This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SweepTheMess #CollectiveBias

Wanna know what my life is really like?  Behind the home page, painstakingly-written blog posts and carefully styled photos with just the right light?  My life is messy.  Utter and constant chaos.  Can you relate?  Is your life messy too?  Your messes may not be the same as mine, but I’m sure that things sometimes get a little chaotic and disorganized for you too.  That’s just life.  With three little boys, my life often seems like a never-ending span of messes amid a whirlwind of energetic boys that I can only pretend to keep up with.

Here is something I don’t often admit, at least not out loud.  I often get discouraged by the turmoil.  I wish I were better at keeping my family organized.  I am always looking for ways to tame the chaos, new methods and systems to try.  But, truth be told, my house does not look like a spread in a magazine.  And it probably never will.  In photos I take for my blog, there are all kinds of clutter and chaos just outside the frame.  It’s all staged.  My real life is a never-ending cycle: if the floors are vacuumed, there’s a mountain of dishes waiting to be done.  The sink is actually empty?  Well, you can bet there’s enough laundry to clothe a small village needing to be tended to.  The last load of laundry is finally in the washer… wait, is there such a thing as the “last load of laundry”?!  Don’t get me wrong, I do clean.  I clean ALL.  THE.  TIME.  My house is just never all clean, all at one time.  See why I get discouraged?

 

Over the years, I have found little things that help.  A load of dishes a day, for instance, helps keep the counters clear.  Which, in turn, makes it easier to complete meal prep.  A load of laundry a day, even if it doesn’t always (or ever) get folded and put away, keeps everyone in mostly clean clothes…  There are the occasional days we get to the store and I realize there’s spaghetti sauce on my toddler’s pants… whoops.  And a sweep (or two or three) of the kitchen every day makes it look so much cleaner than it really is.  Bonus: it keeps odd choking hazards out of the baby’s mouth.  Baby N is in the stage of taste-testing every speck and spot he can manage to get his hands on.  Whether we are cutting hair, doing science experiments or art projects, a clean floor is one thing I need to stay on top of, for the safety of my family.  Good products that I can trust make the mundane and monotonous part of my life a little less so, or at least help it pass more quickly.  Flour sack dish cloths to dry the dishes, my DIY laundry basket dresser to help me contain the laundry explosion, and, most recently, the O-Cedar Angler Broom to help me quickly and efficiently clean the floors are some of my very favorite, can’t-live-without items that I use everyday.

Here’s one more secret.  When I’m feeling discouraged about our chaos, I just have to do is look at my children.  I mean really look.  Not at their dirty faces and the mischief they are causing, but at how they are learning and exploring their world.  I have to look past the disarray to find just how amazing and beautiful this parenting thing really is.  Sure, I’m angry that every single toy has been pulled off their shelves, but when Little J tells me about how his Angry Bird cars had a race with the Thomas trains and the Dusty Crophopper airplane had to save Spider-Man before the dinosaurs could eat him, it suddenly becomes more than just too many toys all over the floor.  The magic of a three-year-old’s imagination is, indeed, beautiful.  The entire silverware basket from the last load of dishes I just ran through the dishwasher becomes a rowdy band as Baby N learns more about cause and effect… and sound.  Big J used an entire bag of marshmallows and half a box of toothpicks to create his marshmallow house masterpiece.  That sparkle in my sweet boys’ eyes when they master a new skill, or when that light bulb finally lights up, is amazing.  My life is a mess.  An adventurous, chaotic, sticky, slimy mess full of new discoveries and light bulb moments every day.  A beautiful mess.  My beautiful mess and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

 

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O-Cedar “A Beautiful Mess” Giveaway

And if you need something to do with all the dust and dirt while you wait for a winner to be chosen, check this out:

This post is sponsored by Bissell.  I was provided with product and compensation for this review; however, I pinky swear and cross my heart that all opinions and content are my own, 100% honest and original.

 

Christmas is quick approaching! Next week, can you believe it?!  If you’re anything like me, you’re running around crazy with last minute preparations and a to-do list longer than your days and your nights are filled with wrapping gifts and deep cleaning.  Anyone else out there?  It can’t just be me!  And, apparently I wasn’t busy enough with three boys, a husband who has traveled more of the past three weeks than not, and all the holiday hullabaloo I seem to get myself into, so we have had at least half a dozen illnesses run a muck through our home in the last two months!  I am so sick of my family being sick!

 

It’s the perfect time of year to get rid of the things you no longer need, use or want in your home, nasty germs and bugs included.  The kids are on winter break now and I am determined to rid our home of things that make us sick.  It has, admittedly, been much longer than it should have been since the last good deep cleaning.  I’ve opted to try and avoid the post holiday clutter and mess by doing a little prep work before!  So, when I was offered the chance to try out the BISSELL ProHeat 2X® Premier 47A23 Upright Deep Cleaner with Scotchgard Protector solution I pretty much jumped at the opportunity… because I wanted to steam those pesky little germs right outta here! And partly because I have three boys, and that equals dirty carpets… but mostly for the germs!  And a little bit for the dirt.

