***This post was written in collaboration with Kids Business Communications and Unilever. No monetary payment was exchanged and all opinions are 100% my own.***
This summer, Mr Surfer has taken it on himself to give our garage a massive overhaul, transforming it into a man cave.
Neatly tucked away is the work bench, accompanied by tools and saws. Most importantly, there is now abundant space.
A sacred shrine for the men in my life to make as much mess as they want.
Last Sunday’s rainy weather proved to be the perfect opportunity to test this makeshift haven of hardware.
Rather than have the twinions stay home, climbing walls from sheer boredom we set the first project:
Making wooden planes.
Then, came the fun part – painting them!
You know how it goes with little children. They’ll happily paint what they’re supposed to. For five minutes.
Then, they find more interesting stuff. Like facial and body parts…
I didn’t care. The exercise took up at least a couple of hours.
Give me happy, filth to their ears children over bored, screaming, whiny ones any day.
All the while, I took LOTS of deep breaths and tried to let go of my controlling compulsive tendencies.
Call it cheap therapy.
The fun was finally over. Not a lick of paint left.
I promptly stripped and dumped them in the bath.
Perhaps it was risky to let the twinions have such free reigns and access to mess.
But the entire experience was not in vain.
Firstly, playing dirty doesn’t have to be stressful. Now that we have the designated space, I no longer hyperventilate when it turns disastrous.
I also wanted to see if well known, trusted brands like Omo and Jif could also handle the aftermath.
To be completely honest (and there’s no reason to be anything but) neither product was completely effective.
Granted, I put them to the extreme test with grotty, stubborn paint.
Still, I was slightly disappointed with the results.
While the Omo Ultimate guarantees to actively lift stains that have been left to dry up to 48 hours, it wasn’t entirely the case with on of the twinions’ t-shirts.
It took a couple of washes and a 30 minute soak in hot water to get rid most of the paint.
Next was to see how well the Jif Easy Lift Bathroom spray could clean the paint off the bathroom tiles.
Again, it wasn’t a completely satisfying outcome.
After many generous applications and vigorous scrubbing, it didn’t quite finish the job leaving some paint stains between the tiles.
I have often used other Omo and Jif products without any issues. Give me the traditional Jif cleaning cream any day.
Playing dirty is a part of life.
My children are learning creative and sensory skills from making a mess.
I’m learning to cope with them.
For one reader, there’s a giveaway that includes:
- 1 x Omo Ultimate 1L ($12.99)
- 1 x Jif Easy Lift Bathroom 750 ml ($6.49)
All you have to do is:
Subscribe to With Some Grace by Email
- Leave a comment on this post and tell me: What’s the biggest mess your kid/s have created?
Terms and Conditions:
- This giveaway is only open to Australian residents
- Closing date for entries is 10pm AEST Thursday, 22nd of January.
- The winner will be contact via email on the following Friday.
- If the winner does not reply to my email within 24 hours, another winner will be chosen.
- Entries will be judged on merit and decision of the winner will be final.
Update 30/01:
In response to my concern regarding difficulties in getting rid of paint stains when using OMO, below is a statement from Unilever:
Unfortunately Paint is not something Unilever formulate the product for.
However, essentially OMO is great on common stains like:
Tomato sauce
BBQ Sauce
Orange juice
Eggs
Custard
Chocolate Icecream
Grass
Gravy
Spaghetti Sauce
Cake
Jelly
Baked beans
Thanks Unilver for the additional information and promptly letting us know.
The biggest mess that my kids have ever made was actually all my fault.
I wanted to enter a Heinz Baked Beans competition, and was trying to come up with some creative ideas to show the baked beans (as this was the competition requirement).
So, if you can, please picture this…
Take one giant piece of plastic (similar to the one used in a Slip and Slide), add about 20 or 30 opened cans of baked beans. Now, add in 3 kids under the age of 9.
And there you have it. The recipe for disaster.
They were covered in baked beans from head to toe (in ears…EARS!!!!), sauce was everywhere, the house reeked (Yes, I was dumb enough to do it indoors!!) and to top it all off, I didn’t even win the competition!!!!!!
The little monkeys got into the pantry and decided to play with the flour. I should have know they were up to something with the silence. It was everywhere, even after cleaning it up I was still finding flour dust everywhere.
When my son was one he had a great old time with the sudocrem. Wish I could say the same was had about cleaning the mess and him. Four washes and I couldn’t get it all out of his hair. Was a nightmare.
Mothers Day last year when they make a present using glue and glitter and also decided to make a chocolate cake… I dont think there was room not covered in chocolate gluey glitter
Oh my goodness I remember our attempt to make playdough, it turned into a disastrous gluey cobweb of slime!!!!! Leaving a trail of destruction was given a whole new meaning! Three days later I was still finding caked on remnants in kitchen cupboards and doors!
When my daughter was about 3 years old, she thought the white grout on the bathroom tiles were “Boring”, so using a permanent red marker sorted them out. (with a precision I was proud of)).
We had to re-grout the entire bathroom because of the contrast in whites
Oh my goodness what a mess!!! When we let the kids paint it’s outside on the grass and it invariably always leads to hand foot and everything painting!!! Mess, biggest mess that I can recall was the use of talc powder in every room! My hubby would love a man cave!
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Aaron got loose in our after finding my built up supply of moisturisers coating the entire room in a layer of greasy whiteness
Pureed food all over the hair, body, face, floors and table!
Three things:
1. That man cave is going to be your saviour.
2. They are just TOO gorgeous.
3. I can’t live without Jif. Really.
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It would have to be in the bathroom. One time they emptied the entire bath onto the floor with their buckets, the water had so many bubbles and was coloured blue too
The biggest mess my children have ever made is the time they started playing in mud. We laughed it off and thought it was cute and kind of went about our gardening while they continued along with their mud mess. Eventually they were both down to their underwear and covered literally from head to toe in mud. It took some washing up, I can assure you!
Getting into mummy’s make up bag and putting lipstick on the floors, walls, toys and clothes and nothing on their lips!
We always make a big mess cooking…but we always have a great time too.
We had a code brown incident during toilet training time. It went every where. The toilet, the walls and the fan was literally hit.
Helping me work on the car and he got mucky, just like I did when I was a wee lad helping my father do the same thing.
every day around the dinner table!!
The biggest mess the kids have made was when daddy gave them a chocolate
bar each to give to me for Mothers day
well what can I say
they decided to hide them in there bed overnight so with the heat of their bodies melted chocolate was everywhere
We were staying in a small hotel room, exhausted and I was taking a quick nap while pregnant with number 2. Bored, number one son – not quite 2, decided to finger paint the windows and floor with the contents of his full nappy!
My five year old invited his two best friends over to play – twin girls. As I prepared afternoon tea, they turned the fan on in his room and aimed red painting sticks at the fan – the result was a room that looked remarkably like a murder scene!
Love their Smiles Grace, it says it all 🙂
And yeah Kids equal big messes, and the more mess they make the better fun they have. Kyle is our messy child – as soon as he steps outside the Motorhome he is dirty, its like the dirt jumps off the ground onto him.
Cameron is our clean freak 🙂
I still remember when Kyle was younger and David was looking after the boys……Kyle trashed EVERY room of the house – in the end he asked one of his brothers to grab him, hold him down and not let him go until David could clean up at least one part of the house before I got home…..now days a motorhome can get just as messy but its easier to clean up!!!