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In the spirit of trying to give you more of what you want this year, I thought I would throw together a post all about the reusable pouches I’ve been sharing on my Instagram. On my Insta-stories today I shared a video of H and his always obsession – a pouch. But a lot of you noticed that it didn’t look just like any ole regular run of the mill pouch that you grab at the grocery store. Well… that’s because it’s REUSABLE!

Reusable pouches for kids

My little crunchy “green” heart found out that there are such things as reusable pouches, and I started buying them in 2015. For the first two years of his life, H hated food. Literally. Hated it. Refused to eat, no matter what. So, rather than fight him on it, I just rolled with it and started coming up with tons of awesome ideas for toddler approved healthy smoothies. But, I was finding that his regular cups just didn’t quite work for us with all the traveling we did. So, I did some research and stumbled upon a black hole of reusable pouches for kids!

How to use reusable pouches:

First off, I always like to wash the reusable pouches right out of the box. I feel like this is a “duh” thing, but you never know. I just throw them in the dishwasher, run them through, and they are good to go!

Filling the reusable pouches is really easy. You can use a spoon or a funnel, or you can just wing it like I do and pour straight in. 90% of the time when I’m making the kids something for inside the pouch, I’m using my Nutribullet or Vitamix, so its a really easy transfer. 

REMEMBER TO PUT THE TOP ON before you start filling. Again, this seems like a “duh” thing. Buuuuuuut I can’t count the number of times I’ve has a case of the #mombrain and totally forgotten the top. 

WITH THE TOP ON, open your pouch, pour the apple sauce / smoothie / yogurt / etc straight in. Keep an eye on how full it gets! Most of ours have a “fill line” marker. This really comes in handy the first few times you’re using your reusable pouches. Now that it’s a regular occurrence, I can eyeball it, but an overfull pouch is a mess waiting to happen. So maybe even consider doing this over the sink, ha. 

Once you fill the reusable pouch with your ingredients, just seal it back up. Y’all know my grandma status and my arthritic thumbs. I cheat and use a butterknife to go over the seams and help seal the reusable pouch. That way, I’m sure its a good seal.

After you seal up the pouch, hand it off to your kiddo. And celebrate the fact that you just saved a pouch from a landfill!

How to clean your reusable pouch:

Cleaning reusable pouches is SO easy. The biggest tip I have is to clean out your reusable pouches as soon as your child is done. I do two things when cleaning out the pouch. And I fully believe rinsing it in both ways is why we’ve gotten such longevity from our reusable pouches. 

First, I LEAVE the seam sealed (and obviously the cap is off at this point). With the seam still sealed, I turn on the water and hold the spout directly under the stream. I like to leave the seams still sealed at this point because I feel like it kind of helps force any leftovers out. As it fills, I squeeze the body out until the water runs clear. This maybe takes three or four fills, which equates to approximately a minute of time. If food has been in there for a little while, I’ll sometimes fill the reusable pouch halfway full, put my finger over the spout opening and shake. This really helps knock any sticky type of residue out!

THEN I open the seam, and flip the reusable pouch over – seam side up. Again, I turn the water on and let it flow through. This time, the water just goes straight through, so  it’s easy to direct it wherever.

Finally, I put the reusable pouch into the dishwasher! Can you put reusable pouches in the dishwasher? Absolutely! Make sure to double check with any you buy, but all the ones I’ll link here are dishwasher safe. I always recommend only putting the reusable pouches in the top rack, as it doesn’t get quite as hot. To wash a reusable pouch in the dishwasher, just slide the bottom opening over the prongs.

Why I love using reusable pouches:

Even if that’s not a blip on your radar, it’s pretty awesome knowing you can keep refilling the pouch as many times a day as you need and you can keep reusing the same ONE versus the seven thousand we were going through a day before. I mean seriously, at a dollar a pop – a huge chunk of our food budget was being eaten up by the ones we bought from the store. 

When you’re buying reusable pouches, you can keep using them. Over. And Over. Annnnnd over again! 

What reusable pouches are the best?

Like I said, I have been buying these reusable pouches since 2015. So, the ones we still have and use are mostly no longer available on Amazon. Or are no longer Prime eligible. But, I’m going to recommend others that I’ve used or that friends have used and recommended as well. 

Have you ever used reusable food pouches?

Let me know in the comments below!

Looking for inspiration for the best toddler approved green smoothies?

Check out a few of our favorites: A roundup of the best toddler approved green smoothies HERE, 5 toddler approved green smoothies for Fall, a dairy free oatmeal cookie green smoothie, and a green peach summer inspired smoothie HERE!