Back in September August and I made a plan to try and save money, and the #1 thing we wanted to do was stop buying sodas every day on our way to work. When we added it up we realized we were spending nearly $150/month just on sodas! For the month of September we totally rocked it. We bought a 36 pack of Mountain Dew for August so he’d have a soda to take to work every day and I went back to exclusively drinking water. But as time went on, we slowly found ourselves falling back into our old routine of stopping at CVS every morning and picking up a Sunkist for me and a Red Bull for August. And before I knew it, we’d stopped there every single day for the 3 weeks leading up to the holiday break. At $1.59/Sunkist and $2.49/Red Bull this had to stop, and had to stop now. Enter in the Sodastream.
I had originally planned on buying a Sodastream for my mom for Christmas because she LOVES root beer and drinks a lot of it, so I figured she’d get a lot of use out of something like this. But because of a mix up, I wound up with 2 Sodastreams and so one went to my mom for Christmas and the other came back with us to Texas. And let me tell you, this thing rocks! For $79.99 you get a CO2 container for 60 liters of soda, a 1 liter bottle, and 6 1 liter samples of syrup. Because we’d tried samples at the store we already knew we wanted to buy both the orange and the energy drink to take the place of our Sunkist and Red Bull.
Each soda mix costs $4.99 and provides enough syrup for 12 liters worth of soda. So instead of spending $4/day buying sodas at the store, we now spend ~$5 every other week. Obviously we’ll be getting our money’s worth in no time at all. Oh, and as a bonus, each 8 oz serving only has 30 calories but tastes exactly (or pretty darn close) like the real, high calorie thing . For comparison, 8 oz of Sunkist has 130 calories and 8 oz of Red Bull has 110 calories. And seriously, this thing could not be easier to use.
You fill up your 1 liter (or 1/2 liter if you buy add ons like I did) bottle with ice cold water and screw it onto the machine. You then press the button at the top 3 times, pushing the CO2 into the water.
Then all you have to do is unscrew it, pour in the correct amount of syrup, stir it up, and you’ve got perfectly tasty, cheap, low calorie soda.
We like to make ours at night, store it in the fridge, and grab it on our way out the door in the mornings. But the flavors certainly aren’t limited to just energy drink and orange, they have tons of flavors. Ranging from regular cola and mountain dew to diet pink grapefruit and cranberry raspberry.
Of course, if you’re not a soda drinker this product isn’t for you, but if you’re like August and I and really want to give up soda either because it’s ridiculously expensive or because it’s a complete waste of calories but just can’t seem to bring yourself to do it, I honestly can’t recommend the Sodastream enough.
Disclaimer: I did NOT receive any compensation for writing this review. I bought 2 Sodastreams with my own money but think it’s a pretty awesome product and wanted to share my opinion in hopes that I might help someone else save a little money and calories.
I’ve heard a lot about this in the past few months and it seems like a great idea for big soda drinkers. HUGE money saver. I really only drink diet coke, and I’m afraid if I got one of these things that I’d be tempted to drink a ton more soda than I already do!
I think it’s definitely going to save us some money in the long run! And yes, I definitely have to watch myself and be careful not to drink even more soda now that we have it. Helps that I bought the 1/2 liter bottles so I don’t have to make up as much at one time!