Share the biggest messes your children have made in the 5 minutes when your back was turned - £300 voucher to be won!

[EllieMumsnet]

Perhaps you have a child with the potential to be a future 'Banksy' - an artist able to cover a wall in felt-tip graffiti, while you are busy chopping carrot sticks. Or maybe they're more of a Jackson Pollock character - suddenly spraying the entire contents of their bowl across the floor in homage to the painter's splatter artworks? We’ve all been there when unbelievable messes have occurred in the blink of an eye and Carex would love to hear your stories about the biggest messes your children have made.

Here’s what Carex has to say: “Here at Carex we’re all about living life hands on… and sometimes that means getting messy! Luckily we’re here to clean, care and protect with our range of antibacterial hand washes. To keep the family busy this summer you can currently enjoy half price entry to Alton Towers and Sea Life centres with every promotional pack of Carex.”

Did you leave the room for five short minutes only to come back and find they'd somehow got at your prized Chanel lipstick and had liberally applied it not only to their lips, but their cheeks, eyes, hands and hair? What madness made you leave them unsupervised?! Share the unfortunate stories of the times you turned your back and a mess ensued.

Everyone who posts on the thread will be entered into a prize draw to win a £300 voucher of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

To my shame my son aged about 6 got hold of a lighter I used for lighting candles and proceeded to see if he could use it on the settee, luckily it was flame retardant (or we might not be having this post) but it still made a mess where he had tried (and tried) :(

Once found my ds sitting in my bed covered in makeup - foundation, lipstick, mascara all over his face, hair and pyjamas... He’d also spread it liberally all over my duvet cover and pillowcases too!

The oldest hair chalk somehow managed to be smashed and liberally smeared across the upstairs landing carpet, which was less than a year old. A rainbow cacophony of colour smudged into brand new grey carpet. It was bleak and I still haven't got all the blue out.

My son was in his forward facing pushchair on a trip to the supermarket, and I couldn't figure out why people were laughing as walked round. Turns out my son had picked up a packet of butter in a split nano second, opened the wrapper, and was happily eating it....and what he wasn't eating was smeared all over the pushchair, down his front, in his hair.......do you know how much Vanish it takes to get a whole pack of butter out of a t shirt and trousers?!?! Then there was the pushchair covers........

I left 18 month old strapped in to her high chair while potty training with my other dc. She managed to grab an ink pad for stamping and resembled a smurf on my return !!

10 mins after the house has been cleaned dp brings in the garden umbrella type parasol thing as it's raining. The end is still full of mud which toddler manages to spray everywhere in 10 seconds flat whilst playing singing in the rain with it.

We are lucky to have a black grapevine in the garden which always produces tonnes. I made a batch of jam/ jelly but at around 8 months pregnant lost my enthusiasm and froze the rest in Tupperware for making into yet more jelly later.

Sooo later came and I left the box out defrosting in the kitchen. Not long after I was in our lounge, which incidentally is our largest room and has a new, light coloured carpet, when I heard a wee voice from behind say ‘I wan gapes mummy’. Turned around to see my two year old carrying the box dribbling generous quantities of dark red grape juice in an arc of doom towards me. Door, carpet, walls, toddler covered. Time slowed down. I managed to scoop child and grapes up for a hasty removal but blimey it took a lot of table salt and carpet cleaner to sort that out!

Mine was this morning, my dd (8) is making slime, whilst I make pancakes, the phone rings, I go into the next room to get my phone, come back into the kitchen and it looks like a massacre has happened, as she's using red food dye. I was gone for all of 30 seconds! Dd is very pleased with the slime colour and doesn't see the problem!

This is after cleaning the food colouring off the wall!

My son covering his whole face with a pot of suducrem, gave me quite the shock lol!

Wasn't this won by the nutella covered child? Saw it in the DM today. Obvious set up. Looked like the child had been forced into the chair and smeared with the stuff.

Luckily we've only been subjected to dry mess rather than gloopy, foody, pooey mess:

• I went arse over tit walking into the kitchen one day because the entire tupperware cupboard had been emptied and I slipped on a bastard clear plastic lid.
• Similar, but this time with the pots and pans cupboard; it's a military exercise making sure everything stacks and fits in, so I was not happy to have this Krypton Factor exercise forced upon me.
• Entire toilet rolls unwound and ripped up all over the lounge floor.
• Airing cupboard obsession lasted about 6 months, so most days we'd end up with everything on the lower shelves being strewn across the hallway.

Both boys painted the chimney breast in red paint, then each other and finally the tv.

When me daughter was 2 she got a green stamping pad that was oil based covered herself head to toe green and her newly decorated bedroom. carpet the lot ruined. Needless to say she looked like a mini incredible hulk with her bright red hair and blue eyesfor the rest of the week as her Lily white skin was stained

I made the mistake of leaving my cosmetics bag in the bathroom in reach of my then 18 month old DD.
I was hoovering upstairs & DD was playing in her bedroom (or so I thought.) I opened the bathroom door so I could hoover the floor & found DD covered in red lipstick, all over her face, pyjamas. Oh & she'd also 'decorated' the bath panel, the walls & the vinyl floor!
The worst bit was that she'd used my brand new Estée Lauder Lipstick, it was gone all the way down to the bottom of the lipstick case.
DD (12) is still partial to nicking borrowing my make up, but at least she applies it to her face now not to the rest of the house.

When my dd was about 3 years old she somehow (I still don't know to this day how) got hold of my Halloween black nail varnish. She painted her bedding, her walls and herself. It was so funny we couldn't even be mad at her.

Last week we were cleaning up for a visit from my Mother in Law and I put the twins in the play pen while I cleaned the shower.

I came back down to find one had put his hand into his nappy, pulled out a load of poo, and they were both covered in it, as were the foam floor tiles, and all of their toys.

My ds. He was about 1 and I was just going upstairs to get him up from his afternoon nap. The smell of poo got stronger and stronger as I went up the stairs and when I went in his room, he was stood up, and had liberally painted both himself and his cot in the contents of his nappy and he was very very happy about this. Not

Another time he covered his hair in vaseline which was much nicer but took a lot of washing up liquid to remove.

We've had many a mess including getting hold of the sun cream and squishing it everywhere, frube yoghurts being opened then shot out over the table.

Lucas once emptied his entire chest of drawers all over his room. Swiftly followed by emptying the two bottom shelves of our (10ft wide) bookcase all over the dining room floor. Total mountain of books and DVDs!

The biggest mess was paint and glitter. On him, on me, on the floor, on the walls, on my chair covers, everywhere except the paper, in fact! I hadn't even gone away, was just pouring some more paint out and he spilled it then tried to 'clean up' with me yelling 'no' in increasingly high decibels...

Nothing earth-shattering but I have often left my younger child happily painting a lovely picture on the easel and then come back three minutes later to find they'd painted aboth hands and other bits of their body a greeny-grey mush-colour. Then there was one of those dig for semi-precious stone kits which covered the whole dining room in a fine, grey dust!

My DC decided to spread her greasy ezcema ointment all over the freshly laid carpet on the landing.

I was cooking lunch and my son was painting a picture to hang on the fridge.
When I turned round he'd covered his face in red paint. He just smiled at me
but, I thought I was going to have a heart attack!

When my 2 year old got the hose pipe in our conservatory 😩