Table Saving Solution — Fitted Vinyl Tablecloths

I learned young that houses with small chil­dren are where good fur­ni­ture comes to die. I inher­ited my first kitchen table from an aunt whose three chil­dren had spent the last 15 years break­ing it in. No amount of clean­ing could remove all the hid­den patches of stickiness.

When I even­tu­ally replaced that table I was sad­dened when the first kitchen table I pur­chased started to go the same way. Homemade play dough, fin­ger paint­ing, and a tod­dler whose first instinct was to gnaw on the table rather than her food took their toll. Then I opened a home day­care and we gath­ered round the table to learn about ice with food col­or­ing and salt, made can­dles, and melted crayons. Little bits of our days ground them­selves per­ma­nently into our table, which I real­ized was likely to last just a few years rather than carry us through the next decade so I looked for a solu­tion. It was there that I dis­cov­ered the best appli­ca­tion of vinyl  ever: Fitted vinyl tablecloths.

We love the round ones avail­able at Happy Accents, and have also found a woman who makes cus­tom fit­ted cloths for unusu­ally sized and shaped tables.

My vinyl table­cloth habit (my sev­enth is on its way here as I type)  is prob­a­bly worse for the envi­ron­ment than my drive through cheese­burger habit, but I will spare you the analy­sis this time…