Life Hack - Permanent Marker Remover!

In a nutshell: To get permanent marker off of a wall

1 - Get a tissue or sponge

2 - Dab tissue with a little bit of hand sanitizer

3 - Wipe the permanent marker area and it will easily wipe off! 

4 - Repeat as needed over the drawn on area. 

I used Equate brand but know that 3M also works, those are the only two I've tried. 

Lily just got home from school, and I thanked her for sharing this life hack with me. She discovered it after she decorated her water bottle with permanent marker but then accidentally spilled hand sanitizer on it, and it wiped it right off. 

This is my little mess maker.  

Along with Owen, Peter has recently discovered the joy of writing utensils. Here he was dutifully working at Owen's desk yesterday, (so cute).

My experience today: So I've been catching up on the blog today, I finally finished August, yay. I spent a lot of time catching up on the blog yesterday too, and I hope to be current before October. I don't like getting behind, but it seems like I always am. Anyway, I knew I was pushing my luck cause I was also decluttering and organizing upstairs. And I left Daniel and Peter up there alone. And, I don't know where it was in my bins and piles of junk, but Peter is a gifted child and somewhere he found the dark brown permanent marker. And proceeded to draw on the wall, and the floor, and our dresser. Those were the only ones I was bummed about. Luckily the dresser was brown so I had hope I could blend that in somehow. And I've gotten it out of carpet before, plus it was just three lines. but I was sad that, gauging by my last permanent marker experience, it was going to take me a week to get all that off of the wall... Sigh. It's my own fault.

Things that I don't care that he drew on are: a box of wipes, a bin, the garbage can, and this toy book.

So I was looking for a magic eraser, and finally found one. I went back up, scrubbed the carpet for a bit, and then I remembered Lily saying that hand sanitizer gets off permanent marker. Hmm. I had some right next to me. I put a little on a tissue, and it freaking wiped off soo easily from the dresser! It didn't even appear to ruin the stain on the wood, but I guess time will tell. It came off so easily, yay! Over to the wall I went - lets see if this works... and it did! And it took me like 3 minutes to get it all off the wall! Amazing!

The wall kinda has a reddish tint to it now, this was my first time trying this and I rubbed it all around as I wiped it off with a sponge. I think a better approach would have been little by little with tissue. I still mostly used the US Advantage on the carpet. I tried a little sanitizer on it, but I think it will probably just need a little more scrubbing. But hooray, Lily saved me like 2 hours of my life with this trick. Thank you Lily! I will still strive to keep permanent markers locked up and out of reach, but I'm thankful to be able to add this to my list of home cleaning hacks.

9pm - so later tonight, in my room, I discovered more of Peter's permanent marker damage, most of which I was easily able to clean. Thankfully he didn't do more on the carpet, cause that is the hardest to get off. But I found that he drew on almost every page of that toy book, not just the cover, he drew on another bin under the bed where we kept toys, he drew on a toy piano, top and bottom, he drew on Corey's nightstand, the bed frame, our bed quilt/comforter (luckily it was on a pink flower part so I mostly got that off with a combination of US advantage and the hand sanitizer and what didn't come completely out isn't going to be noticable) he drew on the the window blinds, the balcony door, and yeah, he did a really thorough job! Stinker Pete.