WARNING!!

I gave up my hopes of Parent of the Year a long time ago. But, when I discover a mistake I am making, I like to tell others in hopes of keeping their run alive.

 

This started about a year ago. Last summer, we had let Jake play with his bath squirt toys outside in the kiddie pool. Like any good parent, I left them out there off & on throughout summer. When we moved into the new house, I decided to give them a good Clorox cleaning. I noticed that tons of dirt & leave bits were coming out of the squirt spouts. Gross, but I figured that's what I got for letting Jake play with them outside. I was satisfied with the cleaning & threw them in the bath tub.

 

He has played with them off & on in the bath tub for the last year. I noticed that even after my Clorox cleaning, the nasty gunk & leaves were still coming out. So I goggled how to remove dirt from squirt toys.

 

And that is when I realized the awful truth....

 

 That was not "dirt & leaves", it was MOLD.

 

I threw all of the toys in a mixture of 90% Clorox & 10% water. I figured if Jake survived the mold, he could survive the Clorox. (Have I mentioned that I gave up hope of being parent of the year?) I let them soak over an hour. They were still squirting out mold. 

I finally decided to just cut one open.

 

And I threw up.
 

This was the moldy inside even after an hour of soaking in Clorox.

The picture does not do it justice. It was nasty disgusting.

How disgusting is that?!?! Needless to say, I threw all of the toys in the trash (thank goodness Jake was at school or he would have had a heart attack!).

 

So what's a parent to do? This is what my Google search told me....

 

1) Don't buy bath tub squirt toys. They are a breeding ground for mold.

 

2) If you do buy them, make sure to squirt all of the water out & let them completely dry out.

 

3) Put a dab of glue in from a glue gun to close up the hole, which prevents water from entering.

 

4) Some toy manufactures are now making squirt toys that can be taken apart & cleaned, then put back together.

 

I'm sure there were more, but I was on limited time, so for now, we'll just play with cups in the bathtub. Until Jake notices that Thomas the squirt train is no longer in the bathtub.