So yeah, my whole family has been sick…except me. Literally. Everybody. All with the same horrible stomach bug that keeps you in the bathroom for eight hours, and then keeps you in bed for the next 72.

So, I’ve been trying my best to NOT get sick. I don’t have time to right now. Too much work, too many things to do. *Knock on wood* I still haven’t gotten sick, and I think I’m in the clear.

Now, with all of this vomiting going around, I’ve had time to figure out some new tricks for removing said vomit from various baby items, namely Mr. Teddy. I know that this is probably the least interesting topic ever to people who don’t have kids, but trust me…if you do have kids, this stuff is gold.

As mentioned in a previous post, laundry detergent might not be the best answer, at least the way I tried to do it. I put some powder detergent on a wash cloth, wet it, and rubbed it on Teddy’s fur. This was a bad idea. It got way too soapy. I couldn’t get the soap off, and I ended up putting him in the shower. Then he got kind of gross, and it took him about 10 hours to dry. Not good when your child is used to going to sleep with Teddy…his absence is definitely noted.

However, I have found that liquid detergent isn’t bad if applied in a very small amount. Take an old tooth brush (or any other brushy/scrubby thing you have that you don’t need that is fairly small), and put a little bit of detergent on it, wet it, and brush onto Teddy’s dirty areas.

Then, rinse the brush out, and once there’s no soap on it, brush Teddy with clean water. This should get a good bit of the soap out. Then take a kind of wet/damp wash cloth and wipe the rest of the soap off, and maybe give him a nice little sponge bath all over with the damp cloth. The goal is to not get Teddy really wet, because you want him to dry quickly.

For drying, I hung him up by his feet with shoe laces from my bedroom fan so dear daughter couldn’t see him. I thought that might be too traumatic for her to see. He was mostly dry in about an hour, and then I just used the hair dryer on him for about three minutes to get him the rest of the way dry.

Here are some more things I’d like to try next time (god forbid there is a next time…ugghh!):
1. Mother-in-law suggested putting Teddy in a pillow case, and letting him go through the gentle cycle in the washer and the dryer on low. I’ll think I’ll test this on one of the other stuffed animals before trying it on Teddy though.
2. Same method for the actual cleaning (with the tooth brush), but rinsing him off with a kitchen sink sprayer. He would get more wet, but it would probably also get more soap out.

Seriously, if anyone has tips on this, I’d love to hear them! As long as children vomit, I’m pretty sure mothers will struggle with how to get vomit off of Teddy