Mess, Manners and a Dyson Review.

My children are the messiest eaters on the planet. The smallest thinks it is fun to toss any unwanted food over the side of the high chair. The big boy shovels food in so fast most of it ends up everywhere but in his mouth. And no matter how cushy or comfy we make their seats the girls just can’t sit on their bottoms. They kneel, they squat, they stand on their chairs and of course that leads to spills and drops and mess.

I spend a lot of meal times repeating the phrases “Sit on your bottom”, “Eat slowly” and “Noey!!!!” and no matter how much I try to encourage slow, careful, less messy eating habits nothing seems to work. So now I’ve pretty much given up on the preventative side of things, now I’m working on the making cleaning it all up as easy as possible.

So when the lovely people at Dyson asked me if I wanted to try out their fancy new Dyson Digital Slim DC35 multi floor I was a little bit excited. I had visions of zipping around with the cordless vac after every meal, making cleaning up a breeze. I figured if cleaning up was easy then the messy eaters wouldn’t bother me so much any more and I could just let it go… let kids be messy kids.

So the Digital Slim is a rather fancy looking contraption. It comes with an ace little charging unit that you could attach to the wall or the inside of the cupboard which would not only make recharging easy but also make putting it away easy too. No more opening the cupboard to have the vacuum fall out on top of me!

The attachable ‘stick part’ is as long as my standard vacuum and shrinks easily to whatever size you need. It also comes with the short little brush and crevice tool and the way you empty it with one little push of a button is rather handy. But the best part is that it is light and cordless. I really can quickly and easily zip around the floors after a meal or messy activity, no super long extension cord getting tangled around chairs and babies.

It doesn’t suck quite as well as my regular dyson vac, and while it sucked up more dirt and dust that I ever knew I had on my floor, it did have some trouble with the more ‘chunky’ bits. It has, however, been awesome when it comes to cleaning the car (my kids are messy eaters in there too) and it’s great for dusting shelves and around windows and other odd spots.

Sadly, it hasn’t made me lighten up over the messy eaters. I waver between trying to accept that being a little (or a lot) messy when you eat is age appropriate (even for the seven year olds) and that I need to just lighten up, to wondering how I can encourage good table manners and less messy eating.

What do you think?
Do you have messy eaters?
How do you encourage better table manners?

{Disclosure – I was not paid to review this product. The product was provided to me free of charge to use and review. The opinions presented in this post are my own.}