3 Must-Know Parenting Cleaning Hacks

Toddlers have an uncanny ability to destroy the house in unexpected and creative ways in NO time at all. Case and point, 20 minutes of my Saturday. We had just returned home from being out. My husband left us to run a couple of errands. My daughter, son, and I no sooner stepped into the foyer then my son had an accident. I stripped him of his clothes, grabbed his wet shoes and ran up to grab him new clothes and put the laundry on. I came down to find the front door covered in red crayon. I dropped his fresh clothes and started looking for this cleaner I use with stickers, to get crayon off, that sort of stuff only to be unable to find it anywhere. I came back down to the crayoned door, the pee-pee carpet, and my nude two-year-old to find he had had a #2 accident beside his first one. I know I’ve said it before, but parenting is a wonderful lesson in humility. This series of unfortunate events got me to thinking about the many times I have been faced with a stain such crayon and the parenting cleaning hacks I have discovered to get them out. So I thought I’d share these 3 must-know parenting cleaning hacks today. You can keep them in your back pocket in case you’re faced with something similar and maybe just maybe you can share some of your parenting cleaning hacks with me. Because Heaven knows, I certainly need all the help I can get!

3 Parenting Cleaning Hacks You’ll Want to Keep in Your Back Pocket

 1. For the removal of crayon:

Take mayonnaise (I was worried all-natural mayo may not do the trick but it does), coat crayon. Let sit for a couple of minutes, using a scrub brush, or similar remove. Takes VERY minimal scrubbing. Then, wipe remaining mayo away!

2. For the removal of ink from a ballpoint pen:

It happened to me first on our cream coloured leather couch. My daughter was writing a “list” for grocery shopping . You know those kid-written ones that almost look like handwriting and only have cookies and chocolate on them? Ya, well she was writing one of those only to have some of her “cursive” end up on my couch. Thinking it was ruined forever, I google it and found out pen + generic hairspray = problem solved!

[bctt tweet=”Did your kids just draw on the walls? Fear not, here are 3 must-know #parenting cleaning #hacks” username=”parentfromheart”]

3. For food colouring dyed skin:

For my daughter’s second birthday, she thought it might be nice to get into my food colouring and dye herself blue. The picture below is from AFTER I had tried to scrub it out of her. I took to facebook to plead to my friends for some help. Thanks to my friend Natasha, who told me any shaving cream that foams just needs to be put on the dyed skin and then wiped or rinsed off. It’s that easy. The only condition is the shaving cream must be the foaming kind, so it must either come out of the can as a foam or be a gel that turns into a foam.

What are your, stain treating, laundry hacks, or best parenting cleaning hacks? I would love to hear about them!