It's a three way tie between my kids covering themselves and the bathroom walls entirely in a giant jar of Vaseline, cleaning up a 2oz bottle of lavender essential oil that I broke in the kitchen, and cleaning up a 2 year old and the Vick's he rubbed all over himself and his bedroom walls.
I dropped a bottle of olive oil on the kitchen floor, no cap. ...
omg you win. This must have been impossible to clean up. I was making vanilla extract togive as gifts one year and dropped a gallon of vodka with probably $100 worth of vanilla beans in it, but my house smwlled so good for weeks after. I think it soaked into the grout.
It's not that hard to clean up actually (see post about breaking a bottle of lavender EO in my kitchen). If you have corn meal, rice, or old fashioned oats, just pour that over the spilled oil, wait for it to soak up, sweep, and then mop the rest of the oil off the floor. It's still messy AF.
Since this involves epic quantities of vomit I will leave it under a spoiler tag: TW TW TW TW !!!!!
When I was sailing on a kids camp trip we encountered really bad weather on a very cold night with 18 12-15 year olds on board. They had all eaten a large dinner of lasagne when the bad weather hit at 8pm. Many kids were dunked in freezing cold water (think surrounded by icebergs in the St Lawrence River in early April) and so we had to keep them below deck all night. Generally we encouraged people to be sick overboard, which they obviously could not under the circumstances, but when I went below that morning literally every pot, pan, bowl, and cup in the galley had been put to use. I did not eat lasagne for about 8 years after that. One kid called the police in an attempt to get out of the camp when we got to the next town. I honestly couldn't blame him.
This story is ok:
My MIL loves recounting the story of when her two sons got into a full pound of butter as toddlers (I think 2 and 3.5) She said she couldn't even wash it off of them because the water was slick and the kitchen was covered in the stuff.
So many messes, so many. Due to the lack of supplies (& the smell!), this one was pretty bad - cat pooped in his cat carrier on a road trip and then stepped in it and dragged it all over himself and the carrier.
Try cleaning that up on the side of the road while not letting the cat escape into the woods.
Animal Mess: Black cat got what we still refer to as the "rocket shits," where she was running away from her own diarrhea, and basically spraying it like a hose all of the house. It started in the corner behind a side table, went behind the couch (and on the couch as she ran past), up and down the hall, into our bedroom, and I think maybe also into the kitchen and dining room before we caught her and locked her into the hall bathroom.
This started on probably a Saturday night, and we had kept her locked in the bathroom with a litter box and food until we could get her to the vet. On Sunday this was fine because we'd been able to check on her every hour or so and keep her calm and happy. Monday after work was another story, and the bathroom was a Jackson Pollack nightmare. We also had to give her a bath (which to her credit she didn't fight, because she knew she was a wreck).
Food Mess: I had forgotten about a bottle of sparkling cider for probably 2-3 years, and it was hanging out in my tiny wine rack, which is on the very top shelf of my pantry. My pantry is sort of reach-in-closet style, and the wine rack is on the side where I store spices, canned goods, baking supplies, and miscellaneous stuff like ramen and bulk boxes of ziplocks from Costco.
Anyway, around the time of one of our excruciating heat domes, the bottle popped open and dumped cider down that entire side of the pantry, and onto the floor. The only thing that was totally ruined was a new box of cornmeal, but even after pulling stuff out, and wiping it all down, I still encountered the random sticky spice bottle or sticky can of beans for MONTHS because I'd missed a spot, or it had splattered in a way I hadn't realized.
We had a dog poop + Roomba incident. Literally the only time the dog has ever pooped in the house. Good thing I wanted to replace that area rug anyway!
DS2 picked out a lava lamp for DS1 for his birthday last week, and DS3 climbed up on a kitchen stool and knocked it off and broke it. There was broken glass, wax, and colored liquid all over the inside of my cabinets and seeping into the floor. It took me forever to clean up!
