The idea, like most really good ones, is so simple it almost makes you want to cry – particularly if you’ve just had the living room walls repapered for the third time this year. Non spill paint pots come with screw or clip on caps, which allow the entry and exit of one brush but no huge fountains of paint. Even if our young artist waves the thing around like a flag, very little comes out – and when he or she just naturally forgets that he or she was painting Daddy being chased by a dinosaur and goes running off to frighten the dog, kicking all the paint pots over in the process – well, who cares? Child might as well have kicked over a completely sealed paint pot, for all the mess it’s made.
You can get non spill paint pots just about anywhere – certainly on the web sites of all the major kid’s toy suppliers and parenting product retailers. Not to mention, of course, a certain e commerce giant whose name has a lot in common with (i.e. is exactly the same as) a famous rainforest and a very large river. The only difference, as far as anyone can make out, is in degrees of trendiness and associated price tag: a non spill paint pot, after all, is a non spill paint pot and that’s about as far as you can run with it. One imagines the best criteria, when shopping for non spill paint pots, would be how many there are in a pack, rather than whether or not they’ve been sourced from some trendy “kid’s outfitters” – whose main job, it has to be said, seems to be duping new parents out of as much money as possible before they realise how much their new arrival is going to cost them anyway and start economising like church mice. A non spill paint pot is not a fashion item – it’s a convenience, designed to protect one’s home against the awful majesty of Creativity. Don’t be hoodwinked into paying the best part of twenty quid for something that you could practically have made yourself.
Tirade aside, non spill paint pots are awesome. They’ll set your child free to express him or herself freely, without getting yelled at for doing what they thought was a good thing: and they’ll protect your sofa so you don’t have to. Enjoy!