Household Cleaning Tips

It's time for some more household cleaning tips.  In a recent post I showed you how to make cleaning hardwood floors fun.  Now I want to share some advice that can save you some serious time.  It's so simple, yet few parents take advantage of it.  Here it is.

Rip those stupid cloth covers off.

 

Kids get car sick easily.  Even if your kids don't get motion sickness, they will spill drinks and/or food all over their clothes and seat.  What does this mean for you?  Well, it means you're going to be wrastlin' with a cover for about ten minutes.

The booster covers aren't too bad; they come off easy enough.  It's the convertible 3-in-1 seats with five-point harnesses you have to worry about.  When it comes to these contraptions, you're looking at a minimum of three eff-bombs to complete the task.  I don't know who designs these things, but it must have been the same woman that invented the bra hook, because they both take me ten minutes to take off.  Save yourself the embarrassment of cursing  in front of your children (and the subsequent explanation of bad words) and strip your seat down before they sit in it.

If you have taken my previous advice, then your kid should already be sitting at the dinner table sans shirt.  Great, but that's only half of the battle.  Wiping your kid down after a meal is easy, but what are you going to do about the plush cover that is now stained a nice bright orange with carrot purée?  How do you plan on getting those smashed peas out of the five-point harness crevices?

The answer is simple...remove the cover.  Your baby will either puke or poop (most likely both) in this chair.  I guarantee it.  You can either rip that cloth covering off now and save yourself some time or you can spend twenty minutes figuring out how to squeeze the harness latch through those tiny slots in the back of the chair.  Then you can spend another forty  minutes washing and drying it.  Then comes the hard part...putting it all back together.

No covers, no problems.  Wipe it down with a wet-wipe after every meal or better yet, let your dog lick the leftovers out of the chair.  A case could be made for the comfort level that a cushioned covering offers your little one as he or she dines.  I'd like to make the case that I want my kid to be as uncomfortable as I am at dinner time.  Why should my 3-year old (Leah) get to sit back in a nice plump seat that conforms nicely to her tiny hiny, while I'm stressing out about the boy not eating, the baby not chewing, and Leah feeding my "meal prepared in love" (chicken nuggets) to the dog?  It's not gonna happen.

Floor food is just the appetizer. Every dog knows the good stuff is in the baby's chair

We've covered food going into the body.  Now, let's talk about food leaving the body. If you don't know what this is, congratulations on getting your wife or baby mama to change all the diapers.  For the rest of you guys, this is a diaper changing pad.  For some reason, when you purchase these things, they come with a cloth cover that fits over it.  Why?  Nobody knows.

These things are just asking to be shat on.  Have you ever tried to scrub poop out of cloth?  It's not fun.  Your fingers already run the risk of coming  into contact with either poop or pee, anytime you're near this thing.   There's really no point in having a cloth cover laying there.  That's just one more tushy target that you're going to have to rip off and throw in the laundry.  Rip it off beforehand and just wipe the plastic down once or twice a month.

The time spent on removing, cleaning, and re-assembling these baby items can now be spent on more important things like managing your Fantasy Football team, creating memes, or napping.  I suppose you could focus that extra time and energy on teaching and developing your child, but then you run the risk of eventually home-schooling your kid.  You owe your kids a better life.