Grosser but probably less cleanup time overall....when DD puked spaghetti all over her top bunk and the wall and it slid down to the bottom bunk along the wall.
My old dog ate a whole bag of chocolate chips and was very very uncomfortable as it all came out the other end the next couple days. The vet used some formula of her weight to the amount of chocolate consumed to determine that no vet intervention was needed.
With four little kids and now a new puppy, there is always some giant mess.
Broke a glass mixing bowl in the sink, where pieces proceeded to fall and be washed into the garbage disposal. Despite carefully picking out what we could, the disposal would sound horrible after that and stopped working. We had to replace the disposal.
We remodeled our bedrooms and baths on the upper level of our very open concept floorplan last summer, including having the hall retextured and painted. The painters didn’t properly block off the area, we had a thin white film over everything in the house from the priming spray. It’s a bit more resistant to wiping up than dust, as it’s got a bit of stickiness to it. I’m still finding places and things that got coated.
Our roomba knocked several bottles of wine out of the storage container, then proceeded to spread red wine and broken glass shards… everywhere. Can confirm that the thing did a great job of getting every area possible. At least it wasn’t poop?
I have a friend whose roomba broke through the invisible barrier and terrified the dog, who pooped in fear. Then the roomba a tried to clean up the poop.
ETA: I see this is not uncommon!
Also I've only ever really cleaned up vomit but nothing compared to these horror stories.
There was the time I was attending a funeral 2 weeks post partum and thought I could change DS2 on the front seat of my car. He sprayed that mustard-y baby poo all over the dashboard of my car, including into the vents. I had to clean that up with baby wipes and then go into the service.
H gave our dog some Spam 🤢 and he had the runs for two days. He tried so hard not to poop in the house during the night and it was obvious he was pacing throughout the entire downstairs with uncontrollable diarrhea. It was everywhere two mornings in a row.
For some reason I thought it made sense to make gravy in the glass casserole dish I baked a turkey breast in. I didn’t think about the fact that glass will shatter if too hot. I had turkey juice running down the walls and dripping from the ceiling with shattered glass everywhere.
Oh and my dog chased our cat into the bathroom one day while everyone was gone. And somehow closed the door behind them (the cat must have ran behind it?) They had to be stuck in there for hours. My shampoo and conditioner, H’s shampoo and my body wash were knocked down off the shower shelves and were all squeezed out (100 lb GSD, he probably just had to step on them 🤷♀️). Every roll of toilet paper and paper towel in the closet (bi fold door, probably not closed the whole way) were shredded and everywhere. I really would give anything to have a video of what those two did in there all afternoon together. It was probably pretty funny and we did have a good laugh after H got done flipping out about the hole in the door our dog made trying to claw his way out.
Post by jennistarr1 on Feb 5, 2024 20:00:37 GMT -5
I debated posting this one ...so I'll give a warning of pet death (fish)
Out my bedroom window I spot this huge bird which I had never seen before and showed my husband and he's like "huh, wonder why a blue heron is in our yard, bet its eating our fish" (pond) So I start looking around and it was like Gettysburg ....fish bodies everywhere.
We tried cleaning them ourselves but we were soooooo upset. I called my mom literally hysterical, she came over and cleaned like 50 dead or dying fish out of my yard.
We've gotten hit by "the heron" many more times and they typically swallow them whole. But for whatever reason that time the heron like stabbed and threw them like a killing field.
This isn’t gross or anything but when I was single and living with a roommate, for some reason I gave our dog a down pillow in his crate. I came home from work and he had chewed it open. There were tiny little feathers EVERYWHERE. The room he was in was a tiny row home bedroom and the feathers were floating in the air like the upside down world in Stranger Things, they were stuck to the walls, 2 inches thick on the floor, and bc of the static the (black German shepherd) dog was coated so much he looked like a wooly sheep, head to toe. TBH I don’t know how he didn’t suffocate. I don’t even remember how I cleaned it up.
