Keepin' it Real, Car Seat Style

So, remember how I said that I'm REAL, and sometimes being real includes dealing with the fact that things aren't always as clean as I wish they were.

Take car seats for example.

Ours were not, um, pretty. We don't remove them from the van unless we MUST and the last time we MUSTED was when the van had to get body work done, thanks to AWESOME Vegas drivers. That was October. And we didn't clean the car seats then, we just moved them.

Well, the time had come to move Oliver out of the baby carrier car seat and into a convertible. (He's a peanut at 16 pounds and 10 months, so he'll be rear-facing until he's 9.) We bought Henry a new car seat and needed to transfer everyone around.

Well, wow. The car seats were DISGUSTING. I can say that. I'm only a little ashamed. The amount of gross-ness was probably a year old so it's safe to say those things were crawling with... well... crap.

But! Never fear. They are now *almost* as good as new.

So without further ado:

How to clean horrifically disgusting car seats:

Remove the cloth cover entirely! You may need to actually take the car seat apart (as in remove screws) in order to fully remove the cover, depending on the kind. DON'T LOSE THE SCREWS!

To clean the covers, I used stain spray and a rag and scrubbed for a bit to try and get the tougher gunked-on gunk off. I let them sit for 15 minutes and then washed them on cold with detergent and 1 cup vinegar. (Oh, vinegar is fantastic for getting smells out. I'm planning a great big "This is why I love vinegar" post. It's going to rock your world.) I used cold because I was afraid the hot water would cause the fibers to shrink and since that would render the cover useless, I decided not to risk it.

I ran an extra soap-less wash cycle after the first just to make sure all the gray, gross water was off.

Now, depending on your manufacturer, it may say to "line dry" your cover. I saw no such thing on either of the two I was washing, so I just did the old "tumble dry on low." It took about 45 minutes to get them dry.

NOW FOR THE SEAT:
We took them apart entirely and soaked them in the bathtub with the HOTTEST water we could get out of the faucet and I just dumped a generous amount of vinegar in too. (Enough that I could SMELL it mixed with the water.)

And it worked like a charm. Old juice, gold fish, and who-knows-what-else melted off the seats. They were good as new.

And here is the photographic evidence that one should clean their car seats more than annually:

From The Diet Coke Diet

And a close-up:

From The Diet Coke Diet

Yikes. 

Now, you could probably use bleach instead of vinegar, but I LOVE vinegar because it basically does all the same things bleach does without being so dang caustic. Ya know? Vinegar is magic. And I really really recommend you try it to refresh a well-used car seat. 

Cuz like I said, ours were GROSS. 

But that's what happens when you're on the Diet Coke Diet. Car seat cleaning is WAY low on the list of priorities until it becomes unavoidable. :)