Give a youngster a pencil, crayon or texta and leave them unsupervised for five minutes and I'll almost guarantee they will have drawn somewhere they shouldn't. The table, the floor or themselves are common areas, so too are walls. In fact, children and walls are probably the bane of my existence these days. My little ones (and not so little ones) have a bad habit of dragging their hands along walls as they walk, and of swinging around door frames instead of walking into a room.

The result is dirty walls, and it's darn hard to keep up with them. I'm not interested in having a spit polished home. However, I do like to have things reasonably clean. When it comes to walls and door frames (and doors for that matter), if you don't keep on top of the situation, that lovely white or light colour rapidly turns darker. Left alone, I'm sure it would turn black.

As parents, we all find solutions to some problems in the strangest places. When it comes to drawing on walls, and discolouring the walls and door frames, the easiest solution is a humble old nappy wipe - unused of course. I am not sure what's in them, but they seem to remove most marks from walls, especially pencil, crayon and texta. They are also good for removing same from a child's skin.

Nappy wipes, or baby wipes, are also good for removing grime from walls, doors and door frames. They quick and easy to use, and don't contain any nasty chemicals like most wall cleaners.

It does make one think, however. If baby wipes are good for removing stains from walls, what chemicals are they using? More importantly, what are they doing to baby's bottom? Still, they do the job, both on baby and on walls, and for three or four bucks for a packet of 80, they're cheaper than most cleaners. If you find your child has drawn on a wall, don't pull out the heavy duty cleaners, try a baby wipe, you'll be surprised at the results.