cleaning hand-me-down bath toys

My nephew and niece are a few years older than my kiddo, and so we sometimes get hand-me-downs that my sister-in-law passes along to us. We also visit a kids' consignment store every so often. Between the two sources, we ended up with a nifty little collection of Fisher Price Little People and animals.

Back in the day, these were solid plastic, so if we played with them in the tub they didn't collect water inside. But the new ones (from the last 10+ years) are hollow, soft plastic. And as a local news report pointed out awhile back, hollow bath toys collect water inside, and grow bacteria and mold. Ew. Double ew.

So when I bring this kind of toy into the house, I give them a pretty good cleaning with the only thing I know will kill mold: Bleach. I dilute it in water according to the directions on the bottle, and I pour the solution in a plugged bathroom sink. It's best to do this during nap time when kiddos aren't around, and then keep the bathroom door closed and locked, anyway.

I squeeze as much air out as I can, then dunk and fill with the water. I shake, then soak.

The real problem is getting the bleach water out afterward. Squeezing releases most of it, but not all.

For this, you'll need an awl. You can find one in most hardware stores or in an art supply store (with the bookbinding supplies). It's basically a sharp spike with a handle.

Turn over each toy, and identify what would be the lowest point (where all the water would settle) were the toy upright. Poke a nice hole with the awl. Be careful of hands! In fact, don't follow my example in the photographs; work on a solid surface.

When you turn the toy upright again, give it a second for the water to drain to the awl hole, then squeeze gently to get all the water out.

Repeat the process with clean water to rinse all of the bleach solution out. Voila! Clean toys, ready for playing in the bath tub without spreading germs.

Because of the nature of the plastic, the holes disguise themselves so you won't even notice them . . . until it's time to clean the toys again!

Thanks for reading!

train table rescue!

When we put together the train table for the kiddo back at Christmastime, I planned ahead a bit. After I painted it with acrylics, I sealed it in with a clear latex sealer. And then I bought washable crayons.




But still, these things happen.






I know this is probably old hat for mamas and papas, but believe it or not, this is the first time I've had to deal with crayon marks on any surface but paper . . . And thanks to the washable Crayola crayons and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, everything's back to normal.




Back when I was making recycled crayons for our rupee crayon project, I tried to figure out how to make recycled washable crayons, but aside from using pure soap, I came up empty handed. I think I'm going to have to find some way to test the rupees out with the Magic Eraser. Anybody out there have experience with this? Thanks in advance!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

tabula rasa

I'll be posting more pictures of this soon, but this photo here represents about a hundred hours of work spread out over a month. More if you count the time I spent a few years back stripping the paint off that door and patching and sanding it. That was back when we'd intended to use it for a door.





So the reason for all the hours, for such a "before" looking image? This room, a few weeks ago, was packed to the brim with bins of art and craft supplies, childhood mementos, display items from my former bookstore, and theater leftovers. It's taken a monumental effort to get to this photograph: a clean slate, painted a soft, silvery gray, with the beginnings of a door-turned-headboard on the wall.

I've lost count of the trips to the charity store's donation drop-off. I've given a few things to friends. We held a one-day yard sale that paid for the bed frame and paint. And there's plenty stashed in the studio, and some stuff on my kitchen table ready to get the boot. The recycle and trash bins fill faster than Sanipac can haul it all away, so a friendly neighbor called the city to report us a couple of weeks ago. I frequently feel overwhelmed by the task at hand, which is essentially sifting through and getting rid of so much of my old self in order to have a clean, quiet space. One that we're intending for a guest room, but which the cats are pretty sure is really just for them.

Anyway, I'll go into more detail about the process later. That's all for tonight!