Wednesday, October 22, 2014

My No Brainer, Sleep Deprived Mom Moment of the Week

Last week, my kids wanted to write on Zeke's new cast with marker.  They also wanted to play with a large box that we had gotten via UPS.  Against my better judgement, I let them do both at the same time.  That mean I let them have out permanent and water based markers at the same time.

Of course, two of my kids got permanent marker on their clothes.  Normally, I would have just left well enough alone and accepted the fact that those clothes were now stained with marker.  But with the full power of the internet at my disposal, I thought I'd see if I could come up with some homemade remedy to permanent marker.

Hairspray is a great ink remover but I wasn't so sure that it would work on permanent marker.   (It's great on ballpoint ink, though.)  A couple of the websites recommended soaking the affected area in milk.  I was pretty sure I'd seen science projects where milk and ink did interesting things so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Then I saw a website that advised mixing milk with vinegar.  Now, I love vinegar.  It is awesome for a lot of cleaning tasks.  So in my brain, this seemed like the method to try.  I found my favorite retro polka dot bowl, filled it part way with milk, submerged Kenson's yellow shorts, and then poured in my vinegar.  About the time the vinegar hit the milk, I remembered that for baking purposes, vinegar + milk = buttermilk or sour milk.

Um, yes, I just decided to soak my son's shorts in sour milk.

It is now a clumpy, curdled, nasty smelling mess.

But by golly, it's already done so I'm leaving it overnight...just in case it actually works.
Because my polka dotted bowl was seriously the best part of this whole experience

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