Reusing car seat stored in attic for 3 years

[Emilia35]

I got DC1's car seat out of the attic yesterday to check its condition after it's been in my attic for 3 years. The straps were a bit mouldy so I removed covers and straps and washed them all in the washing machine. It now looks great and has never been in an accident.

However I've since read that storing a car seat in the attic can damage the plastic due to the changes in temperature and apparently car seat straps should never be washed/submerged as it damages the fibres and makes them unsafe?! Is this true?

I've emailed kinderkraft to ask for new straps but the delivery cost is ridiculous, so may as well buy a new one.

Question is, would it still be okay to use the car seat for DC2 or should I definitely buy a new one? New one wouldn't fit my pram so a bit of a pain on top of making me feel awful sending more stuff to the landfill!

I’d think it would be ok I’d use it

Surely car seat straps can be washed, hasn't everyone had a baby puke all over their car seat; are we supposed to buy new car seats every time it happens

It wouldn’t have crossed my mind to not use it!

I think it's more to do with fluctuating temperatures. An attic if it's not lined and boarded as if it were a room will have extremes of hot and cold over a period of time. Not much different to it being in a car come to that!!
Have a look at this -
www.goodeggcarsafety.com/blog/reusing-child-car-seats.html#:~:text=Seats%20that%20are%20constantly%20left,hot%20or%20very%20cold%20countries.

I wouldn’t use it after 3 years in the loft.

Plastic can become brittle by extremes of temperatures but you’re unlikely to be able to tell by looking at it.

I used my maxi cosy 3 times, for the 3rd child it'd got a bit mucky in the loft so I spent £50 on a new cover and I washed the straps. I wasn't going to buy new seat each time and I'm not sure the nonsense about the straps is true anyway, I used washing up liquid not bleach! Don't people clean their carseats when their kids spill stuff in them anyway? We've had to clean other seats for various spills over the years. Unless the seat has been in an accident or is obviously damaged I'd reuse.

The first car seat we had had an expiry date on it, might be another thing to consider.
I would follow the advice about storage, though. This is the kind of detail that would torture you if anything ever happened.

So what do you do when you buy a seat that goes from 1 up until they no longer need a carseat (10 ish)? The seat lives in the car, below freezing at night in winter, 40 degrees plus in the sun with the windows closed in summer. Are you buying a new car seat every other year at £300 a pop? The temperature is far more extreme in your car than the loft that's for sure.

Cut the straps and take to the tip

for £100 you can get a decent seat maxi cosi cabriofix isize.

mould is so dangerous to adults, let alone a newborn baby, and the spores will still be on there. Also loft storage isn’t recommended due to the high and low temps.

@SnowyOwl1 we never had car seats that were designed to last that long.

They will all have expiry dates on them so even if a seat can safely protect children through a range of different ages, it doesn’t mean that it will remain safe to keep the same seat for that many years.

Thank you all for the responses! Interesting about the high and low temperature is - what should we do over freezing winter days and very hot summer days when car seats are left in the car? Do they have to be replaced yearly? :O

Think for DC2 I'll now get a new one as the anxiety of whether it was completely safe or not won't be worth it!

This article suggests that most car seats will have an expiry date of 5-6 years from manufacture

www.aviva.co.uk/insurance/motor/car-insurance/childrens-car-seat-laws-where-do-we-stand/

Generally expiry is about 6 years from date of manufacture as the foam degrades so it can't absorb impact as well. This also happens due to how it's treated sometimes. I'd take the cover off and see how the foam underneath looks if you give it a prod then decide if you want to risk it. Crumbling is a very best sign. Personally I didn't take the risk but ours looked pretty bad. I now store them in a cupboard between kids and yes it is a pain.

The attic thing goes around all the car seat groups on FB but I can't trace it to an original source and I highly suspect somebody just made it up because it sounded right to them, and it's been repeated so often everyone assumes it's true. There is nothing inherent to attics that makes them unsuitable storage for car seats. Temperatures are not that extreme in most attics anyway.

However, since you've had mould on yours, I would replace it. Mould is a problem on car seats because any chemicals you can use to remove the mould could damage the car seat, and if you just wash the car seat covers in the normal way as approved in the manual then you're not likely to kill the mould spores. There is some suggestion as well that mould can damage the integrity of the plastic and/or straps.