Cleaning Your Pack'N'Play - HoJo's Life Adventures

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With our newest addition and my loving to be ~~cheap~~ frugal, we buy a lot of items second hand. Little J actually has a brand new pack’n’play that he sleeps in nightly {thanks, Gamma!}, but I wanted a second one for trips to the river, camping, and traveling. We scored one at a rummage for $15! WAHOO!! I know it came from a good family, but I have no idea how old the pack n play is. That made me want to clean it!

Can you clean a pack’n’play? How? Would it work? Would I ruin it?

All of these questions ran through my mind. What’s a mom to do when she has such questions? Why, turn to Google and Pinterest of course!

I came across many articles on how to clean your pack and play, but these two were the ones I ended up referencing. Thanks, ILoveMyKidsBlog and FullTimeFrugal!

Notice I say that I referenced these two websites. In Heather-ism, that means I read them quickly, did what I wanted, and then went back and reread to see what I did wrong…. =) Now I’ll share what I did and what you should do to get the cleanest pack’n play/playpen around!

First I got the bathtub water as hot as I could! While it was filling, I added half a capful of laundry detergent. I also added about half a cup of baking soda, one cup vinegar, 10 drops lavender essential oil, and 11 drops lemon essential oil. (I’m a dump kind of gal, so these are all approximate – except that lemon oil, exactly 1 extra drop of that puppy slipped past me!) Mix the water around really well!

Next I took the base/mattress of the pack’n’play and put it on the bottom of my tub. It wanted to float, so I set the pack’n’play on top of it. I sloshed it around a bit, set the timer for 30 minutes, and walked away.

When I went back after half an hour, my water already looked like this.

I don’t have the biggest tub, so I then had to flip everything. That water was still H.O.T. so I highly recommend you use more caution than I did! Once again slosh everything around a bit…

When you walk back into your bathroom, plan to be disgusted and impressed with yourself all at the same time. Your tub water will look nasty BUT you will know how much cleaner your pack n play now is!

This is where you really need to rinse everything off. You can do this with the shower head right in the tub, outside with a hose, or you can be a bonehead like me and just not do it. Sheesh! DUH! How did I skip this step!!!

Then simply take your washed and rinsed item outside. Set it up like it’s going to be used and place the mattress on top. We left ours outside for about four hours and it was totally dry.

Correction, we ended moving the mattress part to the railing because our lovely South Dakota winds kept blowing it down. I’m not sure this was ideal, but it worked. This part was about 90% dry when we brought everything back in the house. We happened to have a fan blowing in our living room, so it spent the evening in front of the fan to ensure it was 100% dry.

7/22/15 Edit – I sent my mom this link so she could wash the pack’n’plays at her house. Below are the two she washed. But she also wanted me to add that they are HEAVY when wet! Just be prepared for that. I had a bit of water around out my apartment door, but nothing major since I let the playpen sit in my tub to drip dry a bit before moving everything outside.