What To Do if Your 3 and 2 Year Old Make Your Walls Their Art Project

Does anyone else in the world feel like they are constantly looking up rememdies on the internet for how to remove stains, especially those involving permanent ink??? Or is everyone else really smart, and put everything potentially damaging in places toddlers can't reach? Please tell me I'm not the only one. Please say that you too have spent many a day searching the internet for remedies sharpies, permamnent ink, kool-aid, and paint.

If you are in fact anything like me, then you may find this post helpful. A few days ago, we had company over for dinner, and while the kids were "being so good" on their own upstairs (and evidently in the kitchen as well), we decided to play games. The sad part was, the entire kitchen was being destroyed right in front of us, and we didn't even notice. The kids decided to take a permanant marker (not a sharpie) and color on all of our cabinets, laminate flooring, carpet on the stairs, table, walls, oven, doors.....you get it. When we finally did notice, the damage had been done both upstairs and down.

Here are some pictures of the upstairs, we had been working on the kitchen for a while when we took pics, so no pics of the kitchen.

Well, I used my trustee google yet again, and found some interesting remedies for permanent ink. What I found was that different things worked for different surfaces.

For the Cabinets, I used a Magic Eraser

For the flooring I used nail polish remover...though interestingly enough, our acetone np remover didn't even budge the stain, while our non-acetone np remover wiped it out with ease.

For the carpet we also used the np remover

For the oven bleach worked alright, though for most surfaces, bleach was completely useless. I was in shock.

The walls were tricky because of the texture. I used a combo of np remover and bleach, though the np remover removed a bit of the paint as well.

I didn't use everything I found as remedies to use. Here are some other suggestions I did not try:

WD 40

hairspray

goof off

cooking spray

You must be willing to really try everything to get it out. You can be sucessful, but it's a lot of work. In my experience, I've found that nothing will remove permanent ink with a couple of swipes. You've got to scrub and scrub!

Hopefully this helps you out a little bit, and hopefully you can feel better about your parenting skills by knowing that you are not the only one whose children use your house as their pallette...or maybe because your kid's never done this and mine have.

Good luck!