One of our more popular items in store this year have been our stainless steel straws. We always love reading the conversations on our Facebook page and one of the concerns that some people raised was firstly how to wash them, and secondly, are they safe for kids to use.

The first one is easily fixed. Whether you're using natural cleaning products or not, the straws are super easy to clean with a sippy straw cleaner, and each set of straws we sell in store come with a straw cleaner. If you're drinking thick and gluggy smoothies with a stainless steel straw, give them a rinse / soak at the end of your drinking so you don't allow anything to cake inside them. If you do, a good soak and scrub later will clean it, but it will make the job a little harder than it needs to be.

The second one was around safety using them with children. Firstly, if your kids are old enough to handle stainless steel cutlery, supervised, they should be ok with a stainless steel straw too. If you feel they're not, this new product from Klean Kanteen will put your mind at ease. Klean Kanteen literally made planet earth's first stainless steel water bottle, and they're still the same design and we have them in our store. We were importing Klean Kanteen from the USA before any Aussie major had them on their shelves. They were one of the first water bottle brands we had after Cheeki, way back in 2009.

Klean Kanteen have an insulated cup that not only doubles as a reusable coffee cup for hot drinks with the right lid attachment, but it's also an insulated cup for cold drinks and they designs these stainless steel straws with the silicone toppers for that purpose. We will have the cups and the cap / straw combo you see on the right hand side back in our store in a couple of weeks. In the interim, they were also savvy enough to make a 4 pack of the straws for people to enjoy with any cup or water bottle they like.

The straws are a straight stainless steel straw with a flexible silicone tip that allows you to drink from any angle. If you accidentally bump your teeth on the silicone, no harm done. You can remove the silicone topper for easy cleaning or to just use the straw plain and straight. Both pieces are easily hand cleaned or can go in the dishwasher. They are available in a set of 4 with a free cleaning brush and come in a multi-colour set and a black set.