So, it’s Saturday night (or maybe Wednesday) around 6pm or so and you can probably find us gathered around the bath tub with three little boys and water all over the floor. That’s right, bath time. Bath time and I have a love-hate relationship. My boys love splashing and making a huge mess and I hate cleaning it up! But it’s a necessary evil. Okay, it’s not THAT bad, but it’s not my favorite.
Anyway, our bath tub has no shortage of toys to entertain my little water babies. It’s a half-hearted hope that my boys will play with those while I’m washing the other one instead of splashing and pouring water over the other one’s head. Eh, it doesn’t always work.
Those toys spend a lot of their time in the water… soapy, sudsy, dirty water. Very dirty water. Three boys. Super dirty water. They also occasionally find themselves in the mouths of one or more of those boys. Ick. So, I want to make sure that these toys aren’t crawling in all kinds of gross germy bugs that are going to make us all sick. Sick kids are the worst.
We have two kinds of toys: foam toys and plastic toys. I employ a different method to clean each type. Cleaning bath toys is so easy and only take a few minutes of your time.
Foam Toys:
These would fly all over the dishwasher if I put them in there, so I fill the sink with hot water and a cup of vinegar to soak all those foam letters. The vinegar kills any germs and it’s so much more safe for my kiddos than, say, bleach or something. Soak them for 15 minutes (or more…) and then set them out on clean cooling racks to dry.
Plastic Toys:
The simplest way to clean plastic toys is in the dishwasher. The hot water will sanitize the toys and you can just set them in there, turn it on and let it go. I don’t use the dry setting, just let them air dry. If I catch it, I’ll prop the door open a sliver while it’s still all hot and steamy to help them dry a little quicker.
I do these cleaning routines once a week. My boys usually get baths 2-3 times a week, depending on our activities. The best way to keep the toys clean between these washings is to make sure they get picked up after bath time and stored in our mesh bath net. This way, they have a chance to dry and don’t sit in icky leftover water after bath time.
