My wife was the same and we ended up buying one. If it were up to me I would have followed online advice of using only hot water and liquid baby bottle cleaner, and have done this at times now only using the steamer as a safety measure - search online for some interesting reading about its origins and outdated use

it was either buying one of these or having the mother in law boiling the bottles in water on our gas stove

I bought a sterilizer because it saves time and avoids the hassle of boiling water in a saucepan.

I also bought a bottle warmer. True, perhaps not an essential piece of kit, but at 3am when the baby needs feeding, it's easy to grab the bottle (breast milk) from the fridge and pop it into the warmer. It's done in less than 10 mins and you know the temp is going to be roughly correct for the little one. To be honest though it tends to be slightly too hot so we have to wait another 2 mins.

Not essential, but we use it every night.

Here in Chiang Mai the temperature has regularly been in the high 30s these last few weeks. I'd rather play safe and sterilise in this climate rather than go with a more troublesome cheaper solution which is recommended in more temperate climates.

Maybe with the second one we won't be so overly-cautious, but this is our first and we want to make sure everything is safe.

By the way, the OP was talking about having only a couple of bottles. We have five (Avenit) and that's barely enough.

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