High Chair Hygiene

There is nothing worse than going into a café or restaurant and plonking your little one into a dirty highchair. They say there are more bacteria growing on a highchair compared to your own toilet seat. Yeah – revolting right.

So let me pose the question to parents who use highchairs in cafes. Do you clean up after your little one has covered the highchair with the daily special? Are you the type of mum or dad that cleans up after them and leaves it nice and clean for the next tiny bottom. Or are you the type of parent who thinks, “l just paid good money for that meal and l believe the staff should clean up after us, we’re paying right”? Then there is also the unknown, do the staff even wipe down the highchairs well or do they just dust it off half-heartedly for the next customer?

Personally l’m a cleaner. I don’t wipe down before we place the bubba in the highchair – l’m not that germ mad but l do clean up afterwards, with a packet of wipes and some elbow grease. Only on one occasion l've totally freaked out about the “hygiene levels” and that was when a large cockroach emerged and crawled over my son’s tray and then disappeared. l did the freak-out-jump –up and down on the spot for 10 seconds following that episode. Cockroaches freak me out!

I understand the café staff are PAID to clean up after us but l just can’t bring myself to walk away from such a devastating mess of bread, fruit, yogurt and god knows what else has been mashed up in my young son’s mouth and then spat back all over the highchair and the floor. And even if the café staff do clean up after l have, at least l know it’s been given a good clean, twice, for the next little bottom.

My husband has been known to give me the ‘hurry up’ on several occasions because l’m down on all fours under the table frantically picking up tiny crumbs and crusts from the floor – slightly a bit obsessive l know but l like to leave things the way l found them. Clean. So next time when you are out and about have a think, are you a squeaky clean mamma or a messy mamma?