How to clean those tiny bleepin' toys!

Piglet likes his toys.  He really likes the ones with lots of little grooves and nooks and crannies. He especially likes toys while he's eating and is particularly fond of putting them in his mouth between bites.  This presents a problem for mommy as I am clean/neat freak + germaphobe.  For awhile, I used toothpicks, bottle brushes and the nail on my pinky finger to remove all remnants of apple, mango and the like. It was time consuming, but worked pretty well.  Then came the hedgehog.  Hedgehog presented a REAL problem because his little grooves are so tiny and very uniform and also cover 3/4 of his little plastic body.  Every time I thought I'd gotten every last bit of mashed peas, hedgehog would taunt me from the dish rack..."neenerneerner look at me...I still have peas by my butt! Bahahahahaaaa!"  It was crazy making.


Then one day I was scrubbing potatoes for a (tasteeeeeee) au gratin and it came to me.  THE CORN BRUSH (which I use to scrub potatoes too when I can't find the potato brush).  It's the PERFECT device for cleaning all those bleepin' grooves!  I tried it immediately and it worked like a charm.  Can you guess which toy was the first to receive a special super duper deep cleaning by the corn brush / moi?  :)  Since then I can't stop thinking of other great uses for my corn brush. (That has to be the oddest sentence I've ever written).  I bought this brush for around $3.00 at Zupans. If you have small kids who are constantly throwing stuff on the floor, buy this brush (or one like it).  It does an amazing job cleaning things with tiny crevices.

The corn brush now shares permanent living space with my bottle brush and regular kitchen sponge.  Move over Scotch Brite, now there's something meatier.