I was chatting with some of the community members over on Hometalk a while ago and I mentioned that I’d figured out the kitchen grease cleaning trick after I’d used some rubbing alcohol to clean some Sharpie off of something the other day.
Well. Someone hadn’t known about that one and actually had some Sharpie marking up a wine glass. They went and tried it out and it worked! So, I thought there surely must be some others that don’t know about this little house-saving gem.
Oh, but wait. There’s more to the story than that. Someone else on Hometalk mentioned that there are things you should never use rubbing alcohol on.
It’s experiment time! I decided to try the rubbing alcohol Sharpie cleaning trick on some common surfaces around here (since we’re going to be renovating it all anyway) and tell you how it went!
I started out on our laminate counter top. Kennedy seems to enjoy coloring elaborate pictures on there that somehow escape the paper.
A little rubbing alcohol on a paper towel and it melted away! This one’s a keeper!
What about finished wood cabinets!
Yup! Gone there too! No problem.
The painted wall right beside the cabinet?
Um, no. If you have Sharpie there, you may just have to repaint that little patch. The rubbing alcohol cleaned the paint away and revealed the weird pinky color that used to be on these walls.
Hmm, OK, well if that didn’t work, how about the stainless steel fridge?
I’m talking about the scribbles on the left, not the right, just to clarify. The ones on the right are just artwork on a white board, that I apparently didn’t notice when I was taking the picture. Fail.
But the Sharpie came right off! At this point in the experiment, I was getting a little cheeky and decided to go and draw a heart on the glass on our door. That was the easiest one to clean of all! It almost makes me want to draw a fun seasonal design all over my windows with different colors of Sharpie, now that I know how easily it comes off. I don’t know if I’m quite that brave yet though.
So then I started feeling a little silly and I drew this smiley face with a stuck out tongue on my washing machine. Um. Ooops. I thought for sure it would come right off because everything smooth seemed to be so easy to clean.
Hehe. Not so much. It faded it pretty good, but it’s still there, for sure.
So now I’m on the lookout for a cute little laundry chart printable that I can cover this little mishap up with.
Moral of the story: Rubbing alcohol works great if you need to clean Sharpie off of somethings, just don’t be stupid about it.
Like, um… me.
*Update!!!* The nail polish remover worked! So now you really can clean Sharpie off of just about anything!
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.