Sharpie cleaning "TEST"!

So my post are usually about my family, because it is my journal, but yesterday after searching online I came across something so exciting for me that I decided to share, but I went a step further then my initial find. You see my 5 yr old has recently been a little obsessed with drawing all over our walls and anything else with our sharpie pens. I think I have them all hidden, but he finds them. So our walls,doors, table, dog crate and window seals had many a pictures that didn't belong there. I think we had gone through this with every child, so it isn't that I hadn't looked up how to remove permanent ink before, but this time around I was hoping that maybe there was something new. The other methods I had tried in the past, alcohol, WD40, toothpaste, hairspray, etc....., kind of worked , but often to get it all, it would start taking off paint, and many of them stink pretty bad. So, I was finding all the same solutions, but then happened upon a site that said if you didn't want to use all the harsh chemicals, you could try "Sunscreen". They said apply and wipe off.  Yeah right, I thought, if the other stuff didn't work why would this, but I had nothing to lose, so I tried it, and guess what? IT WORKED, and it worked better then anything else I had tried. On the textured surfaces I did have to scrub a bit, but my house is almost sharpie free.( I found a few more this morning! :) YEAHHHHH, what a great find, I will never go back to the other stuff again.

 Well, I slept good knowing what a find I found, but woke up thinking, how would it do in a side by side comparison with some of the other products. It had been awhile since I had cleaned sharpie, maybe they work comparable, but just a little more elbow grease was needed, after all I can't say that Sunscreen is the cheapest of all the ways to clean. So, I dung through my cupboards to see what of the different cleaners I had on hand, and set out to do the test myself. I went into my boys room, where they have completely ruined their window seal, so if something went wrong and it didn't all come off I wasn't ruining something that looked decent. Then I did it, I drew on the window seal with Sharpie, kind of scary, not something that I would recommend on a normal basis. Then I let it sit 30 minutes, just to make sure it was good and dry. Here are my results!

 My cleaners, Ooops, alcohol, awesome, toothpaste, hairspray and sunscreen.

 My sharpie drawings!

 I choose to not do any scrubbing, I put the cleaner on let it sit for a minute, then I wiped it off with a napkin. In the 1st round sunscreen by far did the best, then I thought toothpaste did pretty well, followed by awesome. All of them removed some, but it is going to take several more applications to get it off, if it even all comes off.

 This is the 2nd round. Again I applied the cleaners for 1 minute before wiping, much lighter. Sunscreen section is gone, toothpaste still in second followed by awesome.

Since there was no contest with the sunscreen, I decided not to keep working on them with their own cleaner until they came off. So I sprayed the whole thing with sunscreen, so I could finish cleaning. This brought me a new find. The original ink I cleaned off yesterday had been sitting a couple of weeks and came off beautifully. Yet this stuff that had only been sitting for 30ish minutes, but had other cleaners on it first. It did not all come off. The areas where the toothpaste and awesome were are completely clean now, but where the oops, alcohol and hairspray were seemed to have set into the paint and there is now, a very light ink stain still there. So if you want to clean off permanent ink, start with the sunscreen, otherwise you might set some of the ink in permanently. I am glad I used my boys window seal that has to be replaced anyway. (Yesterday this was one of the places I cleaned and it was 50% covered in ink, and all of it came clean ) One thing I do wonder though is lotion sunscreen vs. spray. That will be an experiment for the future.