My kids LOVE to play outside. If they had it their way, they’d play outside all day, stopping only for potty breaks and snack times. And we have a really great kid-friendly backyard, so they spend their time outside with plenty of options- riding bikes, playing soccer, digging in the dirt, climbing on the jungle gym, writing on our brick wall with sidewalk chalk that never comes off no matter how hard mom scrubs it… the options are endless!
All of the above mentioned activities are ok with me, except the stinkin’ chalk on the brick walls. When my oldest son initiated this idea, I thought, “How cute, he found a way to keep score of the soccer game he and his friend were playing!” Ethan made a scoreboard and had tally marks under each person’s name showing the number of goals they made. And it is sidewalk chalk, that stuff is easy to get off, right?
Wrong.
Little did I know that sidewalk chalk was meant for sidewalks and getting it off a brick wall was practically impossible!
A few months ago I heard that my neighbors lost some of their deposit on the house they were renting because their kids had used some chalk on the brick wall and the landlord couldn’t get it off after they moved. I wish I would’ve know that before Ethan decided to keep score on mine.
I first (naively) tried hosing off the wall with my garden hose. It looked like it worked as it does on the sidewalk. Except when the water dried, the chalk drawings were still there.
So then I scrubbed with a wash cloth, then a brillo pad, and I used a power sprayer. Nothing worked.
I brought this up in conversation with a friend of mine, and her reply was, “Have you tried baking soda?”
I said, “What the heck will baking soda do?”
And she said, “I don’t know, but it cleans everything else!“
I shrugged off her suggestion and my wall has stood there for about a year now, still strutting the chalk drawings.
So you can imagine my thoughts when Arm & Hammer challenged me to switch out my other cleaning methods (which wasn’t going to be a problem!) and try using Arm & Hammer baking soda to clean up something outside. The other Arm & Hammer challenges I took part in over the past couple months were a success- my kids love the Spinbrush (still use it daily!) and Baking Soda did wonders for my son’s smelly shoes, maybe there is hope for my brick wall afterall?!
So sometime in the next couple weeks, I am going to grab a wash cloth and my Arm & Hammer Baking Soda and I’m going to use a bit of elbow grease and attack that wall.
What do you think? Any bets out there how it will turn out? I’m excited and nervous all at the same time!!!
(Maybe I should have just stuck to de-greasing my husband’s grill!)
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About Stephanie
