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!

naptime mischief

Awhile back, I wrote about the mural I painted in my kiddo's bedroom. Here's one of the images from that post:

My guy's two-and-a-half now, and we're trying to accommodate his increasing independence. The idea of converting the crib to a toddler bed turned out to be a bad one though, so within a couple of days, we'd converted it back.

Unfortunately, one of the picture frames I'd removed from the bed's new location had left an air bubble under the paint. And, well, you can probably guess what happened from there.

All told, he peeled all the paint off of an area about eighteen inches across. He must have gotten started as soon as I'd closed the bedroom door; this wasn't the only piece of mischief he'd accomplished . . . yikes. That kid is something else.

Happily, we'd built the wall ourselves and painted it using modern paint, so lead exposure wasn't a concern here. Still, that was a bad time.

I phoned my dad for advice on fixing the wall.

His solution called for spreading joint compound over the entire area (available pre-mixed in little buckets at the hardware store), nice and thin. I let it cure for almost a week in the heat, then rolled some primer over the patch, and three coats of paint leftover from the original room painting (lucky lucky!).

Next, I pulled out my acrylic paints for repair and blended the old and new together as best I could, plus one apple.

It looks different from before . . .

but I think I actually like it better now. So far so good; the new apple hasn't tempted him yet!

So, what unexpected projects have you taken on due to your little troublemakers? Do tell!

Thanks for reading.


p.s. you can make these photos larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that.


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