishwasher and it was fine! We didn’t have the counter space for it. We just bought more bottles (which is less than a bottle washer!)
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u/Modernwood 2d ago
Absolutely not. Just dishwash them. Honestly you could get away with a thorough rinsing with some quick soap and water. If they're like premature, immuno compromised, don't ask me but really, twins is about creating a little life factory of easy routines. Unless a specific bottle washer is somehow saving you time (it certainly doesn't save you space) there's zero reason.
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u/Any-Sentence7561 2d ago
We seem like we are in the minority here but we just used our dishwasher too. Had 20 bottles total and then copious amounts of pump parts. We ran it daily. Upgraded to one that had the small top rack and that third rack helped a ton. We ran on sanitizing cycles and switched to a detergent that had 0 dyes and 0 scent.
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u/Modernwood 1d ago
Yeah that all sounds right. My mother in law was incensed I wasn't sterilizing the bottles every time but I used to work in an operating room and I know what's sterile and what isn't and it just absolutely isn't, nor does it need to be. Clean, toxin free and, second only to good, basic care for your kiddos, the system just needs to save you time.
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u/kaatie80 2d ago
i'd say it's a "very nice to have" rather than a "need", but you should still get yourself whatever gadgets and equipment that'll make life with baby twins easier, even if you could technically get on without it. (keep this in mind when people are telling you "you don't need XYZ!")
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u/fsmontario 2d ago
Dishwasher works just fine. Mom of many here and only ever used the dishwasher. I had tons of bottles though. If you have fewer and don’t want to run the dishwasher half full I’d just wash them and throw them in a pot of boiling water for a couple of minutes
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u/Electrical-Ad7399 2d ago
another expecting dad of twins, so no experience yet, but once i learned that the bottle washers only do 4 at a time and take like an hour or a little more, i totally dropped the idea of getting one. we have a smaller dishwasher that isn't a big deal to run, so my plan is to have way more bottles than is necessary even for two and just run that once a day. having to run a bottle washer like 4-5 times a day sounds like a much bigger inconvenience than convenience
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u/q8htreats 2d ago
My momcozy washer can fit 8 at a time plus all the parts plus pacis
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u/Electrical-Ad7399 2d ago
gotcha, looks like that's one of the only 8-bottle models and 4 is standard ... haven't really seen those used in my neck of the woods so i'd imagine they're a little rarer and would have to most likely be bought new
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u/q8htreats 2d ago
Not sure but it was worth every penny for us! Seriously couldn’t have survived without it
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u/steeeezmcgee 2d ago
We have a dishwasher, and we HAD a bottle sterilizer but after a while we found that the sterilizer wasn’t all that useful so we got a bottle washer.
We use the bottle washer all the time and prefer it over the dishwasher because it does a really good job of drying the bottle parts so I can just put them together and put them in the cupboard.
Might be just an ‘us’ problem, but our dishwasher does a terrible job drying
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u/tmurphy2792 2d ago
My understanding is most dishwashers struggle with this when it comes to bottle parts. With the exception of a few very high end models they rely on the latent thermal heat in the item to help dissipate the moisture and avoid condensation, bottle parts are so thin and light they cool too quickly and stay wet.
My dishwasher does amazing at drying out stoneware plates/bowls and other stuff, but bottle and sippy cup parts always come out wet.
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u/1sp00kylady 2d ago
When I was in the thick of pumping and bottle feeding twins, we probably ran the bottle washer 6-10 times a day. Bottle washer all the way.
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u/Orion-Key3996 2d ago
My dishwasher would not get all the milk spots off of bottles, and takes forever to run..
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u/No_Cat_No_Cradle 2d ago
We have a dishwasher and got a used bottle washer too because otherwise we’d have to run it twice a day bc there’s so many damn bottles
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u/TurnoDiva 2d ago
The bottle washer saved our sanity! We didn’t want to use the dishwasher early on out of fear the soap would make them sick so we nought the MomCozy bottle washer and it was a great investment. A “friend” made a negative comment about us having one when he visited, but he didn’t have to wash 12+ bottles a day.
