This is why we can't have nice things

April 25, 2014

This is why we can’t have nice things

From pelvic floors to heirlooms, most parents have lamented the loss of at least one cherished possession their kids have ruined. Bek Day explores some particularly funny examples, with the pictures to prove it.

When my younger brother was a teenager, he used to get all testosteroney (scientific term) and punch stuff around the house when he was mad.

Because I was more often than not the cause of his rage-filled punching sessions (and because he never actually punched humans, just walls and doors) I used to help him cover up the evidence. We would get a poster or a framed print and stick it to the wall over the place where he had made a dent in the gyprock, and then forget about it. This went on for a good two or three years during his turbulent teen years, until I moved out of home and my parents put the house on the market to move.

Imagine their surprise when they were preparing the place for open house inspections and discovered that under almost every poster lay a giant gaping hole in the wall.

It took my brother a weekend and several tubes of spakfilla, but he managed to patch up the holes that he had created. Because he was far less testosteroney by this stage, he was quite apologetic. For their part, my parents weren’t too upset. You see, they’d lived through nearly two decades of having all their nice stuff ruined by kids.

From the time we had a toothpaste fight in the bathroom (if you jump with both feet on a full tube of toothpaste, you will be amazed at how far it goes – and how quickly your mum stops buying toothpaste tubes in bulk) to the time the glass sliding door ‘spontaneously’ shattered into a thousand pieces, my brother and I have enjoyed an illustrious career of destruction.

My parents aren’t alone. So common is the experience of having kids ruin your nice things, that creative mama Julie Brophy has dedicated a website to the phenomenon.

Entitled (appropriately) ‘Sh*t My Kids Ruined’, the site serves as an online community where parents can collectively lament the loss of their beloved possessions, sharing photographic evidence to boot.

Let’s face it – if you don’t laugh you’ll cry, so have a giggle at these pictures of some things that have been well and truly ruined by children …

All images via Sh*t My Kids Ruined

The toilet

When weights and porcelain collide.
This box of chocolates

Life is like a box of chocolates. Your kids put their sticky fingers all over everything.
This dog's coat

Rainbow pooch to the rescue!
The floor

“Honey, you left the food colouring out …”
His hair-do

The reverse mohawk. Very popular with the under-two demographic.
This iPhone

iPhones. Equally dangerous in the hands of babies and drunk uni students.
This makeover

Permanent marker: A cautionary tale.
This car

Reason #465 that a toddler should never be left unattended with an open tin of paint.
Her hair colour

Little Jenny went through her punk rebellion stage a littler earlier than most.