How to wash soft toys

Soft toys are beau­ti­ful, pleas­ant to the touch and are very pop­u­lar with chil­dren of all ages. But par­ents are wary of them, because they know that these are real “dust col­lec­tors”. So that the health of the child is not endan­gered by dai­ly con­tact with toys, which col­lect not only dust and dirt, food debris, but also microbes, oth­er poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous microor­gan­isms, they must be reg­u­lar­ly washed or cleaned in some oth­er way. How to do it cor­rect­ly, the experts will tell in this arti­cle.

What toys can and cannot be washed in a washing machine or by hand

To deter­mine if the toy can be washed, look at the infor­ma­tion on the tag. There are always tags on more or less expen­sive prod­ucts. But some­times par­ents cut them off so as not to spoil the appear­ance of the toy. There­fore, if there is no label, you will have to fig­ure it out your­self. Take a good look at the thing, feel it — if there are any pres­sure ele­ments on it, behind which micro­cir­cuits can hide. If there is, such prod­ucts can­not be washed at all. Also, you should not sub­ject such prod­ucts with organ­ic fillers, for exam­ple, with peas, buck­wheat husks, down / feath­ers, med­i­c­i­nal herbs, saw­dust, small stones, sea salt, wool, etc. to wet pro­cess­ing.

There are toys that can be washed, but only by hand:

1. Those that have some details that are fixed on the glue. Short man­u­al pro­cess­ing will not cause the adhe­sive to dis­solve. But if the part still peels off, you will get it from the bot­tom of the basin and fix it again. And when wash­ing in a wash­ing machine, small parts, like but­tons, can clog the water out­let hose or some­how dam­age the mech­a­nism.

2. Too big — more than 15–20 cm in “height”. Even if a thing is qui­et­ly placed in the drum of a wash­ing machine, when wet, it will turn into a heavy lump that will pound against the walls and can dam­age the wash­ing machine and dis­able the mech­a­nism. We wash such toys, but only by hand.

3. Hand­made items that are unlike­ly to with­stand inten­sive pro­cess­ing in the drum of a wash­ing machine. But gen­tle hand wash­ing won’t hurt them.

4. Anti­stress toys. Inside such prod­ucts there are many small balls of expand­ed poly­styrene, and their shell is very thin. If the mate­r­i­al breaks dur­ing wash­ing in the wash­ing machine, it will be a dis­as­ter, as the balls will need to be col­lect­ed all over the bath­room or kitchen. And with man­u­al pro­cess­ing, you con­trol the force of fric­tion, so do not dam­age the thin fab­ric.

If the toy can­not be washed at all, it can be cleaned in oth­er ways, which we will dis­cuss lat­er in the arti­cle.

How often should soft toys be washed?

There are no strict rules regard­ing this issue, but there are rec­om­men­da­tions from pedi­a­tri­cians and oth­er spe­cial­ists:

1. If a child comes into con­tact with a toy every day, often takes it in his mouth, drops it on the floor, gets it dirty while eat­ing, then you need to wash it as often as pos­si­ble, even every day.

2. If the child plays with the prod­uct from time to time or very care­ful­ly, does not pull into his mouth, does not throw it on the floor, does not take it out into the street, wash­ing can be car­ried out as it gets dirty or once every 10–14 days.

3. If the toy per­forms a pure­ly dec­o­ra­tive func­tion, for exam­ple, it stands on a shelf, on the back of a crib, you need to clean it once every few months to sim­ply remove dust and pre­vent the occur­rence and repro­duc­tion of dust mites.

If a child has been ill with a dis­ease that is trans­mit­ted by air­borne droplets, food or con­tact, toys should be washed or cleaned imme­di­ate­ly after recov­ery. It is opti­mal to boil, but mod­ern toys are unlike­ly to sur­vive such treat­ment. There­fore, you can first wash, and then dis­in­fect under an ultra­vi­o­let lamp. You can also use a house­hold steam gen­er­a­tor for dis­in­fec­tion. And the eas­i­est, and so to speak, “bud­get” way to at least par­tial­ly dis­in­fect the prod­uct is to take it out for 8–10 hours on a bal­cony or on the street for direct expo­sure to sun­light.

Preparing for washing

If you decide to rub chil­dren’s toys, pre­pare each of them for the pro­ce­dure:

1. Inspect the toy, if it has open seams or parts that are about to come off, fix the prod­uct.

2. If things have elec­tron­ics, but it is remov­able, remove, remove the bat­ter­ies.

3. Remove as much dirt and dust as pos­si­ble with a brush. The oper­a­tion is best done out­doors, as an option — on the bal­cony.

