Preparation & storage

I'm a beacon of efficiency. I often tell people that if I hadn't become a teacher, I would have loved to have been an efficiency expert--you know, one of those people who goes into factories and other businesses and tells people how to do things in the most efficient way possible?? Doesn't that sound like fun? I'm all my girlfriend's favorite person to call when it's time to assemble wedding favors because I can figure out a way to get twice as much work done in half the time using the least amount of manpower.

So when it comes to bottle preparation and storage, my main goal, of course, was to be efficient. It all starts with the dishwasher.
It's the quickest way to get a large amount of dishes (and bottles) washed and I truly feel that it does a better job than I would do--especially on the vents and other tiny parts that come with my favorite bottles. I use the cages for all the parts, the vents go in with the silverware, and the bottles go along the left-hand side first, then wherever they will fit. I wasn't kidding about the efficiency thing, people--my husband says I could get a school bus in our dishwasher if I had to :)

Next comes storage--but really, before that, we have preparation.
That's me preparing bottles. I prepare all my bottles before I put them away--yes, even when all 18 bottles are in the dishwasher. It's far more efficient that way. I line them up on the counter like this. You'll notice that they're all facing the same way so that I can fill them up with my pitcher with ease. I don't expect many other people to take bottle preparation to this level, but this is what works for me.
You'll have to just ignore that bottle of pinot in the background--not EVERYTHING in my life revolves around my babies ;)
I fill up my bottles using the Britta pitcher that sits on my counter. Yes, I feed my beautiful, precious babies...............tap water. Filtered tap water, but I had a student a few years ago who did his Science Fair project on water purity and he says that the Britta filter doesn't change the water's purity level. I'll do a whole post on water later, but for now, suffice to say that we do use tap water to fill the baby's bottles.

Finally, it's time to put the bottles away.
I store them in the cabinet with the water in them and the vents already in place. The nipples and collars are already assembled and in a bowl next to the bottles. This way, I can quickly pull the vent out, put the formula in, screw the nipple on and we're ready to rock and roll.

Here's a close-up image and I turned the little bucket over so that you could see how I store my disks. The two little bottles in the back have already got their disk on and cap so that I can grab and them and throw them in the diaper bag when we are ready to go. More on travel later.

One last picture--this is my "big kid" side of the cabinet--I don't keep Bubby's big-boy cups in with Boo's bottles and I had to get rid of over half of the glasses that Matt and I use. Luckily, we wash dishes every other day, so we never run out of cups.

Again, I don't expect everyone to take it to this level. This is just what works for me and I thought I'd share it with you :)