My ex decided to completely clean the kitchen one day. She emptied cabinets, cleaned them, and put the stuff back. Except for the Tupperware stuff—she was a Tupperware junkie. She ran out of counter space and put some Tupperware in the oven for safekeeping while she cleaned the cabinet. She put the Tupperware on the counter back in the cabinet but forgot about the stuff in the oven. Later on, she decided to clean the oven, which happened to be a self cleaning model. If you’ve ever melted Tupperware in your oven, you know what a chore it can be to get the goo out. To her credit, and it hurts me to say that, she did it all by herself and actually got the oven sparkling clean.
A refridgerator drains into a shallow pan underneath the unit. It’s an evaperator pan, that is emptied by evaporation. You normaly don’t have to do anything with it, so most people don’t know it’s there. The pan fills with drained solids over the years.
Not only have I done the table knife to clean out the freezer thing ( when I opened the yellow pages to call a repairman, the company that had the graphic of a guy doing just what I did, and recoiling in horror from the hisss) I’ve also done the straight bleach on a large patch of mouse piss that I discovered under my fridge.
I now have psychological issues when it comes to cleaning and fridges, much to the annoyance of my wife.
I once knew someone who was, well, not too bright. During the time I knew him he had various mishaps occur, mostly due to his failure to think things through. One day he told me about the time he was part of a cleaning disaster as a restaurant dishwasher. I don’t know if it was entirely true, but he was a feckless fellow and seemed to be basically honest.
There was apparently a blocked drain in the restaurant floor. Someone had a bucket full of cleaning solution and was trying to un-block the drain with the solution and a broom handle. Suddenly the restaurant inspector paid a surprise visit! The waitstaff tried to stall him in the from part of the restaurant while efforts to clear the blocked drain were redoubled.
Under pressure, my acquaintance and his manager had the bright idea of pouring bleach into the bucket of solution. Bleach cuts through stuff! But alas, the bucket began to boil and fume. Too late, they realized the original cleaning solution was ammonia-based!
Now faced with more than a blocked drain – indeed, a bucket generating chlorine gas – they decided to open the back door and dump it in the alley.
But the back door was blocked somehow (yes, that’s also a violation the inspector would flag them for). Now left with little choice, as poison gas started to build up in the enclosed space, they took the hissing, fuming mess out the front door instead, shouting a warning.
Imagine if you will, the restaurant inspector, here to look for safety violations. Perhaps he senses that the waitstaff is being unusually solicitous, and begins to suspect he is being distracted from his official duties.
Suddenly the kitchen bursts open, and two yelling men carry a boiling bucket of poison gas through the customer area!
I don’t think the establishment passed that particular inspection.
Sailboat
My uncle’s friend thought cleaning a greasy hood vent with gasoline was a cheap innovative way to do it. Well, the fire department determined that it was that and the gas stove/oven that contributed to the explosion. 
The local prosecutor took the case to a Grand Jury because he couldn’t believe someone could be so stupid. However, a grown man crying on the stand convinced them it was so.
The house I lived in during college had hardwood floors, the first time I had lived somewhere with them. After a while the stairs got really dirty and I decided to dust them. I used Pledge.
All was well as I dusted the bottom steps while standing on the floor, then I started to climb the stairs to dust the top ones and almost killed myself. Socks + Pledged stairs = slippery death. That build up is meant to stay on and protect your wood too, so it took a while before we could use the stairs without clinging to the banister for dear life. Surprised a few guests, too.
Reading all these stories shows me how lucky I was growing up. I’ve pried ice out of the freezer without mishap. I’ve never mixed bleach and ammonia, but just out of luck. Definately not from knowing better. I’ve had fun with the whole clean up for the deposit run-around. have you ever vacuumed up dust bunnies so massive that they actually make a sound getting sucked up in the hose?
