PSA: Bath toys

This is a public service announcement for new mothers. Before you put those cute squirty bath toys on your registry, I want to show you something. Warning: this is horrifying... [I'm being a little sarcastic here, but this is actually true.]

That's a bath tub full of bits of MOLD! I wish you could actually see what it looked like in person because this doesn't do it justice (as if that's a bad thing).

Let me tell you something. I may be OCD, but in general, germs don't bother me all that much. "A little dirt don't hurt" I say. But my kids bathing with mold?? I am NOT okay with that.

Let me tell you something else. I have a hard time keeping up with stuff around the house. It's always messy with dirty laundry, dishes, etc. piled in various places. I do my best, but we have to live life. But the one thing I DO do is squeeze out our bath toys after EVERY bath.

Now, before you freak out too much, this was AFTER their bath (they didn't actually bathe with this, exactly), and after my trying to clean the toys, which apparently just loosened the mold, but all of that was inside the toys that they play with (and, in James' case, CHEW on!) on a normal basis. 

I had noticed some stuff coming out of their toys recently, so I decided it was time for a good cleaning. I've thrown gross bath toys away before, but most of their current toys were a set of squeezie boats we received as a gift from family this summer in Canada and they are FAVORITES. There would probably be mutiny if I threw them away. I looked up how to clean bath toys and found this blog (which I recalled having already pinned on Pinterest). I did a bleach soak and made sure to squeeze the bleach mixture into the toys. They soaked for about two hours, then I rinsed the outsides really well, then filled the sink with clean water and rinsed the insides of each toy really well, squeezing clean water in, shaking it around, and forcefully squeezing it out over and over again. I did this until no more mold came out and I thought they were good. The blog had suggested plugging the holes with hot glue so it wouldn't happen again, but I thought, "well, that's silly! That takes away the point of the toy!". So I threw them in the tub with the boys.

Within minutes I saw some of the floaty stuff. Yuck! We quickly finished the baths, and when Jason took the boys to put them in their PJs I started squeezing out the toys again and mold was basically flying out of every single one! I called Jason in to show him and he was as disgusted as I was. 

We agreed to go ahead and plug the holes, as sad as that is, but I think they'd still be happy to play with the boats just as boats. I'm thinking we might buy a new set of squeezie toys (they usually come in packs of 10 or so) and put one or two in the bath, then after a few weeks, toss those away and get out two new ones. Either that or skip squeezie toys altogether. The boys enjoy squirting the water, but would they really miss it? Maybe squeezie toys can be reserved for pools and outdoor play.

Just thought I'd share because I was actually quite surprised. I thought one or two of the toys were kind of gross, but I did NOT think all of them were, nor did I think they had that much grossness inside of them!