Sitting at dinner last night, I watched how my 3-year-old, almost expertly, made a mess everywhere BUT the placemat I had put under his dinner plate. We have a glass top table and after every meal time it is filthy!
I have tried to cut down on the cleaning up by using tablecloths, but as a new one is needed virtually every day, it was adding to the laundry and ironing – which I hate! I have placemats, as I said. They are easy, wipe-clean things but they are too small and do nothing to soak up the spills.
A few days ago I posted an easy placemat sewing tutorial for my outdoor table. I was so happy with how it turned out. So last night, as I watched the finger marks extend across the tabletop, I knew I need to make a few. But these couldn’t be just any placemats, they had to be massive, kid’s mess-worthy placemats.
Ratting around in my material box I found some appropriate material for the job. After a few minutes at the sewing machine, I had whipped up the first kid’s messy-saving placemat.
Hopefully this will be big enough. It is 45 x 70 cm. Tonight is 0-its first trial run. If cuts down the clean up, I will be running up a few more of these on the weekend.
Do you have any tricks to help clean up after littlies’ meal times?
