Megan McArdle comments on Steven Brill's new article on the teachers' union. I'll probably come back to this one.
How to clean a dirty high chair?
Lisa Belkin writes about the devastated local school budgets. Our school budget was defeated and our schools are in serious trouble. On Monday, I another town meeting until 11PM. Three members of the six town council members refused to give more money to the schools. There was deadlock for most of the night, until some backroom deals were made. The end result is still really bad. Our schools are in big trouble. The teachers are demoralized. I'm now serving on the Foundation committee, but turned down a request to run for office.
Apt. 11d 
I can imagine that clip being Exhibit A to demonstrate unfitness to have custody of one’s children. Use a garden hose instead (outside).
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Well, Amy P., some of us live in apartments.
Clean all plastic with ammonia. Actually, clean everything with ammonia and/or denatured alcohol, that’s my method. Fancy store-bought cleaning products are a waste of money.
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I clean everything with baby wipes. I have no idea what is in them, but they work on grease and soap scum.
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I throw them away and bought new ones. I simply don’t believe they can be adequately cleaned. I mean, maybe an autoclave, but they’d probably melt. Fortunately my kids don’t need them anymore.
I just discovered that baby wipes work for cleaning oil paint off one’s skin. So I am revisiting baby wipes.
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Alternately, don’t buy that kind of chair: buy the kind that straps to a kitchen chair and can be entirely disassembled and put in the dishwasher.
We were given a secondhand high chair of the kind in the video, full of unreachable crevices, and the straps couldn’t be unknotted because they were too food-encrusted. Yuck.
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y81,
Moving into a house with a garden hose when my oldest was turning five was totally life-changing–water pressure is so much faster than practically any other cleaning method. In the old days, when the spirit moved me (for instance during a pre-labor cleaning frenzy), I’d spend an hour or so and go through a huge pile of Q-tips in my kitchen and never quite get the high chair clean. The straps were particularly crusty and couldn’t be easily removed or put back in place.
“Alternately, don’t buy that kind of chair: buy the kind that straps to a kitchen chair and can be entirely disassembled and put in the dishwasher.”
I’m sadder but wiser now–it took a while to realize that the Fisher Price high chair had hundreds of #$%!&*$# crevices on the underside which nonetheless somehow manage to get baby food crusted in them.
The high chair I bought for my second child was basically the sort you describe. When we lived in an apartment, I was able to just soak it in the bathtub. That does still leave the issue of the dining room chair which you are sacrificing (although a towel between the seat and the chair does offer some protection).
In happier news, I am pleased to report that the good people of Etsy make replacement high chair seat covers.
“So I am revisiting baby wipes.”
I don’t think I will ever stop buying baby wipes.
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I spent most of yesterday talking with my daughter’s assistant Kindergarten teacher. She has four kids and still doesn’t know whether she has a job next year. And this is our last week of school.
We used our high chair for as little time as possible. As soon as she could sit in a small, cheap booster seat that strapped to the chair, which could fit into sink to be washed, we just let it stay dirty most of the time.
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When you do run for office, I am writing you a check. Can’t wait to see that post.
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When you do run for office, I am writing you a check.
Why wait? There are many fewer regulations if you’d send the check now.
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Stokke high chairs. There is no other.
Usable after high-chair time for the years when they’re not quite big enough for full-scale chairs, extraordinarily hard to tump over (even intentionally), barely any nooks or crannies, darn-near indestructible.
Hm. That’s an issue; I’m pretty sure they were a bunch cheaper in Yurp. One the other hand, it’s likely to see daily use until at least age 10.
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Stokke high chairs.
That’s what we have. My wife went Nordic for baby stuff.
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That’s wrong. Our crib is Stokke. The high chair is something else Euro-ish. If it’s in our house and made of nice wood, it belongs to our son.
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“… If it’s in our house and made of nice wood, it belongs to our son…”
We bought a fair amount of wood. Blocks, train sets. This was our choice. Our kids preferred brightly colored plastic, and it cleaned more easily, too. Eventually, we mostly went plastic.
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