I Can't Take It Anymore, So I've Banished All Slime and Putty From My Home

When my son first asked if he could make slime, I thought it sounded like a great idea. Hands-on, scientific, simple ingredients—a perfect antidote to the ever present screen time battle.

Little did I know that by consenting to such a concoction, I was letting Satan himself into my home.

Whose brilliant idea was it to bring back slime in the first place? That’s right, kids. Your ooey gooey ooze is nothing new. I remember playing with “slime” when I was pretty young, and I’m freaking 42. Every generation thinks they invented sex, and now every generation apparently thinks they invented slime, too.

I’m blaming the Youtubers. Looking at you, Collins Key. My kid watched you test out a gazillion different kinds of slime and thought it looked like fabulous fun. So I, the dutiful, education-minded mother, collected the liquid glue, the borax, and the food coloring, and watched my child delight in the wonders of chemistry.

Maybe the climate change deniers are onto something. Maybe science really is the devil trying to deceive us and bring us to ruin.

Just kidding. I love science. I just hate slime.

The problem is that when you have a kid who is a scientist by nature, no experiment ever truly ends. There’s always another “What would happen if” question to be answered. What would happen if we mix all of these colors together? What would happen if I add glitter glue to it? What would happen if I raised the slime waaaaayyy up over my head and let it go? What would happen if I threw up a big blob of it and tried to hit the ceiling? What would happen if I put it on my head? What would happen if I put it on the cat?

Y’all. My house had been slimed, ceiling to floor.

I have found little brown (because that’s the color you get when you mix them all together) slime boogers all over my house. I’ve found them on the couch, on the coffee table, under the dining table, on the bookshelves. I just know we’re going to have company over one day, and they’re going to pick up one of our throw pillows and find a brown slime wad that looks exactly like a real booger on it, and they’re going to think our family picks our noses and wipes them all over our house. Lovely.

I’ve had to clean slime-mixed-with-glitter-glue off the piano, the TV stand, the window, and my phone. I’ve found it smeared in the bathtub, on the counter, in the sink, on the hand towel, and on the bathroom door knob. (Seriously, at what age do kids learn to wash every bit of something off their hands before they dry them?) I’ve found it in my kid’s hair. I’ve found it in my own hair.

And it’s not just slime. Oh no. We went on a great big “putty” adventure at the same time as the slime. Putty is thicker than slime, and seemingly easier to keep contained, so it might seem better, but it’s not.

One day, my son lost his putty. Not the container, which I found sitting empty on our dining table, but the wad of putty itself. It’s a bit disconcerting to know that there’s a gob of thick, viscous gunk floating around in your house somewhere unnoticed. I was convinced that we were going to find it in his bed, though we checked there to no avail.

For two days, the putty was missing. Two days. Finally, my oldest daughter pointed to something in the dining room and asked what happened.

This is what had happened:

Clearly, my scientifically-minded son had wrapped the putty around the knob of the chair to see what would happen . . . and then forgot about it.

The worst part about this is that our family of five had silver putty oozing down the leg of one of our dining chairs that we all walk by several times a day—in addition to actually using—and not one of us noticed it for two whole days. I think we were all too busy being distracted by brown slime boogers.

It was Satan in our midst without us even realizing it, I tell you. Sneaky devil.

After cutting said putty out of my son’s hair (because he did actually have it in his bed at some point), I finally decided it was time to exorcize all manner of demon squishiness from our home. No more “chemistry experiments” in this house until every last little slime ball is found and I get that brown stain off the ceiling.

I cast you out, wicked putty! We drive you from us, evil slime! Be gone, Satan spawn! Return to the depths of homemaking hell from whence you came, never to return.

Amen and hallelujah.