Pen on the gum boot incident

Today I found out that Julia had drawn over one of her gum boots with pen. As you can imagine, I was not impressed and told her so. I also explained to both girls that people don’t draw on shoes. I was not happy and it was really one of the last straws in a very frustrating day.

Kids are not doing anything they are supposed to, they are both very naughty, destructive, and hurting each other. Both girls are in a time out in their room, well mostly for rest and crossing fingers they will sleep, or at the very least stay out of my hair for a bit. I am so over it and need some me time.

As I was not sure how to remove pen from a gum boot, I tried toothpaste, with no luck. I then tried NapiSan Vanish and that has done a great job. There is still some fine pen marks but it is hard to see. You will see in the picture that the right shoe looks clean and sparkly, the left one is dirty and after a soak with NapiSan Vanish I am sure that it will be as sparkly as the one on the right.

the one that I soaked looks nice and clean, compared to the dirty one. Now to clean the other boot and to do the same for Lillian’s.

So if you want to make your gum boots sparkle, I would highly recommend putting some NapiSan Vanish in a jar/bowl, and mixing it a bit with warm water. Scrubbing it onto the boot, and then soaking it to do the rest. I used a big saucepan to soak the boots. Up to you, with what you have available.

Happy cleaning. If you have any ideas or tips to clean other things that kids might ruin with texta, pen or other ways, send them in.

Note: I have not been paid for this rave about NapiSan Vanish, I just thought it did such a great job, it was worth sharing. So if your little one decides to draw over your boots or theirs, you can soak them and they should hopefully be as good as new, or close to it.