 

With Scotchgard, you can help prevent stains before they even happen.  So, when your mother-in-law calls two days before Christmas and announces they’ll be in town, you can invite her right over with a promise that the carpets are clean enough to eat off of!  Or when tipsy Aunt Lisa spills her red wine on New Year’s Eve, Scotchgard’s 2X Professional Deep Cleaning Formula has got your carpets protected.  I imagine that’s somewhat akin to grape juice and my toddlers, no?  Thank goodness for white grape juice (and wine?)!

 

So, let’s get to the nitty gritty here.  The actual machine.  You now know you should want one… here’s what it can do, just to cement that yearning in your heart a little more.  I decided to tackle my dining room.

And since you’re thinking it… why, yes, I do live on a mini golf course.  Seriously.  Green carpet.  Did you hear that?  I know it’s hard to get past the green, but I was actually referring to the second part.  Carpet.  In the dining room.  Helllloo, who puts carpet in a dining room?!  Not someone with three little boys, I’ll tell you that much.  However, I find myself feeding my kids in a carpeted dining room at least a million times a day.  One day, I will replace it with Pergo or a nice fancy hardwood floor, but until that day I have carpet in my dining room.  Which is synonymous for “I have food smashed deep into my dining room floor.”  Time to change that… at least for Christmas.  So I cleared out the table, chairs and other easily movable furniture, vaccuumed for the first time in days (although it looked more like years) and got ready for some deep cleaning.

 

The Bissell ProHeat 2x Upright Cleaner was super easy to use.  I have never before in my life used a steam cleaner and have only seen my mother do it a handful of times.  The ProHeat’s instructions were descriptive, but not confusing and the illustrations were clear and understandable. It was a total breeze to fill the internal bladder compartment with Bissell’s cleaning solution and the water tank was easy to latch, lift and maneuver, carry and ultimately get it placed back onto the machine correctly.  It took me between five and ten minutes to get the machine prepped for cleaning (after I read the instructions, which took at least that long because my kids could sense I was trying to actually be productive and do something.  Ever read with a two-year-old tapping the back of your book?).

 

Running the machine was almost as easy as filling it!  If you can vacuum, you can steam clean with the Bissell ProHeat.  Seriously, it was that easy and familiar.  The trigger handle was easy to use, even with my small hands.  I didn’t feel like I was out of control at all.  The entire machine is relatively light and easy to maneuver.  I daresay it was even fun… kinda like when you get a new washer and dryer.  All of a sudden, I want to steam clean everything.  And the Scotchgard 2x Professional Deep Cleaning Formula smells great, making this even more enjoyable.  I was a little bit worried that the solution would make my house smell like a chemical plant, but it left my home smelling clean and not like a cleaner.  A lot like laundry, without all the folding and ironing.  People still iron, right?

 

About an hour and a half after I started, I stood admiring the cleaner’s patterns in my fresh carpet.  And then I turned around and saw that I had reached the part I was absolutely dreading.  Clean-up.  I was horrified that I’d have to untangle gobs of carpet fuzz and hair from the bristles and that it would be nearly impossible to get it nice and clean.  Guys, guess what?  All I did was run hot water through it to clean it out and then I pulled out a few fuzz balls.  That’s it.  It took me twenty minutes to get everything cleaned out, rinsed out, put away and ready to store.  That’s totally do-able!  I didn’t need any special tools or cleaners and the machine wasn’t leaking water all over the floor afterward.

 

One other thing that totally impressed me with the Bissell ProHeat 2x Steam Cleaner was that it only took my carpets a few hours to dry!  I had the entire room put back together before dinner time.  I often fail to err on the safe side and jump the gun, but definitely within 6 hours or so, the carpet was dry.  I did have the sun shining in from one window, but I was still impressed I didn’t have to pull out the fans and blow the room dry overnight.  I remember hating when my mom cleaned the carpets at home because they would be wet FOREVER and the TV was then out of commission for The.  Whole.  Day.  My boys were pretty disappointed when they didn’t get to eat in the family room because the dining room carpet was already dry… and I almost cried at the thought of all that food they were potentially going to drop all over my clean floors, but they did great.  I’d call that a good day.

 

A successful first time use of a product for me comes when I say, “yeah, I’ll get that back out and use it again.”  And I already have plans for my family room next week… I might discover it’s a good thing I started in the small room, but my family room will have fresh and fluffy carpet for Christmas if I have my way.  I’m excited to try Bissell’s other cleaning formulas and am seriously wondering if the 2X Pet Stain & Odor Formula will get rid of the “boy” smell that seems to be seeping out from under my boys’ bedroom door.  A momma can hope, right?