For the rest of his life his nickname was Mr. Feathers, pronounced with a proper English accent.
jennistarr1 herons are huge assholes. We have a few in my neighborhood and they go around killing fish just for shits and giggles despite having a plentiful supply in the many ponds and creeks that are throughout. The way they flap around with their dopey faces annoys me too.
My XH and I were in my stepsister’s wedding to his BFF. We both stood up in the wedding so dressed fancy. Partied into the night with another groomsmen and his gf at the time. She was drinking a LOT of cranberry/vodkas. I drove them home in my brand new car (I did not drink). GF got sick and didn’t make it out the window. And the bitch didn’t even tell me!!! We found out after so we stopped at a self serve car wash and were cleaning puke out of my car at 2am in a tux and gown.
Post by lavenderblue on Feb 5, 2024 20:20:24 GMT -5
About 20 years ago I had a pit mix and a Rottweiler mix. They were both glutton, so had to follow a strict eating schedule. No matter how much food you gave them they would keep eating. One time I had left out a new bag of dog food. I forgot about it and never put it in the plastic bin. Got home from work one day and they had torn the bag open. There was dog food everywhere there was poop everywhere there was vomit everywhere. They just kept eating until they got sick and then eating some more. It was by far the most disgusting thing I’ve ever dealt with in my life.
I have dogs (plural) and kids (plural) and stomach bugs are my kryptonite, so I've seen things in this category but I'm not revisiting them.
The worst though, and this is much more sad than funny, was that I had a bachelor uncle with a lake camp who lived about 45 mins from me. I used to go up and "pre-clean" the weekend before 4th of July, because he loved hosting the fam for the 4th, but he was struggling with alcoholism and probably wasn't a great housekeeper to begin with. I was annually cleaning a bathroom that probably hadn't been cleaned since I did it 52 weeks prior.
My oldest daughter gave me a number of memorable messes:
- A&D ointment alllll over herself, her bedding, her baby gate on her door during nap time when she was 2. I only realized it when I smelled it from downstairs. She was quiet and I thought she was napping. She was not.
- Finger-painting in poop, ALSO during "nap time."
-Finger painting in *actual* finger paint all over her room at my mom's house. Why my mom left finger paint in the bottom drawer of her room, I'll never know.
- Not making it to the toilet in time when she had a lower-GI stomach bug when she was 4. Which, was also the time when my younger one ate a dishwasher pod, because N yelled "MOMMYYYY, HELLLLP!!!!!" at the exact moment I dropped the dishwasher pod into the dishwasher, and I tore across the house to find the bathroom floor covered, and her slipping and falling in it. I get that cleaned up and go back to the kitchen to see E with dishwasher powder on her face, and the pod in her hand. Not my best day of parenting.
Post by UMaineTeach on Feb 5, 2024 21:01:43 GMT -5
Cleaning car seat vomit in a hotel parking lot.
We had been swimming all day at the hotel and left to get dinner. The restaurant was a disaster for many reasons, one of those where you should have turned around right after you walked in.
but in the end the kid ate nothing after spending an hour+ laying on the booth seat.
Get to the car and as she is facing the seat to climb in, everything comes up.
We took off the clothes and since the hotel was a very short parking lot ride away we put her in a regular seatbelt and hoped for the best.
Luckily, I had 2 other adults. One took the kid to the room and got her cleaned and in jammies. The other one and I tore the seat apart in the parking lot. First time I had taken the seat apart. We had baby wipes, a roll of paper towel, and a small trash bag.
Once the mess was kind of under control we uninstalled the seat and brought it to the room.
I read the manual and machine washed the washable parts (for like $10 total). Hand washed the rest.
It wasn’t dry enough to ride in the next day, but for whatever reason I had the Ride Safer vest in the car and we used that to get home.
A more thorough cleaning had to take place the next day at home and it still smelled questionable for a month.