4. If the prod­uct has stub­born stains that are unlike­ly to be washed off, treat them with a stain remover, fol­low­ing the man­u­fac­tur­er’s instruc­tions. As an impromp­tu stain remover, you can use alco­hol, soda dilut­ed with water to a gru­el state, vine­gar or lemon juice.

5. If the prod­uct is made of del­i­cate fab­rics, lace, etc., it is bet­ter to wash it in a spe­cial mesh bag.

It is bet­ter to wash soft toys not one at a time, but sev­er­al at once, so that they even­ly fill the drum of the machine. At the same time, it is not nec­es­sary to ham­mer the drum “to the eye­balls”, oth­er­wise things will not be washed well and rinsed out worse. You also need to sort prod­ucts by col­or — whites are processed sep­a­rate­ly from col­ored and paint­ed in very dark col­ors.

Detergent selection

The choice of pow­der is a very impor­tant stage, since the child will be in con­stant con­tact with the prod­ucts, per­haps tak­ing them in his mouth, press­ing them against the del­i­cate skin of his face. First­ly, the pow­der should not be loose, it is bet­ter that it be a liq­uid, gel prod­uct. It has a num­ber of advan­tages:

1. Not as aggres­sive as dry pow­ders.

2. It dis­solves best in cold water.

3. It rins­es out bet­ter.

4. Does not dam­age fab­ric fibers.

Sec­ond­ly, it should ide­al­ly be hypoal­ler­genic, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, made from nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents, free of phos­phates and oth­er harm­ful sub­stances. Immu­ni­ty in chil­dren of the first years of life, and even in preschool­ers, is still not strong enough, you should not use chem­istry once again, if this can be avoid­ed, so as not to fur­ther weak­en the pro­tec­tive func­tions of the body.

As a safe and at the same time quite effec­tive means for wash­ing soft toys and oth­er chil­dren’s (and adult) things, a liq­uid deter­gent made by hand from laun­dry soap and soda ash has proven itself to be excel­lent. It is done very sim­ply and quick­ly enough:

1. Take 90 grams of laun­dry soap, grind in any way, the eas­i­est — on a grater for veg­eta­bles.

2. Take 90 grams of soda ash, it is sold in hard­ware stores, where you can buy house­hold chem­i­cals. This is an absolute­ly safe sub­stance, which dif­fers from ordi­nary bak­ing soda only in that it has under­gone heat treat­ment, that is, cal­ci­na­tion. Heat­ing is need­ed in order to increase the clean­ing prop­er­ties of soda.

3. Place soap and bak­ing soda in a pot with 3–4 liters of boil­ing water. Deter­mine the amount of liq­uid, start­ing from how thin or thick the prod­uct should be in your opin­ion.

4. Mix thor­ough­ly until the com­po­nents are com­plete­ly dis­solved.

5. Turn off the gas, let the gel cool down, pour into the con­tain­ers in which it will be stored. When the prod­uct has almost cooled down, you can add a few drops of essen­tial oil to it, which does not cause aller­gies in a child, the smell of which the baby likes. But even with­out this com­po­nent, things after wash­ing will smell absolute­ly nor­mal, espe­cial­ly if you dry them in the fresh air.

Such a liq­uid pow­der is used in the same dosages as pur­chased deter­gents, it can be mea­sured with the same cap or with a mea­sur­ing cup.

Temperature, mode, spin

Chil­dren’s soft toys are washed on a gen­tle cycle. It can be “del­i­cate wash”, “hand wash”, “wool”, etc. Instead of using a spe­cif­ic pro­gram, you can set all the para­me­ters man­u­al­ly:

1. The tem­per­a­ture is 40 degrees.

2. Spin — 400 rev­o­lu­tions.

3. The dura­tion of wash­ing is 1–1.5 hours.

4. Extra rinse — yes.

If the toy is made of mate­ri­als that can with­stand expo­sure to high­er tem­per­a­tures, such as cot­ton, linen (con­sid­er­ing the stuff­ing mate­r­i­al), be sure to use this and wash it in hot water. So you not only clean bet­ter, but also destroy more oppor­tunis­tic microor­gan­isms.

After wash­ing, dry the toys on a line or on the dry­er bars, prefer­ably out­doors. If they need to be wrung out first, then pro­ceed care­ful­ly, do not twist them, wrap them in a ter­ry tow­el and press them with your hands so that the mois­ture is absorbed into the fab­ric.