 

You can save $1.00 on Bissell’s cleaning formulas with the coupon below and it’s good until the end of next July, so clip that baby and tuck it away for whenever your Spring Cleaning Fever hits.  It feels even cleaner when you know it was a dollar cheaper and then you can splurge on that candy bar in the check out line.  See what I did there, I just practically gave you free chocolate… or whatever might be your poison of choice.  So, what are you waiting for?  Clip that coupon!

 

Ever have a week where everything just goes so completely not how you planned?  Yeah, that’s been my kind of week.  It’s been busy and a bit hectic.  The time I planned to spend typing up a Thankful Tree post and a giveaway post were actually spent scrubbing permanent marker off my walls.  It’s a good thing my niece is so stinking cute…  I just kept thinking about the end of Toy Story 2 where they put Stinky Pete in the backpack in the luggage sorting area at the airport.  Can you see it too?  He’s picked up from the baggage claim with the bag and an exclamation of “Ooh, Barbie!  A big ugly man doll.”  Then Barbie slides into the pocket next to him with a greeting, “Ooh, you’ll love Amy…. She’s an artist!”  Of course, Amy’s art is all over the side of Barbie’s face.  While Little J did color on Baby N in a decidedly Amy-like fashion with a dry erase marker last week (Seriously.  You can’t make this stuff up.), he was also the one that alerted the two adults in the room about the new “decor”.

So, how do you get permanent marker off a wall?  Well, I have to say I think it depends on the wall.  I found a lot of ideas and tried most of them.  Let me preface this with the detail that we have ridiculously textured walls.  I hate them.  I have two perfectly good Cricuts and vinyl won’t stick to the first walls I am not afraid to adhere it to.  You’ll see why that’s important in a minute.  I hit Pinterest and Google trying to find ideas on how to get this “artwork” off my wall and there was no shortage of ideas.  Here’s how it worked out:

 

1. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and OxyClean.  I started with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and some oxyclean.  It took the marker on the wall plate off fairly well.  But, when I started scrubbing the textured walls, it pretty much tore the eraser to shreds in mere moments and I was basically left scrubbing with little tiny nubby sponges that just kept disintegrating.  Eventually, I switched to a toothbrush, but there just wasn’t enough pressure on the head of the brush and it just ruined the bristles.  No slipping that one back into the spare toothbrush bag after this, you won’t get away with it, promise.

2. Toothpaste.  Specifically, Colgate Whitening toothpaste.  I’m not sure it did much of anything, to be honest.  Other than cover my wall with minty goop.  Nothing like making a bigger mess for yourself to clean up.  On the plus side, my family room was minty fresh.

3. Hairspray.  This actually worked fairly well.  Marker actually came off the wall with this.  The problem was the texture of the wall.  Even with the toothbrush, I couldn’t get into all the nooks and crannies.  I scrubbed with both the toothbrush and a kitchen sponge.  The sponge was great for getting it off the flatest parts.  The texture of the wall was killer though.  The hairspray was probably one of the best removers, when all was said and done.

4.  Rubbing Alcohol.  I figured since the hairspray worked so well and it’s alcohol-based, maybe rubbing alcohol would work well too.  It wasn’t as amazing as I’d hoped and ended up going back to the hairspray.  It worked about as well as the OxyClean and magic erasers.  And I had to really scrub it.  OR maybe my arm was just getting tired and it just seemed like more work?

4. Bleach Pen.  Because, at this point, it couldn’t get much worse, right?  It did okay, but it’s not where I’d start if my walls suddenly become adorned with permanent toddler art again.  It did the most good on the marks we hadn’t scrubbed yet, taking off the stuff on the surface.  It didn’t stand a chance on the grooves of the texture though.  Next time, I’d just skip this I think.  The pro was that there was little damage to the paint.

5. Acetone Nail Polish Remover.  This was excellent at removing the marker.  I just poured a little on a blue Scotchbrite sponge and went to it.  However, it was also fantastic at removing the paint.  While it worked incredibly well, I wasn’t about to re-texture my wall, so it was very short lived.  I did go back to the wall plate and this quickly removed the faint traces left there.

6. Handsanitizer.  This worked well too.  At least as good as the hairspray.  But I had to use a lot of it.  And if I scrubbed too hard, it too removed some of the paint and texture.  I used the sponge a squeezed out about a nickel-sized circle on it and then just rubbed it over the ink.  It came off fairly easily and removed most of the mark.  If I let it sit for a few minutes, it came off better.

 

So, here’s the before (again):

 

 

and the after:

You can still see a few faint areas with marks when the curtains are open and the sun is shining in… otherwise, you’d never notice it unless you were looking for it.  So, moral of the story… hairspray and hand sanitizer are the best contenders for removing permanent markers from textured walls.  At least in my case they were.  I shared this photo on my personal Facebook page and got like 5 people suggesting the magic erasers.  Because of the intense texture, these didn’t work for me.  But I’ve heard they work well on less textured walls.

 

One of my cousins is a teacher and suggested a pink eraser.  I didn’t try it, but it can’t hurt, right…?  What have you used for removing permanent marker from the walls?