How to clean your playpen

We have one playpen that is a bit smaller than a typical playpen. Over the years this playpen has been our travel bed for our babies.  Since its slightly smaller it fits all the better into our trunk.  So if we were going to a friends house, and going to be there past bedtime we could pack and use the playpen said friends home and still have the kids in bed at their usual time.

Even though Audrey is now in a "big girl" bed, we still took the playpen camping with us this past long weekend for her to sleep in one last time (a place we knew she couldn't get out of since our cabin was so close to the waters edge).

Needless to say, after our camping trip up north our playpen needed a good cleaning.  Then it occurred to me that many people may struggle with how to best clean a play pen. Since I run a home daycare and have kids sleeping in playpens on  a daily basis this cleaning method is invaluable to me.

Here is how to clean a playpen:

Step One: Notice how icky and grimy your playpen is.

Ick

 Step Two: Put a stopper in your bathtub and run water as hot as you can stand it. Then add two cap fulls of laundry soap. *Although I make my own laundry soap, I did go with a commercial product for this purpose*

This is the commercial laundry soap I used

 Step Three: Place your playpen in the bathtub like so. Unless you have a giant, 3 foot deep tub you will need to leave the playpen folded up or shes not gonna fit in your tub.   Open up the mat, though, and lay that at the bottom of the tub. Yes, the mat has a heavy duty cardboard as the base.  If you follow my directions, no it wont be ruined by the washing.  I have washed playpens many times.... it will be okay.

position of playpen in my bathtub

 Run lots of water in your tub.  Keep it hot hot hot.

Tub filling up with water

Step Four: Wait half an hour. Just let it sit and soak. When you return you will start to see the icky grime seeping out.

Ick starting to be drawn out. 

Step Five: Although the water is cooler now after a half hour of sitting in the tub its still pretty darn hot! So although your playpen needs "swishing" in the water, please keep your hands out of the water as much as you can.   No scrubbing is required, just lots of movement.  Since your folded playpen was not likely to be totally submerged in the water you will want to flip it and wait another half hour.

Step Six:  Be simultaneously impressed and disgusted with all the nasty ick you got out of that playpen.

*shudder*   ewwwwww

Pull the stopper from the tub and drain that nasty brown water. Again using hot water rinse your playpen and the mat. Rinse them very well until the water runs clear.  You don't want to see soap suds or any more filth . 

Step Seven: Take your playpen outside on a bright sunny day to dry it.  It is important that you lay your mat as pictured below so that the cardboard base of the mat can dry properly and not warp.  If you lay the mat on a flat surface only one side can dry at a time.  That means it will take longer to dry and may warp in the process.  Since your playpen will be very wet from its bath you will need several hours of it sitting in the sun to dry thoroughly.

Step Eight: Once its all dry (be sure its very dry, you don't want it to mold while being folded up for storage) rejoice in how fresh and clean your playpen is and how very easy the whole process was :)

Enjoy, my gentle readers, and Happy Thursday!