My grandfather took a lot of odd jobs during the Depression, including a brief stint as a janitor. There was an unlabelled bottle of clear, colorless fluid in the supply closet, and he wanted to find out if it was bleach or ammonia. He uncapped the bottle, stuck his nose over the opening and sniffed deeply.
Woke up an unknown length of time later with a welt on his head from where he struck it against a metal shelf on hs way down. But at least he knew it was ammonia.
My friend was cleaning his brand new Italian sports convertible.
He aimed the high pressure wand at a black speck on the nose of the hood.
Instead of the speck flying off, it got bigger.
It was a pit, not a speck, and the pressure wand lifted the adjoining chip of paint.
I never saw a man so crushed.
Yikes! Glad you and your friends survived to tell the tale! Do you use Murphy’s Oil Soap (not oily) now?
Well I’m not in that house anymore, but I have learned a thing or 2 about cleaning wood since then. Anyway, now our house has Pergo floors and Swiffer has been invented.
Sorry, but that gave me the best giggle. The first time I had to clean hardwood floors, I thought they were a bit dull, so I sprayed a couple of cans of Pledge all over them and cleaned them. (Hey, it works on the coffee table, so why not?) It was like a skating rink, and it’s a wonder someone didn’t break a leg.
Seemed like a good idea at the time, though, didn’t it? 
I’ve busted my ass on one of those floors after a swifter was used on it. Do not enter a room in socks and try to make a sharp directional change. The worst thing in a retail store that people did to the floor, was spray furniture polish to check the scent. It was super slick until the patch was stripped and rewaxed. The old man spraying stripes on the floor to see the color of spray paints, made my day.
The wax on a floor would be agood thing to remember if somebody in breaking into your house, call 911 and spray the floors after you. They’ll bust there head open if they cahse you.
Hah, me too! I swear they really need to make that inner-metal liner a lot thicker, or have some sort of warning on there.
Speaking of using volatile. flammable solvents as cleaners…
About a decade ago, a worker in a pizza restaurant decided that gasoline would be an excellent product to degrease an oven.
snip, cut and paste from some website,note the name of the restaurant ( caps not mine )
(VANCOUVER) The cleanup continues following an early morning
explosion on Vancouver’s west side. Two restaurants, ``DYNAMITE PIZZA’’
and the Orchid Garden Singapore-Thai restaurant, were levelled. Several
other businesses suffered heavy damage.
Fire officials believe the explosion was caused by a restaurant
worker who was using gas to clean an oven. He’s in criticial condition
with second and third degree burns to his entire body. The blast knocked
out windows more than one-hundred feet away and there are huge plates of
glass all over the street and shards litter the sidewalks. Two banks have
had their windows blown out, so police have sealed the area to prevent
looting.
Stout, welcome to the Straight Dope. I hope you decide it’s worth your while to become a member here.
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Man, oh man, you guys should have seen my boyfriend and his roomates moving out of their apartment this past spring. I mean, they’d never cleaned anything they didn’t have to, even the really anal retentive one, but they want their deposit back, right? So evidently one of them is supposed to be cleaning the toilet, and comes in from the bathroom with a… felted ring of something, held on a stick at arm’s length.
Pubesfelt.
Evidently, if you live in a house full of guys who never ever ever ever clean the toilet, pubic hair will just weave itself into a whole new textile under the toilet rim. Who knew?
There ARE warnings there.
Mind you, if you let the ice get thick enough, you won’t be able to read them.
When I was in Costa Rica, the freezers got a lot of ice, so I would defrost mine about once a week. When my roomie decided to hire a cleaning lady, I started doing it Wednesday morning because that was the day she came: the manager of the apartment complex had mentioned having problems with the cleaning ladies “trying to hurry defrosting”.
A coworker’s freezer got busted by the cleaning lady while we were there; well, one that I heard of. There were three cleaning ladies who worked those apartments (apartment renters just contracted the same women who cleaned the common areas): you would have thought that after a few times they’d know better!