“Remember: when disaster strikes, the time to prepare has passed.” -Steven Cyros
“I’m looking forward to the day when my kids can make a mess at NOT my house.” -Unknown
Okay, mamas. We’ve all been there, right? Wake up to a rather large mess due to our kids exploring or just plain having fun. Or even coming home from work to similar experiences. Where was dad at the time? Usually napping or busy in another room for 15-20 minutes, give or take. But we all know, kids only need a few minutes to create a HUGE disaster.
Mine have created more than their fair share…together and separately. I have spent this entire weekend cleaning up my daughter’s latest catastrophe.
I was having quite a terrible day at work when I received a message from the hubby…it was a photo of my daughter.
“And yes, a good bit of that is permanent marker. I do not know where she got it, but she is wearing it, and it is in quite a few places.”
OH NO!! :/
This mama was so not happy to hear this. Especially after an already bad day. I mean, I had to go get my son from school after work. I couldn’t take her looking like that! So, I rushed home, scrubbed her face (that’s all I had time for), rushed to his school and when we got home, we had dinner and then I put her little butt in the tub and scrubbed all the sharpie off her that I could. By the time I was finished, her poor little arms and legs were red. 🙁
On top of it all, I kept finding things here and there that she drew all over. (The main photo on this post is her brother’s dinner tray…she drew on her own, as well, but not as badly.)
She’s also marked my floors, my tv, my 2 photos and the stand they’re on next to my tv, my front and back doors, and even 4 of my freshly painted walls. I just couldn’t believe it. So much destruction in such a tiny being!
So, I started with cleaning my tv screen…I found that a disinfectant wipe took the sharpie right off…but it left a huge smudge in its place…so I had to use a towel with Windex to rid of that. (This poor tv has been through so many of my kids’ disasters!) After the tv, I used a disinfectant wipe to clean the pictures she drew on. Came right off the glass. Yes!!
Then I had to get it off my kids’ dinner trays…those wipes were not very affective here. Then I remembered that I had Mr. Clean magic erasers…took a little ‘elbow grease’ but it came off! Thank goodness!
I had hubby use acetone to clean the floors and the front door…came right off the floors but the front door has streaks. I guess it’s fine because I plan to paint the door eventually. He didn’t want to do the back door because we plan to replace it one day. It’s pretty beat up as it is. What’s a little sharpie, right?
Finally, yesterday I decided to work on the walls. You know, the ones I just painted in December for my birthday. I had hubby get the last of the paint out and shake it up for me. Took me close to 2 hours to cover the sharpie…it’s pretty tough to cover!
You know, I was really hoping she’d outgrown these types of messes…especially since we hadn’t had any for quite some time. I haven’t talked about any of the previous: peanut butter, poop, and the worst (yes, I said worst!) being desitin!
Anyway, we’ve been through worse. And I’m sure we’ll have much more to come!
What is the worst thing your littles have done thus far? What kind of disaster actually took days for you to clean up? Please, please, please share! I know I’m not alone in this!!
(This is a post from my old blog site. Originally posted: April 25, 2022.)