How to wash soft toys by hand

Hand wash­ing soft toys is no dif­fer­ent from wash­ing things. Except that if the toy is large, it will be very heavy when wet, it will be dif­fi­cult to clean it from the deter­gent and wring it out, it will take a very long time to dry. Nev­er­the­less, we describe the process:

1. Fill a suit­able con­tain­er with water at a tem­per­a­ture of 40 degrees, that is, it should be slight­ly hot­ter than your skin. There should be enough water so that after soak­ing into the toy the con­tain­er is about half full.

2. Dis­solve deter­gent in water. It is bet­ter to take a gel, since the dry pow­der will not dis­solve well, get stuck in the fibers of the mate­r­i­al, and become a poten­tial aller­gen.

3. Immerse a toy or sev­er­al prod­ucts in water, lath­er well with a wash­cloth or sponge. Rub on all sides, if nec­es­sary — addi­tion­al­ly use a brush of medi­um hard­ness. Leave the prod­uct to soak for 30 min­utes.

4. Rub again on all sides, espe­cial­ly heav­i­ly soiled areas, wrin­kle, “squeeze”. Squeeze out soapy water.

5. Rinse in clean water so many times that in the end the water becomes clear, with­out a hint of foam.

6. Squeeze out the water with­out twist­ing the prod­uct, wrap it in a tow­el and flat­ten it, hang it or put it on the dry­er rails to dry com­plete­ly.

Do not give your child a soft toy until it is com­plete­ly dry. It will quick­ly become dirty, and unwant­ed microor­gan­isms may begin to mul­ti­ply inside the filler.

How to dry soft toys quickly

It is impor­tant to quick­ly dry the prod­uct not only because the child miss­es it. If this process is delayed, the stuff­ing inside may become moldy, and oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of microflo­ra may devel­op in con­di­tions of rel­a­tive warmth and humid­i­ty. Here are a few ways to quick­ly dry your baby’s soft “friends”:

1. Hang on a rope or dry­er bar out­side, under warm sun­light (only if these are not knit­ted prod­ucts, oth­er­wise they can stretch, it is bet­ter to dry them in a hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion).

2. Dry things near the radi­a­tor (not on the heater), peri­od­i­cal­ly turn­ing them on dif­fer­ent sides to the heat source.

3. In the cold sea­son, you can dry soft toys on the win­dowsill, under which there is a bat­tery or radi­a­tor. The heat will pro­mote dry­ing, and the sun’s rays from the win­dow will not only dry, but also dis­in­fect the fab­ric.

4. Use a hair dry­er on medi­um heat set­ting.

You can also quick­ly dry the item in an elec­tric dry­er, but only if it is allowed by the man­u­fac­tur­er, as indi­cat­ed on the tag.

If you can not wash soft toys, what to do

If for some rea­son it is impos­si­ble to wash a thing, it can be cleaned in oth­er ways. The eas­i­est (if there are no stains) is to vac­u­um it, you can addi­tion­al­ly process it with a steam gen­er­a­tor. There are also clean­ing meth­ods:

1. Place the prod­uct in a plas­tic bag, pour in a por­tion of bak­ing soda (focus on the size of the item), tie the bag, shake well so that the soda is dis­trib­uted over the entire sur­face of the prod­uct.

2. Leave the bag tied for 2 hours.

3. Spray a ter­ry tow­el of a suit­able size with water from a spray bot­tle or moist­en it in any oth­er way.

4. Wrap the toy in a tow­el, care­ful­ly wrin­kle on all sides.

5. Remove bak­ing soda residue with a soft-bris­tled brush.

This method of clean­ing will get rid of dust and dirt, microor­gan­isms. You can more effec­tive­ly dis­in­fect the prod­uct by freez­ing it. That is, while the toy is in the bag, you squeeze the air out of it and put it in the freez­er for sev­er­al days — most bac­te­ria and microbes will die from expo­sure to low tem­per­a­tures.

If the toy has micro­cir­cuits, speak­ers, bat­ter­ies, it can be cleaned with soda, but not frozen. Anoth­er option is to care­ful­ly open the seams and remove the elec­tron­ics, then sew the thing up so that the filler does not fall out, wash the prod­uct and restore the seams com­plete­ly.

Conclusion

It is nec­es­sary to mon­i­tor the clean­li­ness of soft toys for chil­dren not only in order to increase their ser­vice life and main­tain their aes­thet­ic, attrac­tive appear­ance. This is nec­es­sary for hygiene rea­sons, since a dirty thing is not only ugly, but also dan­ger­ous for the baby. The prod­uct becomes a source of dan­ger­ous microor­gan­isms and dust mites, so dry clean­ing or wash­ing should be car­ried out reg­u­lar­ly.