After our big trip to Georgia last week, I noticed something. Our car seats were getting… yucky. Our kids don’t eat in them that often, but they do eat or drink in them sometimes. And sometimes they bring little pieces of outside into the car with them, or take off their playground-dirt-and-sand-laden shoes right when they get in. Obviously, this means that there’s a fair amount of junk that gets on and in the car seat. So I took on the particularly grueling job of cleaning them.

Because there were no major spills, a “before” picture wouldn’t really do the job justice. But I had three toddler seats (all Britax Marathons) and a infant seat (also a Britax) to clean up, so I got on their website for tips and guidelines.

*Never clean your car seat without following 4the manufacturer’s guidelines. You can inadvertently harm the seat.*

The first thing I did was remove the covers from the seats and soak them in warm water with a little Dreft and some Oxyclean. Yes, I used the washer so they’d all fit, but I didn’t actually run the washer with them in there (they are handwash only). It was simply my biggest vessel!

I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but the water was grey. Gross. I filled it up and rinsed them several times to get rid of the gunk.

Next, I vacuumed the seats themselves. This was pretty darn labor-intensive, because there are many nooks and crannies to get into.

You can see where the belts attach there’s a whole lot of grass (and other yuck) in there.

I also wiped off the seat protectors. These are Brica, and I got them when we got our new car. We didn’t want to immediately ruin the leather, so these came in handy. I really like them!

Then I stopped to do this…
because sometimes when you’re cleaning, you just need to have a cold beer.

Then I continued with wiping the straps off. Britax said to not use soap on them, so I took a clean Scotch pad and hot water and went to work wiping them down.

By this time I felt like my covers had been rinsed enough, so I hung them up to dry and set a fan on them, so they’d be ready to get back in the car the next morning. I was actually surprised to find that they were dry before I went to bed that night!

Our new fancy handrail has gotten some serious laundry usage.

I also drank another beer, because half the time I was cleaning, I was also doing this…

with my cranky-pants baby. At least he’s good for back carries now! He loved it back there.

Have you ever cleaned your car seats out? I hadn’t ever really done it, so it was pretty gross. We had only ever cleaned up spills or spit ups. What was your process? How often do you do it?