Recently, my two year old son Edward has been expanding his artistic horizons by drawing on our nice white walls with permanent markers. For some societal reason that I cannot figure out, this is a problem and I need to make him stop doing it. Not only do I need to get him to stop adding new marks to the walls, but I also need to get rid of the marks that he already created. But how?
After asking around, I was told that the Mister Clean Magic Eraser was guaranteed to get anything off of the walls. Not sure how this was possible (Duh, it’s magic!), I nevertheless purchased one of these mystical devices and tried it out on the newly marked walls. Or rather, Edward tried it out.
Well, I have to tell you, it worked like a charm. A magic charm. All traces of the marker were now gone from my walls. There was just one problem. Two problems, actually. First, the Mister Clean Magic Eraser worked a little too well. My walls, which I previously thought were white, turned out to be more of a dirty sludgy off-white color. The only truly white part of my wall was the part of the wall which had been touched by the magic eraser. It looks ridiculous. I think leaving the marker there might have actually been better, as it would have fit in more with the rest of the décor.
But here is the truly insidious part. The Mister Clean Magic Eraser, like many magical spells and items, does not last long. After using it on a small section of wall, the thing shriveled up into a twisted, deteriorating husk of its former self. By the time I had finished with the markered area, the magic eraser was gone, back to the unholy land that had spawned it.
So now I have no more magic eraser, my marker stains are gone, but there is a brilliantly white and clean circle on my wall that makes it looks unnaturally spotless. So what can I do? The only thing I really can do at this point, is to buy more magic erasers and finish the rest of my wall with them. Either that or wait until my children dirty up the clean spot again, but I don’t want to wait two whole days. So now I will be spending approximately $1000 on these things, since each little rectangular prism only cleans about 1% of my visible wall space. In short, my walls are now addicted to be magically cleaned.
Well played, Mister Clean Magic Eraser. Well played.
Or, as my husband says, “we’ll need to repaint in a few years anyways.”