School Morning Lifesavers

School mornings in our house are a small stampede: backpacks, missing shoes, and the daily hunt for a water bottle that isn’t growing something in the bottom. For a while every kid had a different mismatched bottle, half of them leaked into the backpacks, and we were mopping up more than we were filling up. Our whole list of morning lifesavers really started with fixing the water bottle problem.

The pick we keep reaching for is the Owala FreeSip. It does both a straw sip and a swig from the same lid, which suits a lineup of kids from our 8-year-old down to the little ones, and the lock button means it can get thrown in a bag without soaking the homework. We standardized on them so mornings stopped including a leak cleanup, and the built-in loop makes them easy for small hands to carry out the door.

We tried the cheap gas-station bottles and a couple of trendier brands, and the Owala is the one that actually survives being dropped down the stairs and run through the dishwasher on repeat. It seals when it says it seals, the kids can work the lid themselves, and at around $30 it costs less than replacing leaky bottles every couple of months. In the roundup of things that rescue our school mornings, it earns the top spot.