The Inglesina Fast Table Chair is legendary for a reason. It consistently ranks among the best portable or hook-on highchairs– if not the best– for its quality and ease of use. We purchased a traditional highchair at first, but found we used the Inglesina Fast Table Chair far more often, and have used the Fast exclusively since. The two things we love about it are its portability and that our baby could sit right alongside us at the table during meals.
The Good: It's Convenient and Comfortable
The Fast is convenient to use at home or on the go with its simple twist-tight hooks, and is compatible with most tables, being able to hook on to tables between 0.8-3.3” thick. It’s also comfortable with its high backrest and extra padded seat.
The Bad: Cleaning It
However, the one (huge) negative drawback in this otherwise great product is cleaning it. It’s a pain to clean. We saw one or two reviews addressing this issue before purchasing the Fast, but given all its high praise, we thought it wasn't a big deal. Maybe for most it wasn’t, but for us, we dreaded removing the cover. The Inglesina website and other parents said that the seat could be wiped down. It's true, but sometimes (all the time) the food got everywhere and soaked into the chair, and we didn’t want our baby to sit in the food-stained seat for the next meal.
Initially, we were torn between A) letting our baby explore different foods and make a mess in doing so, or B) trying to keep mealtimes a little less messy because we didn’t want to clean the highchair. For us, neither were acceptable options. I’m definitely on the “keeping things neat and tidy” side, so letting our baby throw food everywhere took some adjusting and letting go. But that’s what babies do, and we wanted to encourage that autonomy, curiosity, and learning. However, there was so much to do in the day already, and so much cleaning that had to be done, the last thing I wanted was to have to clean another mess that was preventable.
For us, the pain points were:
- disassembling the highchair
- the inevitable downtime that occurred when washing it
Disassembling the highchair to remove the cover is straightforward and pretty easy after doing it a couple times. Parents with this highchair can relate– we’ve all gotten pretty good at disassembling it. But wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to take it down so often?
The washing part was fine. It’s recommended to hand wash the cover, which we tried the first time. It was not effective in getting the food out, so we threw it in the washing machine. We’ve since had it for almost a year, and it’s held up well after multiple washes. However, air drying it still made downtime a problem.
The Solution We Created
Frustrated with what we saw as precious time being spent cleaning the highchair– and wanting a simpler, quicker solution– we looked online for an easy fix. There were tons of different types of baby covers out there, but for the life of us, we could not find one for a hook-on highchair, specifically for the Inglesina Fast Table.
As new parents, we’re so lucky to live in a time when there’s a baby product for almost anything you can think of. When I was pregnant and shopping for items and getting recommendations from friends, I always thought– Do I really need that? Is that a must-have item or a gimmick? There were so many things we thought we didn’t need, but we're glad to have when our little one arrived. (The Diaper Genie for one. It has its flaws and is definitely more of a luxury than a must-have). Long story short– there are so many products out there to make our lives as parents easier, but we could not find a solution for our hook-on high chair problem anywhere.
After searching online and asking friends and neighbors for recommendations, we ended up creating our own solution, which you can find here. If you currently use the Inglesina Fast Table Chair or any hook-on highchair, we hope you find this item to be an effective solution to the universal issue that hook-on highchairs seem to have.
Overall, We Recommend It
Still, we love our Inglesina. In addition to using it daily at home, we had plans to use it for outings and travel as our baby got older before recent events kept us mostly indoors. Oh, well. It’s still a great addition to our home. We’ll be using it every day until our baby outgrows it, and hopefully can use it outside when things settle down.