Tonya here… Let’s talk cleaning up after kids today, because if I’m sure, like me, you’ve been blessed with markers on the wall, stains on the floors, food dye everywhere. Thank you to Spot Shot Instant Carpet Stain Remover for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own.
My twins’ are now 9 years old, and so I’ve been through the phases of them using the walls as art canvasses, flushing things down the toilet to watch them go for a swim, squirting food dye from the pantry across the carpet, food stains on every item of clothing, and them painting their own bodies.
Now we’ve graduated to stains. Everything is stained. From the carpeted stairs where drinks are spilled as they try to balance electronics and drinks, to bedding (despite my numerous protests to not eat in bed – she says eating an entire rotisserie chicken in bed on a Saturday night), and of course the clothing, which is almost always stained by one thing or another.
My go-to product for the past few years has been Spot Shot. Just spray, blot with a clean white cloth, and the marks area gone from the carpets, mattresses, cushions, and our fabric couches and footstools. This product has saved my sanity on so many occasions.
Looking for more great tips for cleaning up kids messes?
You’ll find fabulous cleaning with kids tips over at the Stain Fighting Community Facebook Page, and here are a few more too:
- Put together individual ‘kid cleaning’ baskets for each of your kids with their own supplies to clean up their own messes
- Teach kids how to use a dust pan and broom, vacuum, and mop so that they can clean up their own spills and messes right after making them.
- Spend the last 15 minutes before bed having the kids pick up all of their toys and doing a quick tidy of their spaces
- If mess gets too out of control during the day, have them stop and pick up 10 items each and put them away. My kids love this method of tidying up even if we do it twice a day. Putting 10 items away takes no more than a couple of minutes and they can see a quick end in sight.
- Donate kids clothing and toys that you no longer need. The less there is, the less there is to clean and put away.
- Use paint in the rooms the kids are most likely to play in that stands up to stains and fading.
About Spot Shot Instant Carpet Stain Remover:
- Spot Shot instantly eliminates the toughest stains and odors – works great on pet stains, coffee, spaghetti sauce, grease and oil, marker, wine and more!
- Specially formulated to get out the worst stains while still being gentle to your carpet’s fibers
- All Spot Shot products safely eliminate even tough, old carpet stains without scrubbing because they are formulated with powerful cleaning agents
- Contains neutralizers to eliminate even the worst odors and leave a clean, light fragrance
Learn more about Spot Shot Instant Carpet Stain Remover on their website, and like them on Facebook. Don’t forget to download the coupon for $1 off your next purchase from their website.
What are your tips for cleaning and stain removing your kids’ messes?
Coupon
Click here to print coupon for $1.00 off.
Giveaway
If you’d like to enter to win a $25 Walmart gift card and Spot Shot Instant Carpet Stain Remover and, please leave a comment telling us one of the messiest things your kids have spilled on your carpet. (US entries only.)
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Written by 5 Minutes for Mom contributor Tonya Staab.
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The messiest things that my kids have spilled on my carpet was a bowl of raviolis
Pick just one!? LOL I would have to say when chocolate got embedded in my carpet. Didn’t find it until the next day when there were ants galore all over the living room floor.
the messiest thing my kids spilled was lasagna. ugh
The messiest thing the kids spilled on the carpet was red tropical punch. No drinks in the living room for them until they got older after that.
Cranberry juice. Not fun lol.
Leave us a comment telling us one of the messiest things your kids have spilled on your carpet :
Well, I can not go in to all the details but lets just say it involved a lot of blood. But all was well, we got it all cleaned up before the cops arrived.
chocolate sauce
My daughter is always spilling her craft paint on the carpet. It seems like as soon as we clean it she does it again.
Grape Juice…my carpets are a darker brown but I could still tell where it got spilled!
Spaghettios!
Let me just say these three little words. Chocolate ice cream! That is what I call a mess!
Fruit punch! Red stains are the worst.
mine kids spill Kool-Aid or drink boxes the most
Candle WAX! I have no idea how to get it out. It’s bright red…well, pink now. 🙁
Probably a bowl of cereal
Grape juice!!
Ashes from the fireplace!
The worst stain was my son spilling grape juice.
