I was cleaning my house today, and got to thinking about some of the dumber things I did while cleaning.
Being a guy, cleaning is not on the highest of my priorities, beyond not having anything smelly, or slimy in plain view.
But one time as I was moving out of an aparment I had lived in for a few years, I dicided to do the traditional"clean the hell out of everything and hope to get the deposit back" routine. It was the first time I ever tried to clean the hell out of an oven, and I ran into some problems getting the pans under the burners clean. I bought and tried every counter cleaner, over cleaner, lighter fluid, Carb cleaner, and diluted acid. Finally after about 25 bucks worth of cleaning products, 6 hours of scrubing, worn out hands, screamin pain in my elbows and shoulders, and finally an abrasive disk and polishing disk on my dremel, I got the damn things looking as shiny and pristene as new.
About a month later I noticed you can just buy new ones for about a buck. :smack:
I have also done the ‘hand dishwasher soap in the machine bit’ and had an impromptu foam party all over my carpet.
And the homicidal spatula I mentioned a couple years ago.
My worst was an apartment I lived in for three years. When I was moving out, someone asked me if I’d remembered to clean the tray under the fridge. Err? There’s a tray under there?
Three years of spilled junk that had congealed into an awful slime was NOT a pretty looking or smelling experience!
I’m living in company provided housing in the arctic.
The house I’m was reasonably tidy when I moved in, but it was obvious that the house had been used for transient employees rather than permanently based ones. The oven in particular was pretty gross.
So after I’d been here for about a month, I set out to clean the oven. Down on my hands and knees for about an hour with oven cleaner fumes, scrubbing my fingers to the bones. When I was done, it was in good shape.
About a week later - I realized that the oven was a self cleaning model. D’oh!
Back when we were kids, my sister learned that you can ‘clean’ silver and other metals by putting them in water with soda crystals and pieces of aluminium foil, so we decided to clean our mum’s favourite silver pendant and earrings in this way. What we did not know is that it would remove the delicate enamelled design on the front of them, and would destroy the lustre - leaving it very clean, but with a bright matt finish.
So, anytime I hear anyone suggest this method for cleaning jewellery (or if they suggest using cola, ketchup or other acidic substances), I slap them really hard around the face.
Huh, I’m 39 and I’ve nevere noticed a tray before. I wonder if I’ve been leaving it filthy this whole time? :eek: I’ll have to go home and look at my current fridge.
If you don’t have one, and you do have a drawer in the bottom of the fridge, pull that out and take a look under there. Yeah, I had that surprise when moving out of an apartment. :eek:
I used to have one of those refrigerator-freezer units that required constant defrosting. So one day, I got impatient and used an ice pick. Freon burns, ruins all the food in the fridge, and makes the house smell funny for days. I now have a nice frost-free model.
You’re not alone. Many years ago, one of my brothers tried to pry loose the ice cube tray (metal tray). It wouldn’t come loose. So he tried to pry it loose with a table knife. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams :smack:. We got a new fridge just after that.
My worst cleaning mistake wasn’t exactly cleaning, but decorating-related. Bathroom was wallpapered. But the wallpaper started peeling pretty much as soon as it was installed (and no, we didn’t do it ourselves, we paid someone to do it, argh!). So we decided to remove it. Wallpaper remover didn’t touch it. So we started trying to peel/scrub/scrape it off.
Wound up removing the top layer of the wallboard as well.
I needed to do laundry, so I ran to WalMart and bought a huge container of liquid detergent. I thought I’d wash what I had on, too, so I stripped naked and walked thus through the kitchen to snag the tablecloth and next I knew, was flat on my back seeing stars. The laundry detergent had leaked all over the tile floor from a tiny hole in the container and I slipped in the puddle. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t hurt, so I tried to get up. Hands and feet and everything else covered in detergent. On tile. Naked skin+liquid detergent+tile+Cyn panicking. **Drachillix ** and I had just started dating and I didn’t want him to remember me that way. My mom lived an hour away. Best friend at work until 6. I oozed myself across the floor onto the carpeted livingroom floor and rolled until I could wipe enough detergent off to get some purchase and arise. Unhurt. And smelling very very April Fresh. Threw a towel on the shower floor for grip and washed and washed and washed. Didn’t do laundry until way later.
10% bleach solution works great for that ;p But pure bleach? I used to know someone who would soak his feet in bleach to get rid of corns or something. Strange…
One of my classmates in college was one of those dudes who have problems with the whole concept of “rules”. For lab, we had our own space, about two meters worth of tabletop with some closet space underneath. Lab rules said that “any container left in the closet and containing anything other than air must be stoppered hermetically”.
He left a flask with HCl solution and one with ammonia unstoppered over Easter break… you know, those ammonium chloride crystals really are white! And they were aaaaaaaaall over his stuff. He tried to cadge help from the rest of us and we just laughed at him (cruel? maybe, but he’d caused trouble for many people and went on causing more; one of his “jokes” got me showered in sulphuric acid, cost me a new pair of glasses and would have meant my eyes had I not been wearing them).
I’ve seen guys go to the TA with a flask full of gunk. TA says “ok, what did you try?” and the guy lists water and a whole bunch of solvents. Then the TA says “have you applied elbow grease along with any of those? Scotch-Brite is your friend, you know…” They selected our chemicals specifically for being easy to clean, but yeah, it needed elbow grease.
Several times I’ve helped friends move and watched their surprise at finding out that dirt does get under furniture. The house I own in Spain came with some furniture the old owners didn’t want to take; moving one of those yielded several 100-peseta coins.
Hey, I watch Law and Order. If it’s not in plain view then you arn’t allowed to notice it at all. All that crap behind closed closet doors, and in cabinets doesn’t count.
I once mopped a kitchen floor with straight bleach. I wanted to get it really clean, y’see.
I have no sense of smell, so maybe I didn’t quit as soon as I should have. By the time I was finished, my nose was running and tears were rolling from my stinging eyes. I felt like I’d been maced.
And then, the other people in the household had the nerve to complain that it was bothering them too!
" :smack: I left when it started hissing.