Baking Soda and Peroxide Laundry Booster

This one is dedicated to all of the moms out there who are baffled by that weird discoloration on their car seat covers.

If you're like me, you rarely ever take your car seats out of your car, and when you do, you're horrified by what you see. The twins are big enough and old enough to be sitting in booster seats with seat belt guides. They buckle themselves in, so I don't really look at their seats long enough or often enough to realize how dingy the're getting until I bring them inside for some reason.

I'm not exactly sure what goes into this weird color that covers the seat, so I wasn't sure what would take it out. All of the best guides I could find were based on what type of stain you're fighting. That doesn't help me. To the best of my knowledge, it's probably sweat, dirt, the occasional ground-in food from our road trips, spilled juices of various types, and, in the summer, possibly even lake water. What it has become is something entirely different: one, uniform-colored, disgusting spot that does NOT want to come out with normal laundering.

This is really embarrassing, but for the sake of the experiment, I'll add a picture of the mess so you can see what I mean.

This is after a thorough washing with detergent
and vinegar. I don't have a "before" picture, but let
me assure you it looked basically the same before
and after the first wash.

One particular problem with washing these is that I don't usually have a lot of time to test new ideas with them, or to stain soak them. When they're not in the car, it's because we need the space for some other purpose. Today, my partner is going to pick up big-kid beds for the twins. Then, they have to go right back in the car in case we need them, and because we often do. This is the nature of car seats.

I had to find something that would work relatively quickly, on all kinds of stains, and preferably not require lots of scrubbing (if you recall from previous posts, I spend a lot of time scrubbing the pit stains out of shirts already).

Here's what I tried:

1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup peroxide

Add both directly to your wash, as well as the detergent you would normally use, let it agitate for a bit to stir it all up, then open the machine and let it soak for at least a couple of hours. I've read that the baking soda and peroxide mixture loses its potency after only 6 hours, so any soaking for more than 6 hours is probably pointless but it won't damage your fabrics. In other words, you can let it soak over night, or from breakfast time until lunch if you want. You could leave it there all day if you forget about it, but it will stop doing any stain lifting after about 6 hours.

There are two booster seat covers in there.
The other one is mostly brown with some pink,
so it is less shocking in the before photos.

Obviously, this isn't quite as fast as I would like for it to be, but the advantage is that I get to just leave it there, out of my way, for the soak time.

Since this was my first attempt with this method, I was obsessively checking the load as it soaked to see if anything had changed. About 3 hours in, I was starting to seriously doubt I was accomplishing anything at all. When I finally transferred it to the dryer at almost 6 hours, I still wasn't sure.

This is the result of the baking soda
and peroxide soak and then regular
wash cycle

The truth is, I'm pretty sure it's cleaner than it was. You be the judge. I know the lighting is different in each picture, but I think it's still evident that at least some of the nasty came out in the wash. I'm not totally satisfied with the results. I'm less embarrassed about it than I was, at least, but that might just be because I put an honest effort into getting it clean so I have an excuse. There still remains a strange discoloration on the seat cover. You may particularly notice it on the right side pink area. Thankfully, I have another plan and will revisit this cleaning project after a trip to the store.

After doing a bit of research, the internet oracle provided me with this little bit of information: While the recipes I found use baking soda, a more effective alternative might be washing soda. I'll have to try that once I've acquired some. But I think that baking soda and peroxide might work just fine on less incredible stains, and would probably be great for kids' clothes and cloth diapers if you're trying to avoid using harsh chemicals. Plus, baking soda is something you're more likely to have just sitting around in your pantry.

*Note - I am aware that I could buy a back-up set of car seat covers and allow myself more time for stain removal. But I like my solution.