Here is a quick little tip of something that is working well for us right now. I love this little white toddler table that we got for Scarlette (it’s this one from IKEA) but I did not love the thought of continually scrubbing crayon and sharpie off of it. I don’t even know where she finds the sharpies, y’all. I think I have them all under lock and key and then I turn around and there is a trail of blue marker all the way down the hallway and she’s sitting in her floor furiously drawing on the screen of her magna doodle with it.
And when I asked “Scarlette! Why did you do that?!” she answered without pausing “Well, I needed da cuhwor bwue.”
Okay then.
We also do afternoon snack time at this table and I did not relish (see what I did there?) the thought of scrubbing sweet potato off of it because that stuff dries like cement. Plus, Scarlette is not quite adept with utensils and thus, I find remnants of food everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
I picked up this oilcloth tablecloth for a regular sized table on clearance at Target after Valentine’s Day. I paid thirty cents for it, which makes me happy every single time I look at it because, well, it doesn’t take much to excite me y’all.
I cut it into quarters and then taped the raw edges under with duct tape. I’m very high-tech when it comes to my DIY projects, obviously. Then I used a little bit of removable putty on the edges of the table to keep it from moving (aka to prevent Scarlette from repeatedly throwing it in the floor.)
So now she can scribble outside the lines or spill maple syrup everywhere and the oilcloth makes for a super quick clean up since I can just swipe it with a wet rag. And when it gets a bit a lot raggedy I just replace it with one of the other pieces I cut.
When I was trying to get a couple of photos to share with y’all, Scarlette said “I WEAR DA COWBOY HAT EAYURS! I TAKE DA PITCHERS!” and then she ran to her toy chest, put on her bunny ears and posed like this:
