9 potty training buys: the 4 that earned their place

The potty by the radiator is the one that worked. It cost €15 and it is plain white; it has done more potty training than the other eight products combined. That sentence is the whole post; the receipts are more interesting than the conclusion. We bought nine potty things between spring and summer 2026. Four got used daily. Five came back or slid under the sink; one lives in the pram basket as an apology. Potty training gear is everything you buy for the weeks your toddler switches out of nappies. The honest total for us was €145 spent and €32 kept working; €113 came back or went unused.

[The method, so you can judge the numbers: we kept every potty receipt in the same folder as the training log from the potty timeline post. The ledger below is that folder.]

The 4 that earned their place

1. The BabyBjörn Potty Chair, €15

This is the €15 white potty from the training timeline; it finally gets named properly. It earned its place by being the lowest-friction object in the flat. In week two the toddler carried it into the kitchen herself, which I did not appreciate at the time. The high back matters more than I expected. On the 7:40pm attempts she would sit on it and lean back like a small executive. Where it fails: it is a living-room potty, nothing more. It does not travel; it does not shrink. We now keep it by the radiator permanently, because moving it started negotiations.

2. The IKEA Lockig, €4

One potty per floor is standard advice for houses. Our flat has one floor and one long hallway; it still earned a second potty. The Lockig cost €4, which is the correct price for a second potty. A second potty’s job is to be everywhere and matter nowhere. It is one smooth piece of plastic, so cleaning it takes ten seconds under the tap. No seams and no padding. The back is low and the seat sits shallow; the toddler outgrew the fit by late summer. The hallway potty quietly lost to the bathroom one. It stays because €4 is not a decision.

3. The Rotho Babydesign seat insert, €7

The insert is the bridge product. Every insert-versus-floor-potty thread on the internet is really asking about the bridge, not the war. We needed both stages. The floor potty handled the start; the Rotho insert handled the move to the big toilet. That move happened earlier than I predicted, because kita uses normal toilets and she wanted to copy the older kids. The insert goes in the kita bag on swimming days. Where it fails: the seat is cold in winter, a fact she announced to the whole bathroom. It also requires the next item.

4. The IKEA Bolmen step stool, €6

The stool is the only buy on this list that will outlive potty training entirely. It earns its keep twice a day at the sink for handwashing, then once more at the toilet. We bought wood-effect IKEA plastic instead of soft cheap plastic. The €25 bath whale taught us what happens to flimsy plastic under toddler treatment. The Bolmen slides on our tiled floor, though; one rubber foot glued on fixed it in five minutes. Glue it before the first wobble, not after.

The baby watched most of it from the bouncer, chewing a strap. The three priciest buys all sat in the failed half.

The 5 that didn’t

5. The My Carry Potty, €27

A genuinely good product that did not fit our life. Sealed lid, a handle the toddler could hold. She used it twice. Once at a playground; once behind the pram at a street festival, in a moment I still respect. Then summer ended and we counted. Our radius is a 600-meter playground and a tram network with toilets in stations. The potty is not wrong; the city was. My partner argued for it before a train trip, because the ICE toilets were a known disaster. I argued we would never fill it. We were both right, which is the worst outcome, because a shared prediction means neither of us gets to gloat. The potty lives in the pram basket now; redemption may come next year.

6. The discounter sticker chart kit, €9

The kit came with a laminated chart, forty stickers, plus a reward ladder in the instructions. The stickers were popular for one week; the chart did nothing. We already had the accident log notebook from the regression post. That notebook sat on the fridge where the chart was supposed to be. You cannot bribe a process you are already measuring. While the stickers survive as general toddler currency, the chart holds a door closed against a draft.

7. The Summer Infant musical potty, €30

Returned within the week. A sensor plays a fanfare when the potty detects success. I could not get past what it teaches: that the moment worth celebrating is the one the plastic notices. We had already learned this in the toilet-lever era, where every announcement got a reaction and the announcements multiplied. A cheering potty is a lever with batteries. The shop took it back without argument, which suggests we were not the first.

8. The drugstore seat liners, €12

Soft liners that snap into the Rotho insert; they feel considerate and perform badly. The brand is a drugstore own-label, which I mention only for completeness. Because the seams hold crumbs while the padding holds warmth, the washing instructions were optimistic. Our toddler is not delicate; the smooth plastic insert wiped clean and never once bothered her. The liners went under the sink in July. Softness is a feature for the buyer, not the sitter.

9. The Thermobaby ladder seat, €35

The most expensive fail. A ladder that clips over the toilet so a toddler climbs instead of being lifted. On paper it is independence. On our narrow Altbau toilet it wobbled. A wobbling platform under a cautious two-year-old produces fewer toilet trips, since confidence needs a still floor. Her feet found different footing on every attempt. We returned it and bought the €7 Rotho insert. The difference in her shoulders when she sat down told the whole story. If your toilet is wide and your child is bold, the reviews say these are great. Ours is not that toilet; she is not that child.

How we picked these

The ledger taught us a selection rule set that the shopping guides skip.

• The daily-use test. A product stays if it got used on ordinary days for eight weeks. Twice in May is a May story, not a place.
• The wipe test. Smooth plastic beats padding and fabric, plus every part that snaps apart. Every padded item lost to a plain one.
• The price ceiling. Nothing on the kept list costs more than €15. The three fails above €25 returned or shelved.
• Borrow or buy cheap first. The playpen taught us to test the flat before trusting the review. A €4 second potty answers “do we need one downstairs” for less than a coffee.
• Buy for the flat you have. Our toilet is narrow; our radius is city-small. The three best buys fit the floor plan; the worst buys fit the fantasy.

Filed under gear, where the receipts live. The method behind our testing is in our editorial policy; what happens when training stalls is in the regression post. Our secondhand gear ledger has the prices the potty missed.