Crofton Gentle Tip Straws

My kids love drinking from straws, especially, for some reason, when they’re enjoying hot chocolate. We avoid buying single-use disposable plastic straws because they aren’t eco-friendly. However, we have an assortment of reusable plastic twisty straws collected over the years as party favors or school carnival prizes, but they’re aging, and they’re difficult to clean.

Aldi occasionally sells different kinds of reusable metal straws that come with a long cleaning brush. I picked up some on impulse recently, thinking they’d be just the thing, and I thought the cleaning brush would be useful.

Crofton Gentle Tip Straws (Product Code: 702902) cost $4.99 for a 9-piece set at the time of publication. The set includes eight stainless steel straws and one cleaning brush. At the time, you could choose the stainless steel straw set with silicone tips or a silicone straw with a carrying case. I opted for the straw set with silicone tips, which the package says offers “safe comfortable sipping.”

These are an Aldi Find, so they’re only in stores for a short time. You can’t order them online after they sell out at your local Aldi.

Here’s more information on the straws, according to Aldi:

• Comes with a cleaning brush
• All straws are BPA free and are dishwasher safe
• Perfect for on the go use
• Made in China

The straws, plus the cleaning brush on the right.

These are nice-looking straws that seem like they’ll be durable and last a lot longer than my plastic straws — as long as people (aka kids) don’t chew on the soft rubbery spouts. Those silicone tips for comfort do make the straws feel big in your mouth, but that’s not necessarily a deal breaker. They just feel a little odd at first.

We discovered the silicone tips are removable. They simply slide on and off, so if you just want plain metal straws, you can do that. If I wash these straws in the silverware rack in my dishwasher, I might remove the silicone tips beforehand and wash those by hand.

The straws themselves are wide enough that we could easily draw plenty of liquid up through them and didn’t feel like it was hard to drink from them.

Using the cleaning brush.

The cleaning brush is easy to use as well. The brush isn’t long enough to reach through an entire straw from one end, so I alternated inserting it into both ends of the straws. The cleaning brush was one of the main reasons I bought this set, because its good to have a way to thoroughly clean out any reusable straws. Because the brush is thin, I don’t know how long it will hold up, but for now it works well. I’ll update this post if that changes.

The Verdict:

Crofton Gentle Tip Straws come in a set with nine stainless steel reusable straws with soft silicone tips on one end, plush a cleaning brush. They’re easy to use and work as advertised. If you’re looking for some straws that are a little more friendly for the environment, along with a good way to clean your straws, these are worth a look.