Top Ten Messes

I thought I would make a list of the top ten messes my kids have made. Mostly because I want to remember them, I didn't take pictures at the time because I didn't want to encourage that behavior. But now that they are well in the past, I think they are fun to remember. I always enjoyed when my parents would share stories of the things we did when we were little.

#1 Soap

This is the first one that I remember, when B was 18 months old he discovered he could unscrew caps off of bottles. He found a brand new bottle of baby wash and emptied the whole bottle into the carpet. At least it was a "clean" mess, but soap is not easy to get out of carpet. This is when I bought my spot bot, and I have used it much since then.

#2 Cinnamon

G has been quite the little mess maker by herself. She loves to get into the kitchen cabinets. I had a quart size container of cinnamon in the cabinet. She dumped out the entire thing and many other spices as well. Cinnamon is not easy to clean out of tile grout, or clothing either. I actually do have a picture of this one.

#3 Moon Sand

G again. We got some moon sand for Christmas last year. It was fun stuff. However, not when kids decide to throw it all over the house. I think I followed a trail from the living room, through the dining room, through the kitchen, down the stairs, and then the grand finally, thrown all over the basement. The good thing is, it vacuumed up really easily.

#4 Milk

Last summer the kids dumped an entire gallon of milk into the carpet. It took several cleanings to get it all out. Even then the milk smell still lingered. I had some good friends the recommend "Kid's and Pets" to get the smell out. I had to do quite a bit of searching to find it, but I finally did. It is quite useful stuff.

#5 Mud Soup

This is not necessarily a true mess, but it's cute and I had to stretch a little to get to ten (that's a good thing). We have two birdbaths in our yard. The kid love to use them to make Mud Soup. They load dirt and sand in by the bucketful and then whatever bits of grass and plants they can find. The girls always add flowers, which does kind of make it look pretty. Then they all find a long stick and stir together. I wouldn't mind as much if they didn't pick all the new plants coming up. The favorite seems to be the sedums. Hopefully they recover okay.

#6 A Pool of Their Own

My kids love the water, they always have. When winter gets long what else is there to do but make your own swimming pool. I remember coming into the kitchen and B and G were in their swimsuits. E was there too, she was just learning to crawl and get around on their own. They were filling up cups from the water in the fridge and dumping it into the floor and "swimming" in it. It really was quite clever for how little they were.

#7 Colored Snow

Technically this one was a supervised mess, because I let them do it. I had been saving yogurt containers and we filled them up with water. Then I gave the the food coloring and let them mix the water into different colors. The idea was to take them outside and let them freeze, then build a really cool ice tower. We just happened to pick a day when it was above freezing all week so they never froze, so we just had some really cool colored snow. It sort of reminded me of "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back."

#8 Sprinkles

The kids climbed up and got down my box of sprinkles. When I discovered them, every single bottle had been emptied onto the living room couch. Also the gel food coloring I had was squeezed out. However, the cleaner that came with our couch is awesome. Worked great and I got all the food coloring out. I haven't bought anymore sprinkles though. I told them they were grounded form sprinkles for a year. This was just last fall, E will turn 3 next month and she wants pink sprinkles on her cake. I don't want to give in, but I'm a sucker for sprinkles. We'll have to see what I decide I guess.

#9 Ashes, Ashes

We were having the missionaries over for dinner and I was cooking. The kids were all in the basement playing nicely. When they got here I called the kids up for dinner and all three of them of them were covered from head to toe in ashes and soot from a wood burning stove. The stove was unhooked before we moved in, but had apparently never been cleaned out. The kids did a good job of it. Not only were they covered, but all of their toys and books and the floor. It was quite a mess. The Sisters even attempted to help clean up the best they could. We had to get the vacuum cleaner serviced after this one.

#10 Eggs

Not too long after the ashes, it was Easter. We had a lot of fun coloring Easter eggs. We enjoyed eating them too. The kids even tried to peel them themselves, in the basement. Luckily it was still fairly clean or the clean up would have been harder. I think they peeled and smashed at least a dozen boiled eggs into the carpet in the basement. After they ran out of boiled eggs, they got the raw eggs. I don't know how many eggs ended up in the floor, I do know boiled or not, eggs are hard to clean up. I borrowed a carpet cleaner from a friend, Berber doesn't clean easily anyway, but I did get it all out. Somehow. We have our own carpet cleaner now. Thankfully I've only had to use it for normal cleaning.