A flexible base that holds your can, cup, or tumbler steady right on the chaise — the sling seat, the towel, or the deck beside it — for the drink that always ends up on a hot, sloped surface the moment the one shared side table is taken.
See it at steadilabs.com →Free shipping · 30 days to change your mind · Molded in small runs in Orange, California
Will your cup fit? Grab a sticky note — the 10-second test ↓
The situation
Lie back on a pool chair and look for somewhere to set a drink — there isn't one, unless your backyard came with a swim-up bar. What's actually on offer is a short list of bad options, and you already know every one of them.
A chaise sits barely a foot off the ground, so the deck beside it is the obvious spot for a can — except pool decks are graded for drainage by code, so it's standing on a slope, in the splash line, on concrete that's climbed past 140°F by mid-afternoon.
Plenty of pool loungers skip arms entirely — review roundups flag the missing drink holder as a standard complaint. The ones with arms offer a rounded aluminum tube or a slat narrower than any can. Nothing about the classic sling chaise was built to hold a container.
Terry cloth bunches into soft folds the moment it's draped over sling or cushion. A can set on top doesn't sit level — it heels over slowly as the folds compress, and every drop of condensation goes straight into the one dry towel you brought.
A half-empty can, bottle, or cup is nearly weightless, and there's rarely anything at pool level to block a breeze. Floating holders drift off across the water for the same reason — light containers on light surfaces don't stay where you left them.
Sit in a chair on the Baja shelf and there's no version of a table anywhere near you — every surface in reach is underwater, wet coping, or a floating holder that's already drifted off. It's the one spot at the pool with nothing dry to offer at all.
It's not a crisis at any point along the way — just the same short list of bad options, offered back to you again each time you sit down poolside.
You know the moment
Arms still slick with SPF, you reach down off a chaise that's barely a foot high for the can you set on the sloped deck below — and the grip you needed was never going to hold.
A kid announces it before it happens. Everything within a body-length of the edge takes the spray, including whatever's standing on the deck beside your chair.
Dropping the chaise back a notch means lifting your weight off the sling for a second — the mesh re-tensions, the towel underneath it shifts, and the seltzer you parked by your hip goes over before you're flat again.
Some chair hog has already draped a towel across the two loungers with the shade, or the view of the shallow end. Whichever chaise is left is the one you get — armrest or no armrest, side table or none.
Dripping, picking your way across hot concrete back to your chair, and the drink you left is wherever the slope carried it — warm, sitting in a puddle, propped against a wet towel.
What you get
The wide flexible base spreads across sling mesh or a folded towel instead of trying to balance on a point of it. Recline the chair, shift your weight, let a kid cannonball nearby — the base flexes with whatever's under it and the drink settles back.
Cans, plastic cups, and lidded tumblers — the whole list glass can't be, since glass is banned at nearly every pool. Cans and bottles slide on; cups and tumblers drop in through the fins and get held by the bottom inch.
No arm to clip to, no frame tube to match, no bracket sized for one lounger style. It sits on the sling seat, the towel, or the deck beside you — whichever chaise was still open when you got there.
The fit test
A square sticky note: 3 inches, exactly.
The classic square is exactly 3 inches on a side — a fact about sticky notes, and it happens to be the exact ceiling of what fits.
Look at the base, not the rim — a tapered party cup or an insulated tumbler can be twice as wide up top. The base is the only measurement that decides whether it settles on sling mesh or a towel.
Base sits inside the square? It fits. Hangs over the edge? Too wide. A tiny footprint lost in the middle — under about 2 inches? Too narrow.
No ruler, no spec sheet, no guessing poolside — one sticky note, one glance, with the can you're actually bringing outside.
Will it fit my cup
The rule is one line: a container base about 2 to 3 inches across settles in. Every verdict below follows from it — and since glass doesn't make it past the gate at most pools, most of this list is exactly what you're already carrying out there.
There's a floor as well as a ceiling — under about 2 inches, the base sits too loose to grip. The one honest non-fit on this list is the handled mug: the base itself would sit fine, but the handle is exactly where a fin needs room to close.
How it works
Sling mesh and a folded towel don't offer a flat plane anywhere — a narrow base tips the moment the surface shifts. The wide flexible base lies across the weave or the folds instead of balancing on top of them.
