You just milked yourself for 15-40 minutes. You’ve bagged and stored the extracted breastmilk. You need a break from anything pump-related for a while, but no. Now you need to wash your pump parts. Gah!

What if I told you you didn’t have to individually soap and scrub each and every piece of pump equipment? Yes, there’s a faster way to get clean pump parts! Better yet, it saves your hands from those hot, soapy, manicure-killing suds.

First, get a big, sturdy plastic strainer and a big plastic bowl in which the strainer can easily sit. When you’re done pumping, put the strainer inside of the bowl and place the duo in your kitchen sink. Then, fill the bowl-strainer combo with scalding hot soapy water (be careful with the hot water please… no spilling or allowing children near the liquid), toss in the used pump parts, and allow them to soak (30 minutes is generally plenty of time.)

Once the parts have finished soaking, lift the strainer out of the water and either rinse off any remaining suds with hot water (simply spray the bubble-covered parts with water from the tap as they sit in the strainer) or fill the bowl with clean hot water, and resubmerge the strainer to allow the pump parts to rinse. Once the pump parts are rinsed, remove the strainer containing the freshly cleaned pump parts from the sink and place the pump parts on a drying rack to air dry.

As you move the parts to the drying rack see if any require a little love from the bottle brush. If so, put a dot of dish soap in the big bowl, add water, submerge the needy pump part, give it a quick once-over with the scrub brush, rinse the cleansed part under the tap, and pop it on the drying rack. Done!