What did you do?

As a parent, you’ll be baffled regularly by what your kids do. Just the other day, my kids were colouring in the living room. When I went to check on them I noticed my three-year old had disappeared and things were very, very quiet, which of course means trouble with a capital T.

I found him upstairs with an orange marker in his hand, an impish grin and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

“What did you do?” I asked him. “Show Mommy.”

He took my hand and led me to his sister’s room and pointed to the wall. There was an orange line drawn on the wall at toddler height. He then led me to his room, showing me the orange line that circled his bedroom and then continued into the hallway and into the bathroom and inside the tub and back out into the hallway and into my bedroom. The orange line was barely visible on my dark chocolate comforter, but I could still see it to follow it along my bed to the opposite end of the room where it disappear and reappeared on my wall, eventually ending by the window. Luckily, it was a Crayola washable marker, so it washed off easily, but of course, that wasn’t the point. After he helped me clean it up, he was grounded from T&T (treats and technology) and the markers were put away.

Washable marker comes off easily, but what about crayon? I was baffled again when I discovered the kid’s activity table covered with scribbles and scrawled letters in my almost six year old’s handwriting. She knows better. Crayon isn’t as easy to remove as washable marker, so I thought I would do a little experiment to see what cleaning products proved to get the best results.

Since the kids helped make the mess, they helped clean it up. We used a paste of baking soda and vinegar, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, and an all-purpose cleaner. As you can see from the photo, the all-purpose cleaner really didn’t do much to remove the crayon, although it did take away the marker. With a little bit of elbow grease, the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser worked amazingly well, but is the most expense option of the three. The baking soda and vinegar paste worked just as well as the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Using a small kitchen brush, it really worked well to remove the crayon, pencil and marker.

Hopefully after our little experiment, the kids have learned to colour on paper instead of tables and wall!