Flexible fins hold the can or cup by its bottom inch, so a gust, a shift, or a reach with sunscreen-slick hands doesn't walk it off the edge.
The chair reclines a notch, the mesh re-tensions, someone sits down at the foot of the lounger — the base flexes with the surface and brings the drink back level.
The pool deck, surface by surface
The reason a drink doesn't last poolside isn't carelessness. Every surface within reach is soft, sloped, wet, or moving before you've even sat down.
Woven vinyl-coated mesh stretched tight over an aluminum frame — it flexes under every shift of weight. Set a can beside your hip and the mesh re-tensions the moment you recline or sit up; there's no flat plane on it anywhere.
Draped over the seat, terry cloth bunches into folds instead of lying flat, and slides on the smooth fabric underneath it. A drink set on top heels over slowly as the folds compress — and soaks up every drop of condensation.
Concrete or a cool-deck coating, poured with a drainage slope on purpose — the ground here is never quite level, by code. In direct summer sun, bare concrete climbs past 140°F, warming anything left standing on it.
Soft, uneven, and often damp from splash-out, with dips hidden under the blades. A tapered cup has almost no chance leaning on ground that gives way on one side before the other.
Versus what you do now
Every design mounts to exactly one style of arm or frame — brackets need a flat Adirondack-style arm, straps need an armrest to loop around, clips need round zero-gravity tubing. Buying guides tell shoppers to check their exact chair model first, and the classic sling chaise — curved arms or none at all — fits none of them.
Reviewers report the same pattern: they wobble or tip once loaded, and drift off in wind or busy water badly enough that the accessory market now sells tethers and anchor clips just to keep them close. The drink ends up watered down, warm, or on the far side of the pool.
It needs a level spot on a deck that's graded on purpose. Roundups of tables that 'refuse to wobble' sell leveling feet and sand ballast to fix the same admission: light tables rock on sloped concrete and move in wind — and at a crowded pool, there's often one table shared between two or three loungers.
Cooler lids are domed, textured, or hinged, not flat, and the lid disappears each time someone opens it for ice. The cooler also sits wherever the ice is, which is rarely beside your particular chair.
Before you buy
That's the surface it's built for. Soft, moving surfaces are its strongest case — the wide flexible base spreads across the weave instead of trying to balance on a point of it, and the fins keep the drink from rattling loose when the chair reclines or the mesh re-tensions.
A lightweight can or bottle is exactly what tips first in a breeze, and this changes that math — the base is wide enough and the fins grip enough that a gust rocks it instead of walking it off the edge. It resists tipping; a direct hard knock is still a direct hard knock.
Measure the base, not the rim. A base about 2 to 3 inches across settles in — the 40 oz Stanley Quencher does. A handled mug doesn't; the handle sits where a fin needs to close.
No. Nothing clips to an arm, straps around a frame, or needs a specific chair model to fit. It sits on top of whatever you're on — sling seat, cushion, towel, or the deck beside you.
Yes — it holds at least as well on hard, flat surfaces as it does on soft ones. Set it on the concrete or the coping beside your chair and the same wide base and grip apply.
It doesn't float, so if it goes in, it sinks to the bottom like anything else you'd want to fish back out. It's fine soaked through and rinses clean — just don't count on it bobbing back to you on its own.
No — that's a separate problem. What it does is keep the can from tipping over on the deck between sips; if wasps are bad that week, pair it with a lid or a can cover for the rest of it.
Rinse off the chlorine and sunscreen, or run it through the dishwasher. It's one piece of flexible material with nothing to take apart.
It's called the Steadi, molded in small runs in Orange, California by Steadi Labs — veteran-founded and patent pending. Every order ships free from steadilabs.com, with 30 days to change your mind.
Who makes it
The maker is Steadi Labs, a small veteran-founded company in Orange, California. It's injection molded — the mold, the material, and the color runs all sit within about three and a half miles of the shop, and every batch is molded there in small runs. The people who make it are the same people who answer hello@steadilabs.com.
Use it for a month. If it doesn't do what this page says, email hello@steadilabs.com and it gets made right — no forms, no fight.
Veteran-founded · Patent pending · Made in Orange, California
The can stands beside you on the lounger — off the sloped concrete, out of the splash line — so the walk back from the water doesn't end with a warm drink sitting in a puddle.
Get yours at steadilabs.com →Checkout is on steadilabs.com — Steadi Labs is the company that makes it.