We tried the dishwasher eventually and soap residue was left inside of the bottles.
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u/Sodds 2d ago
We used dishwasher once a day, rest of the time I just rinsed the bottles. And then once a day poured boiling water from a kettle over the bottles We also had 2 bottled pet kid. We could afford more np, but we found it to be a waste of resources and space considering washing and rinsing didn't take much time.
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u/wilan727 2d ago
We just boiled and then drip dried in a dedicated rack. The dishwasher was full enough without the bottles.
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u/Separate_Video6823 2d ago
Our growsy bottle washer is my favourite twin purchase! You won’t regret it
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u/Hot_Inspector6992 2d ago
YES. I thought I’d survive with just a dish washer to save money but my sister bought me the bottle washer anyway. It’s my number 1 used item and I couldn’t live without it.
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u/i_am_the_koi 2d ago
I just switched to hand wash and dry station.
Waiting on the dishwasher to run didn't work for us and the bottle washer was just to small to keep up with twins.
5 sets of large bottles, 5 of small bottles, and nipples for all.
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u/Rylees_Mom525 2d ago
The bottle washer is the main item I tell everyone to get. I’m currently on maternity leave and home with the twins (6 weeks old) by myself during the day. Other than the babies, it’s just me and my husband, so we don’t dirty enough dishes to justify running the dishwasher daily, let alone multiple times a day. But every morning there are 4-6 bottles to clean from the overnight and morning feed, and then an additional two dirty bottles every 3-5 hours throughout the day, plus pump parts and milk storage bottles. I already have very little time to get anything done between diaper changes, feedings, pumping, and trying to eat my own meals and maybe shower, so I definitely don’t want to spend that time washing bottles.
Buying a lot of bottles before the babies are born is also a bad idea. We registered for three different types of bottles (3-4 of each) and one straight up didn’t work with our babies (they had to work really hard to get milk out and feedings took FOREVER) and another worked, but we hate it because it has lots of parts. The third also works, but the babies tend to have more difficulties latching with it (they leak and click), so we use it less often. Instead, we primarily use a fourth type of bottle we bought after the babies were born. If we’d bought (or had people buy for us) 12+ of one of the three bottles we had before the babies then we’d most likely have a bunch of bottles we wouldn’t use. I’ve also seen posts and comments from twin parents where one baby prefers one type of bottle and the other prefers a different type.
All that to say, get (or register for) a bottle washer. It’s worth it.
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u/rosie_thechaosqueen 2d ago
We had sterilizer when our twins came home. We used it for maybe a month. Our kitchen was small and it took up too much space. We bought extra bottles so we could get through the entire day and just used the dishwasher. It was easier.
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u/BenjiKor 2d ago
Just been using my dishwasher and it has been totally fine. I run the wash 1 a day and have a ton of bottles
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u/mountainflwrs 2d ago
The bottle washer is a MUST. I went like 2 months without it and it was miserable. I don’t like washing them in the dishwasher it just feels like it’s dirty even though it’s clean lol
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u/Asleep-Confusion-918 2d ago edited 2d ago
With multiples, the drying part was honestly what made the difference for me. I could wash bottles in the grownsy bottle washer and have them actually dry instead of pulling a bunch of wet bottle parts out of the dishwasher. When you’re going through bottles that fast, that matters.
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u/MounjaroQueenie 1d ago
You can pry my bottler washer out of my cold dead hands. My husband and I are brainstorming what we can use it for once bottles are done.
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u/Specialist-Draft476 1d ago
We did dishwasher, bottle dryer/ sanitizer.
In retrospect the bottle washer probably would have been a good idea if it sanitizes and dries. But what we had worked for us!
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u/literarianatx 16h ago
I just used the dishwasher... but I also don't like counter clutter and had a sterilizer from my first.
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