the super exciting cleaning post

This was inspired by a post I read over at inspired-housewife. I mean the real post was all about how to get pee stains out of a mattress (vital tips even with all of the so called mattress protectors in zee world). I mean three little ingredients could do that? Well I'm game. And excited (sigh), I really was. And just that day, luckily for me, the cat sicked up a partially digested bird onto Felix's white camel hair filled duvet. I tested it out and wham, white as a dove, clean and bright again really quickly. So this lead me on to thinking that I got rid of the last newborn car seat, but that the second one we bought Esmé was also newborn to late toddler or something. It has been in the garage for about three years though, collecting all of the nasty things a garage can inflict; like bird poop from visitors making nests in the rafters, and I just don't know what else, gunk even from when it was in use and I decided (unwisely) to wash it later. Quite a bit later it turns out. The pale gray straps were dark brown, the chair cover had mould spots, but I didn't want to resign it to the dump and go buy another. Just so...... wasteful. Anyway. I skipped along to the pharmacy and bought a bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide (like a pound or something cheap) and I already had loads of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and of course dishwashing liquid soap. All set.



I picked a super sunny day. I threw the cover in the washing machine and then left it for about 24 hours in the sun to dry and clean further. Still grubby looking and mouldy. But it was the straps that grossed me out. Imagining fastening them around a sweet little baby? Just yucky. So I scrubbed the entire chair down with soap and dowsed it off with water. Then I applied loads of dish washing soap, then sprinkled a liberal coating of bicarb and then spritzed on the peroxide which I had decanted into a tiny empty spray bottle. I mixed it up and coated it all over the straps front and back with my hands; it was all gloopy and slightly foamy.



I was too hasty in seeing if it had worked and began rinsing it off. So had to reapply another coat. Luckily for the mixture (since I am impatient and may have repeated the whole peeking and rinsing thing) I was called away for some such thing and it was about half an hour before I could get back to it. I took an old scrubbing brush and went to it, really scrubbing it all in as hard as I could. I applied a bit of everything again and left it for another five minutes. Then, bucket load by bucket load I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed the whole chair. Half a day's sun later and it was totally pristine, with clean pale gray straps once again.





But the cover? Still stained and ugly. I looked into ordering a whole new cover. But it was pretty much as expensive as a new chair. I remembered my friend Melody making one for her dd from some thick fabric..... but the sheer amounts of slits and flaps on this chair totally put me off. I am not that good at sewing, and knew it would be frustration city for me. Then I found online a pure cotton towelling summer cover which would fit, pretty cheaply on top of the clean but stained seat cover (and since it had sewn in padding ) was unsure how to fix that too. With the sheepskin I bought on sale at Green Baby it's like a fab new chair.



Yep. That was my super exciting cleaning post. I am pretty pleased with it, which is sort of boring, but also feel thrifty and glad I discovered a pee cleaing solution. Everyone with multiple children/beds knows you need one.