My daughter sprinkled baby powder all over her bedspread and carpet when she was little. I guess she invented carpet freshener! 🙂
I think the question should be what have they not spilled on the carpet. Everything has been dumped on mine at one point or another.
I was doing the laundry and did not realize my then two year old had gotten eggs out of the refrigerator which he proceeded to smash into the living room carpet.
A whole gallon of milk that cracked when my son dropped it. What a sour smelly mess. And I thought it was bad when he spilled the chocolate milk.
Olive oil
Chocolate bar
Red wine
Shoe shine
Melted ice cream is the messiest thing that has been spilled by my kids.
My daughter recently spilled a cup of red kool-aid. That wasn’t fun to clean up.
My kids have spilled spaghetti before. Sigh
The worst is when they spill chocolate on the floor that melts. Like eating a Klondike bar and having some of the chocolate crust fall on the carpet. Ugh!
My kids have spilled a lot of messy things but the most messiest thing which was hard for me to clean was chocolate milkshake. it was really messy and very difficult to clean.
I have only grandchildren that visit a lot. Probably the worst spill would be broken felt pen. UG!
My kids have spilled spaghetti sauce.
Playdoh definitely hard to get out of carpet.
The worst thing my son has spilled on the carpet was red juice.
My oldest daughter has gotten makeup on the carpet.
Ketchup
The biggest mess was ketchup. A plate full of French fries landed upside down and the clean up was a challenge.
The worst thing that was spilled was soda.
So far it’s been spaghetti, that was a fun stain to tackle.
My kids spilt koolaid
The worst thing that went on my carpet was vomit when my grandson got sick in the night and threw up the remnants of his supper of tacos and pizza.
The worst thing my kiddo has spilled on my carpet is red nail polish and she didn’t tell me about it so by the time I found it, the polish was dry and hard!
Not the kids, but the dog! He knocked over a brand new bottle of Soy Sauce on my tile floor. Tile, not a big deal right, sadly wrong. It got on the grout and it was stained this horrible dark brown color. I had to lay bleach down on the floor, seal it with stuff, and not once but three times before the color would come off. It was awful.
Powdered grape jello! That was the messiest thing!
soggy cereal and milk
I don’t have kids, but I spilled spaghetti!
To do this day, I am not sure what it was but it left a nice big red stain and I tried everything to get it up. It lightened up but that was it. Of course, nobody did it so nobody would tell me what it was.
I’m going to have to say nail polish. That’s always a delicate situation.
it was not unintentional I am sure as one of them while walking through the front room and vomited all over this was nasty, messy and one of the toughest jobs to clean
my son ate tons of pizza one day, way too much than he should have…. and he got very sick on the carpet. It was not a pretty combination and to this day there is a stubborn stain I can’t get out!
Spaghetti sauce was horrible!
It wasn’t a spill. More like mashing into the carpet. Getting dried playdoh out of carpet is not easy!
Glitter glue was a bad one!
Chocolate pudding
Grape juice was the worst!
I had some pink acrylic paint spill on my carpet
I don’t have kids, but my cats keep me at my wits end cleaning up after them. They’ve knocked over pomegranate juice, coffee, plants, bacon grease, you name it.
All I’m gonna say is, a plateful of spaghetti slides around a lot more than you’d think.
Grape juice
I think the worse was red nail polish.
The worst mess was a can of paint!
subscribe email: slehan at myway dot com
No kids, but I’ve spilled grape juice on my carpet.
Thanks for the contest.
Definitely syrup, it was so sticky and messy, it as so hard to clean out of the carpet
I hate dirt!
I use Spot Shot all the time to clean up cat puke.
Had to be when he spilled koolaide everywhere.
One of the messiest things would have to be a whole birthday cake.
My daughter is the messiest and klutziest person I know. I think the worst things she has spilled if my coffee on the carpet. Or maybe it was the ground in Frozen pasta. gross
I don’t actually have kids or carpet but I used to have carpet and I do have three house cats and used to have 13 house cats. hahaha The messiest things the cats, my fur children of choice, have “spilled” on carpet in the past (this is why I no longer have carpet) is their vomit and other unmentionables. You get the drift. hahahaha
Grape juice
The worst thing my son has spilled on the carpet was a strawberry milkshake so messy
The worst would have to be any kind of red sauce!
grape juice
I’ve had so many spills, I lost track of the worst! However, I would probably say when my daughter spilled hair color when she was over practicing what she had learned in school.