I adopted a dog with heartworms who turned out to be pregnant. When she went into labor, she busted out of the nice linoleum laundry room of my apartment (pulled down the baby gate), tried to get into my bedroom (thankfully it was closed), and then crawled under my desk and tried to have the puppies on my printer (luckily it had a dust cover). So imagine tons of amniotic fluid, green placentas, and three puppies (also green tinged) by the time I got home. It was probably a 600 sqft apartment, and my room and the bathroom and laundry room were the only areas unscathed. And it was July, so opening the few windows just made it a humid smelly mess.
Post by lilypad1126 on Feb 5, 2024 21:09:37 GMT -5
Let’s see. My H shook a jar of salsa without holding the top. It was not screwed on, so salsa went EVERYWHERE. And in asking him about this just now, he told me he actually did it twice, lol.
Once, my H was shaking a jar of Parmesan cheese. Again, lid not on tight it went everywhere. I wasn’t home, so he was on his own to clean it up. When I got home a few days later, he reenacted it, and again, lid not snapped on tight, park cheese everywhere. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.
Oh and on time he dropped a large glass jar of pickles and the jar shattered everywhere, pickle juice everywhere. If I didn’t already hate pickles, I would have after that. Omg my house smelled like pickles for days 🤮
Post by tacoflavoredkisses on Feb 5, 2024 21:44:17 GMT -5
Probably a tie between when my kids broke my daughter’s sensory bottle and glittery baby oil water went down a vent and the time we had a defective bottle of hard cider that exploded on our shelf in the middle of the night because the glass shot everywhere.
We had our floors refinished, I decided to bring out a gallon of white semi gloss paint to touch up some trim. I knocked over the entire gallon on the newly finished floors 🫣
The umbrella in the middle of our glass table on our deck caught some wind last summer and the whole thing fell over and the table shattered. The shards got everywhere, including in the gaps between the Trex deck boards. I did my best to sweep everything up and it still probably took me an hour. This wasn’t even a huge table; there were just so many shards. The deck is only about 2-3 feet off the ground and closed off, so once the glass went through the cracks (and a lot of it did) it was as good as lost forever.
My cat knocked over a brand new 2 liter jug of olive oil from Costco in the middle of the night. It broke just enough of the rim of the cap to leak out the entire jug on our kitchen floor which ran under the stove and refrigerator. That was super fun to wake up to before work one day.
Post by basilosaurus on Feb 6, 2024 1:30:43 GMT -5
I used to keep a case of coke in my car because that was my daily breakfast on the way to work. Stupid me didn't take it out before going to ski and staying with a friend overnight. Multiple exploded cans. In an SUV so there was nothing untouched. Thankfully it was still ridiculously cold, so it was relatively easy to clean the coke slushies.
I didn't have to clean this by myself, but my little cousin about age 2 decided she didn't want to get sunburned and used an entire bottle of sunscreen only some of which made it to her body. This was on a boat in the head, so a wood floor which apparently loves to absorb sunscreen. My aunt and I scrubbed forever, and I'm pretty sure it was still stained.
Post by mainelyfoolish on Feb 6, 2024 7:16:40 GMT -5
Like others with kids, I have a few horrific vomit stories, but I’ll share a funny one instead.
20 odd years ago, I drove an older Dodge Spirit (small sedan) that had a small leak in the gasket around the trunk that I could never find to properly fix. Stuff inside the trunk got a little wet sometimes, but otherwise the car was fine.
One day after work, I went to Sam’s Club to replenish household supplies and carried a full load with me into my apartment. I hadn’t been able to carry the large box of Tide powder, so I figured I’d get to it the next day. Then I forgot about it.
A week later, after it had rained for a couple of days, I opened my trunk to find the forgotten warehouse store sized cardboard box of Tide that had been sitting in my wet trunk. The cardboard bottom of the box had dissolved and the powder was a wet slurry. There really is no good way to wash out a trunk. Trying to get the detergent paste out with a hose produced a trunk full of bubbles. I spent a long time spraying water, then bailing bubbles and water out of the trunk with a bucket. Rinse and repeat, literally. I don’t think I ever got all the Tide out of the trunk.