• 31
• Jul
• 2007

How to give your Car Seat seat belts a good clean

If you are like us and passing on your first borns car seat to number two child, or giving it to a needy relative you’ll probably want to make sure it looks as close to new as possible. Your youngest probably won’t be bothered if their new car seat is looking a little grimy, but you’ll want to give them something new and shiny looking!

The covers of most car seats are removable and easily put in the wash – Word of warning pay very close attention to how you dismantled the seat to release the cover. It can be quite a complicated process and by the time your seat has be dismantled, cover placed in the washing machine and hung out to dry I’ll guarantee you’ll have forgotten which bit goes where! If you have a digital camera or a phone that takes pictures it is well worth documenting in images the steps you went through to take apart the seat.

The one piece I found the hardest to clean was the seat belts that are attached to the car seat (we are talking ‘car seats’ not ‘booster seats’ here). After a year or two’s use all the food, pen, dribble, milk and greasy finger marks etc really take the toll.

Below are the steps we went through to give our car seat belts that good as new look.

1. Dismantle the seat and separate the belts from the frame (please pay close attention to where and how the fasten to the seat)
2. Fill a bucket with hot, almost boiling water and detergent – any washing up liquid will do.
3. Give the belts a good stir. If they are so dirty that the water turns mucky replace the water with a new load.
4. Remove the straps from the water after it stops turning dirty. Lay the belts flat on a table or piece of board. With a stiff brush, brush in the direction of the webbing. Do this until you have a nice lather of foam on the belts.
5. Rinse off the foam, if there is still marking we used a pressure washer on them at this stage and it brought them up a treat (make sure they are secured at one end before doing this else they’ll disappear down the garden like a rocket!!).
6. All that is left is to hang them out to dry. Place them on the line with something heavy attached to the end hanging down off the line, this will stop them drying all crinkly.

That should be it, by the time the cover is dry your seatbelts should be too and you can put everything back together (you do remember the way to put it all back, didn’t you??).

If you have a top tip for getting that good as new look, please post a comment below and share it with us