It always makes me laugh to see the ‘suggested’ necessary items and products that baby stores tell new mothers that they need to be an awesome, properly correct and latest-article-in-a-mother/parent-magazine-following Mama to their new bundle of joy.
Ya know, let me give you some advice. Some real Mom, in the trenches, advice.
Register for stuff you REALLY need to survive the icky parts (potty training, the flu, motion sickness, stomach bug, teething diapers, acid poo blowouts just to name a few) of having a child:
1. A hand held shower head thingymajig. Something like this:
Seriously, save the money you were going to spend on: (…fill-in-the-blank…) that stores want you to believe you need…and get a hand held shower device. Believe me. Trust me. You will unfortunately get far more use out of it rinsing the poo, pee and puke out of clothes than you can even imagine. Seriously, trust me.
2a. Lots of buckets. For use in conjunction with #1. Also used for holding large quantities of bleach water for washing vomit off the floor. (This is a rough walked off estimate, but the puking episode that occurred in our house last night created a 10 x 11 foot rectangle of splattery yuckyness. This doesn’t include the walls and baseboards.) You COULD purchase a bunch of brand new cute buckets, but I prefer to use Dutchware: Gallon Ice Cream containers. They are AWESOME.
OR.
2b. You could use bright blue plastic surgical rinse basins like I use.
Kinda weird? Yup, but that’s what happens when your Mom is an O.R. Nurse. Unusable medical disposable products are the way to go. I keep two at all times in my stall shower for emergency soiled clothes soaking purposes. Pour in some of bleach, fill with hot water from your handy dandy hand held shower head and soak those clothes.
3. Bleach. Lots of bleach. It’s cheap and effective.
4. Stain pre-treaters, preferably in a spray bottle:
That way you can keep your hands FAR away from the goo on the clothes. I buy it in bulk. Clothes with any sort of food (or other substance) on it gets a good dousing. IT WORKS FOR ME. Which is why Lil Chick can own and wear an off-white jacket that has survived an entire winter stain free. You can send notes of congratulation on my off-white stain free jacket success to my email.
5. A box of disposable gloves. For when you can't avoid touching the yuckyness. Trust me. WELL WORTH paying for these to deal with all of the above:
You don’t want those yellow non-disposable gloves that you have to wash out and reuse. You WILL remember what those gloves touched and it WILL make you gag. Besides, I always got water up the loose sleeves and then had pooled icky water on my fingertips. Yech. I buy disposable gloves tight enough so water can’t get in.
6. Old t-shirts. Excellent floor/wall/child scrubbers. You can use em and toss em.
7. Air Neutralizer Spray/Febreeze/Air Freshener. Unless you think the smell of acid poo is a lovely odor to be inhaling all day long.
8. Coffee. Directions: Administer liberally and frequently:
This is just a short, off the top of my head, list. Have something to add? Shout it out in the comments!
Let’s talk Awesome Mama skillz, shall we? In my kid clothing tote bins I still have nearly full sets of (almost!) white onesies in every size*. That’s what I call awesome. (Not that I’m proud of it or anything...Totally lying. I’m ridiculously giddy about it.) That’s my life now, feeling extremely proud of clean onesies and the ability to clean up poo and vomit efficiently and effectively.
Awesome...
A
*(Disclaimer: There HAVE been times that I’ve tossed clothing that is soiled beyond recognition. Cause sometimes you are just plain sick and tired of scrubbing poo. Just keeping it real folks.)*
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