I Made a Resolution to Tackle The Messiest Area in My House Everyday — and I'm Sticking to it!

When you're pregnant, you hear a lot about the "messes" you will be dealing with for the foreseeable future. The blowouts! The spit up! The toys! It would seem that deciding to have a baby also means deciding to live with the mess they come with. That being said, no one warned me about the high chair.

Quite possibly the messiest area in my entire home, my son's high chair has turned into my worst nightmare. It seems easy enough: remove bib, wipe hands and face, remove baby, wipe down high chair. But after a few weeks of my son eating solids I learned that the high chair is the one area in my home I can't seem to keep clean. Every time I think I'm done, I find another rogue blueberry or a dried-up patch of ketchup. One time, I made the horrid decision to look under the seat pad and almost gagged at the crumb pile I found. My son is now 15 months old, and I realize this is one problem that isn't going to solve itself, so my 2020 resolution is to give this high chair a quick and easy deep clean every day so it stops haunting my dreams.

I've tried a lot of methods, but so far only one has given me the sparkly clean results I'm after. First, after dinnertime, I ask for my son's help in cleaning up all the food he threw on the floor. I'm hoping this will one day make him stop throwing food on the floor, but at the very least it's teaching him good habits. Once we pick up all the "yucky" pieces and throw them away, I remove the tray to wash in the sink with the rest of the dishes. I then use a wet cloth to pick up any leftovers and crumbs on the seat or under the cushion. Next, I take Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner + Bleach and give the whole high chair a spray. I let it sit for few seconds to help absorb any grease, kill bacteria, and remove excess odor. Then, I take a wet cloth and wipe the entire seat down, including the foot rest where splatters of applesauce always seem to land.

I find doing this every night after dinner helps keep the mess under control. This year is all about enjoying life as it comes, and I don't want to worry about cleaning all day. Handling this five-minute chore every evening helps me feel like I have some semblance of control over my household, even if my toddler is removing every piece of Tupperware from the kitchen cabinet as I do it. But honestly, it's worth it, because nothing strikes fear in the heart of a mother like watching your toddler eating a chicken nugget when you haven't served him chicken nuggets in two days.