The worst has been red kool-aid!
Nothing beats the berry stains – especially if the kids ‘hide’ them and the stains dry out 🙂
However, wet cleaning wipes and small cordless vacuum in kid’s room for ’emergencies’ can make kids want to clean the mess even before adults see it 🙂
The worst has been fingernail Polish. It’s definitely difficult to get out.
i think the worst ive encountered is makeup stains! Foundation and eyeshadow spilled everywhere on white carpet.
The worst thing has been nail polish.
A WHOLE bottle.
When you have kids, go with clear polish. 🙂
thanks!
cranberry juice
The worst thing my niece has spilled on the carpet is cranberry juice.
The worse was cherry Koolaid
spaghetti sauce
They have spilled red nail polish it was awful. I had to throw out the rug.
My kids spilled fruit juice, it was the worst! Thanks for the great offer 🙂
One of the worst things the kids spilled on my almost white carpeting was spaghetti w/meatballs in red pasta sauce.
Fruit Punch!!! Grr!!!
My son got into his brothers finger paint & got it all over the rug and his comforter. That was pretty bad
MY KIDS ARE ALWAYS SPILLING JUICE ON MY CARPET 🙂
My son got chocolate pudding embedded in the carpet once.
The messiest was popsicle spill. It is hard to get out food coloring stains!
One of the messiest things my kids spilled was a plate with tator tots and ketchup that was a mess
A can of tomato sauce. It was awful to clean up.
Our kids usually have sippy cups so we don’t have many spills. We have however had mud tracked in from outside and smashed strawberries smeared on the carpet. The strawberries were the worst to get out!
Grapejuice!
Red kool-aid was one of the messiest things spilled on my carpet.
I have no kids; no kids messes. I can make a big mess on my own (big kid?).
The messiest thing my kiddo has spilled on my carpet has been fingernail polish! It was near impossible to get off!
Worst thing ever (on 3 different areas) was hot pink silly putty. On cream-colored carpet. Gahhh! It was horrible!
One of the messiest I had to clean was spaghetti sauce.
chocolate ice cream
Grape juice.
The worst thing was a leaking magic marker in red!
Spaghetti sauce it was hard to get off.
The worst is when my youngest daughter got into my teen daughters nail polish. Hot pink nail polish all over my carpet!
The worst for me was orange soda. It stained and I could never remove it.
One of the worst was ketchup///so hard to get out.
My youngest daughter dropped her entire plate of spaghetti on the carpet!! That was such a mess to clean up!
Finger nail Polish is one of the worst things that has been spilled on the carpet. What a mess. I never did get it all up.
chocolate milk
One of the messiest things they have spilled on the carpet is pancake syrup!
I am not sure if they are “messy” stains but difficult stains. Like the play-doh or the fruit punch. Or the times when you move furniture to clean and you find dried stains and you aren’t sure what it was that was spilled.
My youngest spilled…somehow…lasagna on our cream carpet!
Son pour all bottle of baby powder in the carpet. It took forever to clean it. up.
The messiest I think was oatmeal.
pickle juice with rotten eggs
They spilled ketchup which was a huge mess and very difficult to clean.
Tropical Punch Kool-aid has to be the worst
The worst thing was red Kool-Aid. I never did fully get the stain out.
one of the messiest things was pasta sauce
They brought mud into my house, normally not too bad, but where ever this mus came from was very difficult to get out.
The worst my kids did was nail polish on rugs and carpet.
The worst was the spaghetti and meatballs. The tomato sauce was so hard to get out!
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The worst the kids spilled on the carpet was kool aid.
That was nasty!
thank you
We don’t have a lot of carpet but the worse has been blood from a very badly stubbed toe!
The worst thing my son has spilled on the carpet was spaghetti.
The worst thing my grandson has spilled on the carpet was blue jello which was then stepped on and tracked all over the carpet. It was a pain to clean up!
The worst thing was grape juice.
powered red jello on white carpet. Never white carpet again…. you couldn’t vacuum it all up, and the tiniest bit of moisture made the red come out – ughh – I had to get rid of the carpet wah wah!