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If it's happened to you, you're eerily familiar with the unique quality of the sound.
The soft tap followed by a long pull with a slightly hollow timbre.
The noise that takes a moment to register in your mind because you pause for a few seconds to wonder why it sounds that way.
You know that what your twins are doing should sound more staccato-like while they're working on their drawings together at their craft table.
Should.
And then you realize, with complete and utter dread, that it sounds wrong because it IS wrong.
The crayon is no longer drawing on the soft, blank paper you provided your petite Picassos with and has been transferred to the empty and much more vast canvas of your hallway instead.
The horror that can happen in about 2.5 seconds.
I know because it happened to me the second I sat down during their supervised art time to decide what today's article was going to be about.
I had just started to flip my brain out of its scanning-the-room-for-any-potential-toddler-related-issues-mode, and then, I heard it.
The soft tap followed by a long pull with a slightly hollow timbre.
The realization hit home, and I took two quick steps closer to confirm what had happened right under my nose (I've been waiting over a year for this to happen).
Sure enough, one of my toddlers stood next to the wall, totally relaxed and in the zone, with a yellow crayon clenched creatively in his fist.
I aksed him if he'd drawn on the wall, and he said he had. I asked him where, and he looked for a while, pointed, and said, "Right there!"
I couldn't see anything. Still, I scanned the wall for any telltale signs, but the yellow marks all seemed to blend into the existing paint job, at least as far as I could see. I breathed a sigh of relief, assuming I'd caught on soon enough to avoid a doodle disaster.
I turned around to retreat and was faced with defeat as my eyes landed on the big blue streak of crayon they'd also emblazoned on the wall while making their way down the hallway to their secondary canvas.
I turned around to retreat and was faced with defeat as my eyes landed on the big blue streak of crayon they'd also emblazoned on the wall while making their way down the hallway to their secondary canvas.
With a baby wipe at the ready, I quickly swiped at the spot, hoping it would know how to remove the meddling mark. It was a stain caused by a baby, after all...
But instead of dissolving the wax, it managed to somehow simultaneously lighten the streak and also cause it to bleed and settle into the paint surrounding the scribbled area.
We went from having a fresh stain with potential treatment possibilities to what seemed like a permanent stain on a promiment wall in mere moments.
I was filled with fright, but I had a topic.
Picass-Oh No!
When it comes to arts and crafts, there's always going to be a creative side and a messy side. It just comes with the territory.
I knew it was only a matter of time before we were caught up in the Crayola Conundrum.
The blue streak had been joined by a more obvious red streak that seemed more urgent to deal with.
Over the years, I'd heard of other methods people had tried to remove crayon from the wall, with varying degrees of success, including dish soap, hairspray, WD-40, Pink Solution, and Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, which, in my experience, tends to erase the stain you're trying to remove AND the paint right along with it.
So, what's the best way to remove crayon marks from a painted wall?
It's not any of the ways I'd mentioned above.
It's a two-step process that involves, first and foremost, removing the crayons from the situation, or else your sweet little artiste will continue creating their finest masterpiece while you follow franticallly in their footsteps.
Once you've neutralized the threat (read: the crayons), it's time to tackle the stain.
Instead of the hodge podge of other tried-and-true methods, I ventured a guess that something I already had sitting in my pantry would do the trick.
And it did, in record time.
Baking soda to the rescue
I've used it for so many purposes in the past and will continue to use it for many other situations in the future.
When in doubt, baking soda is usually the answer to anything stain- or stink-related.
In some cases, you want to mix baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, with vinegar to create an abrasive foaming agent to help remove stains, but in this case, since we're dealing with paint, you don't want to do that. Instead, just mix the baking soda with a little bit of water, until you've created a thick paste.
Super important side note: NEVER mix baking soda with chlorine bleach, ammonia, alcohol, nor hydrogen peroxide, as any of these combinations can cause dangerous chemical reactions or create toxic fumes you definitely don't want to breath in.
Once you have your paste prepared, grab a wipe, a paper towel, or a cloth, and gently wipe in a swift upward and downward (not side to side) motion.
If you wipe from side to side, it'll just spread the wax further outward and make a bigger mess than you want to deal with.
The fact that gently scrubbing at the stain in a vertical fashion works so much better than scrubbing horizontally could have something to do with the line being drawn vertically in the first place.
Whatever the reason may be, you'll see the color lift almost immediately from the wall when you do this. Half of the erroneous marks were eliminated in a matter of seconds with minimal effort.
(Ignore the mottled-looking area on the bottom-right of the picture above...that was from uneven painting during a touch-up I'd done years ago and hadn't noticed until it was dry and didn't want to sand and re-paint since it's mostly hidden by the cover of shadow, anyways. It's not a result of the baking soda concoction, I swear).
While you're spot cleaning, don't scrub too hard or use too much water, as as you don't want to saturate the wall or remove the paint in the process.
Wipe away any excess dust
Once the crayon wax is gone, it's best to immediately use a damp cloth to gently wipe away any excess baking soda that has worked its way onto the wall.
If you forget to do this or are distracted by your twins trying to draw elsewhere, don't worry. You'll definitely see any spots you need to wipe down shortly after the area you've cleaned has dried.
There will likely be a few ghost-like spots shining on the wall where any remaining bits of baking soda have settled. If you see any of these, grab a clean cloth, dampen it slightly, and then go over that spot on the wall again and then immediately dry the area.
If you don't see any spots, use a flashlight on the wall after a few minutes, just to be sure.
Back to clean and pristine
Once you've gone over these spots and dried them thoroughly, you'll be left with a clean and pristine canvas again (but don't tell your toddlers).
The one slight downside to using this cleaning concoction as a spot-treating method is that the paste is so thick, the baking soda begins to dry and crumble almost as soon as you start to wipe the wall with it. The good news is that most of the bits get caught up by your cloth anyway, and what few crumbs do fall to the floor are super easy to wipe off of the ground.
It's a much better alternative to leaving the unintentional wall art in the hallway forever and having a constant reminder of it. Unless you decide to frame it and date it, which is certainly always an option.
What's your go-to cleaning hack that usually works like a charm in most scenarios? What's the most surprising stain it's removed? Let us know in the Comments section below.
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