I've had a few friends give birth recently and its funny to look back and think of the massive learning curve that you face with a newborn. Alongside all of the conventional parenting things that you have to learn, you also realise that you have to accept that mess is good. My inner self twitches as I watch the little one splash water everywhere and drop food down herself, but its all part of her learning curve and its fun.
You get to face these inner dilemmas most when you wean them. Some mums are really excited to wean their babies and get them onto solid food. I have to admit that I was a bit reluctant to make changes - we had a pretty nifty routine going thanks to Jo Tantum's book, Baby Secrets. We had nap times, feed times and play times, why would I want to change that?! But eventually I braved opening the Annabel Karmel books and we gave solid food a go.
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| Like a rite of passage for all new mums... Pureed Butternut Squash. |
The first thing that struck me was how orange most baby food is. And that it stained everything, even the plastic spoons! I remember asking my friends on Facebook how to get the stains outs of the clothes. (In my secret group on Facebook mind, not on my profile page, I didn't want people to take the mickey for me being toooo mumsy!)
I had various suggestions:
"Remove clothes from baby before feeding"
"Lower your expectations about having super clean clothes"
"Dress her in Orange clothes" (this one being my favourite!)
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| A rare example of non-orange baby food. |
So when I was contacted by a marketing company asking if I would like to try out some Vanish for the blog, I agreed. Now that she's older, there's a whole host of mysterious stains that appear on her clothes, or get sent home from nursery in little bags so there would be plenty of uses for something good at stain removal.
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| The mysterious packages from nursery. I dread opening them...! |
Feeling a bit like one of the ladies from an advert on TV, I gave Vanish a go on some of the little one's clothes. You wonder if they just tell them to wear their food when they're at nursery. This was the sight that greeted me when I took her clothes off.
I had success getting the food stains out. Emboldened by this I thought I'd give it a try on some really stubborn stains, although I think I was a little bit too optimistic and a little bit too late as they'd been on the the item in questions for a few months....! Here's what happened when we did some 'painting' at my friends house a while ago - thats quite a stain removal challenge.
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| White top no longer *quite* as white! |
But we learned our lesson the next time we gave 'painting' a go- just take the clothes off her. (and remember to have the bath ready and waiting!)
Sadly Vanish didn't quite work on the paint stained top - although I think that the 'washable' paints were perhaps not really that washable at all. Happy to confirm that it worked on the other stuff, including a mysterious red wine stain on my top.... Its not like me to waste wine!
What about you? Have you found any magic tricks for keeping things clean? Do you start to twitch when things get a bit messy too?! Feel free to leave me a comment below.
This was a sponsored blog post. As mentioned above, Vanish sent me some products for me to review for my blog. As with everything I write on the blog, my opinions are my own. You can find out more about stain removal on their website.
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Labels: family, Kids activities, Mums advice, Parent Advice, Parenthood, stain removal
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