Do You Need Stress Relief?

This past October I found this on my wall:

This piece of graffiti was doodled by my sweet 2 year old Cesar.

This actually occurred when I was sitting 2 feet away reading a book with my 5 year old son Bency. I did hear a tapping noise and do remember slightly glancing in that direction, but just thought he was tapping on the wall….and the lamp…and the windowsill of our large bay window with his fingers.

But alas, that wasn’t the case and each of these things was covered in blue crayon.

Now, you may be surprised to hear that having two older children this was actually my first go around with the crayon on the wall trick.

I had heard about the brilliance of Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser for such cases as this but had never purchased one before. I finally got around to buying one in November to erase the evidence of his mischief.

Oh my heavens, I was beyond delighted with this little product. A foam sponge that you just wet a little bit and off comes the crayon in one swipe. Not only was there a hint of blue left behind on the sponge but also black….meaning it had picked up dirt that was not visible to the naked eye.

I began going around the house cleaning up scuff marks and all kinds of things that I had tried numerous times to wash off with a rag and soapy water. It was all coming off!

By no means am I a clean freak and all of these marks and blemishes had not bothered me before but watching them come off so easily was like watching a magic show!

I’ve heard other people say before that cleaning is a stress relief for them. This has never been the case for me. I view cleaning as an obligatory duty. It has to be done every day with three small children in the house. Every time I clean, I am slightly disgusted with the grime I come across and am totally disheartened when all my hard work is messed up 5 minutes after I get it done.

But the Magic Eraser was different. With every scuff and blemish I erased, I felt a little lighter, a little brighter and a lot less stressed.

Throughout the holiday season, I took out my Magic Eraser quite a bit. There’s no end to dirt and scratches in our house. When I got overwhelmed with how much was on my to-do-list, I took out my little foam sponge of wonder and performed my magic tricks around the house. It gave me the extra oomph I needed to tackle the wrapping, baking and projects that needed to get done.

As for the rest of my house…well there’s always cleaning to do, so much in fact that I could relieve the stress of about 10 people who are into that sort of thing!

Me and my little mischief maker Cesar

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