This Might Be Weird, But I'm So Obsessed With My Ice Tray

Two years ago, I moved out of a house I had shared with a roommate for several years and into a one-bedroom apartment that I loved and wanted to fill with items that made me happy. I wanted to do the grown up thing and buy luxury essentials, you know, really well-made versions of the small tools that somehow make up the backbone of daily life. And that is how I came to fall deeply and utterly in love with an ice tray.

I know it sounds strange, because an ice tray is not even an item that gets left out on your counter, or even probably used very much, so the idea that it could become a luxury item seems sort of strange. But luxury isn’t just about copper accents and velvet couches, it’s about items that do their job and do them well, and bring you joy in the meantime. That is why this ice tray feels like such a luxury.

I didn’t grow up with an ice maker built into my refrigerator, so I’ve spent a lot of time emptying, refilling and replacing ice trays in freezers. In the same way that some people hate washing dishes, and others hate putting folding laundry, it has come to be a chore that I absolutely detest, largely because most ice trays are a pain in the butt to use.

Enter theOXO Good Grips No-Spill Ice Cube Tray with Silicone Lid, also known as the best thing I bought last year. It solves so many problems that I didn’t even know I had with ice trays, starting with the fact that it has a lid. After having used this tray, I don’t understand how any ice tray is made without one. This one is made from silicon, so it’s heavy enough to keep water from spilling out, but flexible enough that it just pulls right off when you take the tray out of the freezer to get a few cubes. It also eliminates the need to try to get the right amount of water in each divet, simply fill the tray and push the silicon down over the cubes, insuring the each cube is the same size.

The lid also means that you can stack things on top of the tray if you need to, and there’s no need to make sure it is perfectly even. The silicon gives you just a little bit of flexibility if the tray needs to live on top of a bag of frozen dumplings, as mine often seems to.

I also find that the shape of the ice cubes in this tray makes them far easier to remove than other trays. The cubes have a curved bottom, which makes them pop out of the divets much more easily, which I deeply appreciate as I have cracked many an ice tray as I’ve tried to remove super-stuck cubes. The cubes themselves are also an excellent size: Not so large that they don’t fit into water bottles, but not so small that they feel out of place in a cocktail. Despite my apparent obsession with ice, I have yet to acquire a dedicated cocktail ice tray, mostly because I am very obsessed with my current one.

I know that $10 might feel like a lot to pay for an ice tray. I also originally balked at this amount. But as it turns out, the ability to stop hating something that irked me for years is worth a much higher price tag. (Don’t tell Oxo.) This tray is a true luxury. I think I’m going to buy another one.