Alternatives to oil cloth to cover dining table?

[DirtyDancing]

We need to cover our dining table whilst weaning our DS. We bought an oil cloth cover & it's stained terribly. It's gone really orange where he eats. Probably from his favourite spag bol! We've tried putting a tray down with suckers, but it doesn't stay & he lifts up.

Any suggestions of something that's wipe clean would be much appreciated!

[CoolCat2014]

You can buy wipe clean tablecloth material in dunelm by the metre, maybe give that a try? They will cut it to the right length for you.

[slightlyinsane]

Not sure what kind of budget your on but the best thing we did was to get some glass for the top of our table. Wipe cleap for everything, from weaning to feltips, glue, glitter etc but also stops them being able to dent table etc.

[Earlybird]

I'd continue using the stained oilcloth while your ds is young - you can get something better when he is older and not such a messy eater. But until then, simply change to a nicer cloth when you have guests.

[DirtyDancing]

slightlyinsane at the risk of looking slightly insane myself... We actually have a glass table, but we got a wooden cover made for it and put oil cloth over it! It our defence we are naive first time parents and thought the glass might be dangerous / get broken when DS banged his plate/ metal spoon on it etc etc (it does actually have a chip in one end so it's not that robust!)

I think we will keep stained oil cloth. Get a nice table cloth for guests and perhaps revert back to glass table in the near future!!!

DH and I have just had a good giggle, that we may have unnecessarily complicated this one

[KatyN]

How about cheap tablecloths from ikea or somewhere similar? Brightly coloured (orange) and chuck them in the wash each night?

[gildedlily]

I know it says not to but I've rubbed a little washing liquid and laundry bleach onto the stasin and bunged the oilcloth in the washer at 40 degrees. the edges roll a little but no harm done.

[PartyFops]

Noooooooo! Don't replace it! Put it on the washing line and I promise you the stains will vanish in the sunlight.

Truly it works

HTH

[GingerDoodle]

Probably not the cheapest solution but we had a piece of toughened glass cut to the size of our wooden table long before DD arrived as we wanted to preserve the wood.

Its fabs - wipe clean and despite having numerous scratches still makes the table look great.