Sanitize Used High Chair

Will you do this to every restaurant chair you ever put your grandson in?

Have you ever seen a headline that read "Child poisoned by furniture"?

However you would clean it after your grandson uses it would be just fine for cleaning it now.

A mixture of 10% Chlorine Bleach (5% active ingredient, not the bargain brand) mixed with 90% water applied with a wet cloth will kill all the germies. You can immerse the all plastic tray in the same solution if you like for 3 minutes. Stainless steel on the plastic parts will not be harmed. Exposed base metals may blacken from the bleach. Just wipe it off.

As for the restaurant comment, all the restaurants I managed or supervised sanitized the darn things once per day or after each use if time permitted. That is some of the scut work that people who aren't in the business never know about.

Colbyt

If the chair is wood, wipe with mineral spirits. You could use an oil-based soap solution with some alcohol added, but wash and dry it quickly to avoid wood damage and rust. Soapy solution will kill 99% of bacteria. It is not practical to sterilize a chair, although this can be done if you can get a large enough autoclave.

My highchairs always got cleaned with Dawn dishwashing detergent, same as the dishes. Occasional scraping to remove old mushed banana or spaghetti :o) A little bleach in any household cleaner should do fine. Don't forget, the tike crawls the floor and sticks fingers in his mouth, along with whatever germs were tracked in on adult feet. Has he touched a restroom faucet or door knob? Yuck!

Heck there were nine of us kids and we all survived without all this namby-pamby sanitizing of everything. Germs were the least of our worries, we were always trying to kill each other. I remember once when baby brother was in his playpen and one sibling exclaimed "Hey, where'd he get the candy bar?!" other brother yelled "That's not a candy bar!" It was a diaper dumpling. Needless to say there was a lot of hysterical cleanup and concern afterwards but baby brother lived.

TDD

Chuckle. The fact of the matter is that the diaper dumpling came out of the kid. So any germs in it came from the kid. Eating it is gross, but it ain't gonna give him any germs he doesn't already have.

-- Doug

So that's why he's still alive today for us to tease about his culinary pursuits as an infant.

TDD

Think back to the 1940s and 50s. Polio was known as the rich kid's disease because it seemed to be a more prevalent disease of the well-to-do. Those were the kids who lived in super-clean homes and never got to eat dirt.

I don't know how real this explanation was, but it seems plausible. Frequent challenges to one's immune system may actually be beneficial.

Boden

Basically agree, you don't need clean-room conditions for a little kid, they are usually quite durable. (If they were not, h*mo sapiens would have gone extinct thousands of years ago.) And a few germs help to keep their immune system exercised. I will say, if it is an antique chair, especially a wood one, check it for lead paint. And make sure any straps or movable parts are not finger pinchers or provide any way kid could slide out held by the neck or anything. Some high chairs were obviously designed by engineers who had never wrangled a squirmy kid. But if it was made within last 20 years or so, and has all the parts, you should be fine.

-- aem sends...

Sure bleach, mineral spirits, or the old vodka will all do it.

Take it to the car wash and steam clean it.

My wife puts stuff in the pool. I don't know if it works.

olddog

"Sharp-Dressed Man" wrote in news:FuCdnej0NdJWjZ7UnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

Toss it in the back of the pickup and run it through the car wash. OK to leave grandson in highchair long as he has seatbelt on. He'll have a blast!

I dunno about sterilizing it, but we found the easiest way to clean a high chair was to put it in a hot shower.

Hi, Never bought used stuffs for my kids when they were very young. IMO, hot steam cleaner will do good job.

On Sat 25 Oct 2008 10:08:56p, CJT told us...

A wipe-down with a solution of bleach and water before the hot shower will kill just about anything that might be lurking.

Hate to say it, but the kid is probably more dirty than the high chair.

If Lysol doesn't do a good enough job for you then shellac the whole thing--that will seal in any microbes that are on it where they can't hurt anybody.

If you want more than that then use it as a pattern and make a new one then use the old one for firewood.

I'd be more concerned about it having lead based paint on it if it's old enough for that to be a concern.

You don't know how they sanitize the boy.....