Everyone’s bound to have at least one baby gear regret. Domingo and I were doing so well at first. Sure we had some products we didn’t use often (the sleep sheep and moby wrap come to mine) but we did use them a couple of times. They were useful even if briefly, and there really isn’t a cheaper comparable object that would have done well by us.

There’s one purchase I really do regret, even though we use it frequently.

The high chair.

I was so excited about it. It was pretty and pink and girlie, but not too girlie, and soft. So so soft. At first I was worried the seat cushion would be difficult to clean. They most coat the seat cushion in scotch guard because even tomato sauce came out with just a damp towel at first.

So why do I regret it? Because all the extra ‘features’ ended up being way more of a nuisance than a feature.

It started with the straps. They got grimy easily between the creases, and were difficult to clean. The straps seemed superfluous anyway. It’s not like Nicki could fall out through a foot hole, or would stand up and tilt over the side since she was barely sitting at the time. The straps were the first thing to go.

The now empty strap slots were new places to pocket grime. When we moved on to table food for evening meals, (and more and tomato sauce), the seat cushion was in a constant state of mess. It needed to be washed nightly, and the tomato sauce was getting harder and harder to get out completely, especially in the fabric edging. After a couple nights of forgetting to move the cushion from the washer to the drier (and thus Nicki had parked her bottom in the high chair sans cushion several times already) I decided to forgo the cushion during ‘saucy meals’. But after a couple days, I simply stopped putting the seat cushion back on all together.

That lead to a new problem. The seat cushion blocked food particles from the grooves of the various plastic and metal pieces that formed the seat. The high chair was fully adjustable, which meant many parts that could collect food between them. In theory an adjustable high chair is an excellent idea, but in practice we never changed any of the settings. We needed it to be table height, that’s it. I traded washing the seat cover every night, to trying to knock out dried pasta sauce in the foot panel.

This week we were shopping for new furniture and it finally dawned on me. I had effectively turned my $100 high chair into a $20 one. I am sure there are plenty of people out there who will get great use out of a high chair like this one. Evidently, we are not them.

Posted in Family Life, Shopping | Tags: Baby Gear