What’s your worst household mishap? Can you beat mine?

[Nitpickpicnic]

Oh Lord, give me your best ‘if you can’t laugh, you’d cry’ clumsiness stories.

I just plonked myself down on my new sofa, with my iPad and a glass of red wine in hand. Well-deserved 15 minute reward ‘me’ time during a very busy day.

iPad looked like it was slipping so I overcompensated with the other hand to steady it. The hand with the wine. Wine has tipped onto: the sofa, the carpet, me, the side table (with open bills on it), dripped onto the iPad and over the edge of it, down into the heating duct. It was probably only a small half full glass, and I swear not one drop has avoided causing problems. I don’t even have time to properly swab everything and spray the (various) fabrics.

Is this The Universe underlining to me that I should not drink wine, or can you reassure me it’s common to be this clumsy? 🤦🏻‍♀️

I was decorating my living room in stages (big job) and had friends due round for a bbq. I’d showered and changed and was waiting for them to arrive and I thought oh i’ll Just touch up a few spots while I’m waiting. Full open can of paint on top of a ladder, I moved the ladder and the paint flew off. It went all over me, my curtains, the carpet. It was carnage. I still haven’t managed to get rid of it all.

Not my mishap but I'll never forget my friend's flatmate.
She'd run a bath then walk off and forget about the bath. She did this several times resulting in the bathroom floor being flooded.
One time she left the taps running and the bath overflowed for such a long time the water went all over the hall, started dripping through to downstairs and it was a terrible disaster. Rented accommodation. I don't know how they didn't get kicked out.

Mug of tea in one hand, phone in the other. Threw phone on the bed/sofa except I threw the mug of tea

Four times I’ve done that. Four.

I was drying up and walked the 3 steps to the cupboard to put the plate away. It slipped out of my hand and in th panic of trying to catch it, I propelled it into the glass oven door, which shattered into a million pieces. So in the effort to save a £2 dinner plate, I was charged by my landlord £279 to get the door replaced.

I was once making some chilli in the slow cooker but I put too much chocolate in. In an attempt to balance out the flavour, I ground up some more spices and was tipping them out of the mortar when I accidentally dropped it into the sc pot. The chilli went everywhere - all up the walls, under and into the high cupboards and all over the doors of the low ones, all over the worktop, the floor, the hob, the kettle... it made a right mess and took ages to clean up. I kept finding splashes for weeks after. Luckily though I didn't break either the slow cooker or the mortar.

When DD was about three she was playing in her bedroom and I was in another room upstairs, she called out to me ‘mummy wouldn’t it be cool if I had a glittery carpet?!’ I absentmindedly agreed and thought no more of it until I went in there to find she’d emptied one of those huge tubs of glitter all over her carpet, and I’d basically given her permission to do so!

I was making soup and had blended it until it was a thick, smooth liquid. Taking the jug off the base though the bottom came unscrewed somehow and the soup spilled out all over the worktop and floor.

I was making a smoothie with frozen berries, ice-cream and milk. I'd put the berries in but forgot to put the lid on before switching the blender on. As well as the milk spraying out around the room and hitting the ceiling, frozen berries shot out at me like a round of bullets and hit me in the face, giving me a black eye.

I reached to get a jar of pickle from the top shelf of the cupboard next to our cooker. The jar slipped out of my hand and in an effort to catch it I somehow managed to propel it sideways across the cooker hood and then onto the slate tiled floor. Glass and pickle everywhere. If I'd just left it to fall it would have landed on the work surface instead and might not even have broken.

Why does glass always go the furthest when broken?

Years ago I was invited to a friend's house for tea. Her mum picked up the pint of milk (in a bottle) to shake to mix in the creamy bit at the top (full fat milk. She'd forgotten that she'd taken the lid off already. Milk over her, the table, the food.

@IAmGrootGrootGroot

I can laugh about it now.....six years later

My best one was when I was 18. My DM was in the process of selling the house and moving in with her partner, so I was staying at her house by myself to look after it.
She had just had the hallway decorated, cream carpet on the stairs, cream wallpaper on the walls.

I was going down the stairs with a pot of melted chocolate/fondue type stuff when I tripped on my pyjama bottoms and fell down the stairs, sending melted chocolate up the walls, over the carpet, all over me...

That was a fun conversation with my DM - luckily she saw the funny side

I nearly had a disaster this morning. Took a chicken out last night and my plan for today was to roast it and use it for a few batch cooked dishes.

Came in from the school run, put the oven on to preheat on high, so I could get a nice crispy skin on it, while I pottered making coffee, washing up etc. Oven beeps to let me know it's at temperature.

Went to the side, where's the chicken? Went to the fridge? Where's the chicken? Remembered that before I went to bed, to protect the chicken from the cat, I put it still wrapped in the plastic IN THE OVEN on the defrosting slab!!! Cue panic. Opened the oven and the label on the plastic had just started to smoke. Luckily the wrapper had ballooned rather than stuck to the chicken so I could save it. But it was close.

MsSquiz your disaster reminded me that my parents had a new (fortunately brown) carpet fitted in their dining room when I was a teenager. I was given my plate of dinner to take in to the table - "be careful you don't spill any of it" Mum says.

I don't just spill it, I dropped the entire plate of food on the floor. Gravy everywhere. Quite how she kept her cool I'll never know.

Had the folks around for dinner to celebrate a special birthday. Got the good wine glasses and china out for the occasion.

When emptying the dishwasher later, I pulled out the top rack, as you do, but the little clips had come undone, so the top rack with all the lovely glasses, china etc. came crashing out on to the kitchen floor. That was last year. I am STILL finding little shards of glass even now!

I think I saw it happening in slow motion too!

Calamity Jane here.
My funniest story is my friend making a banana smoothie. The lid flew off the blender and 6 months later they were picking bits of banana out of the plug socket.

Our toaster was on the table where I’d been reads magazine. Unbeknown to me the free gift of alcohol based spot remover had fallen into it

Next time the toaster was switched on , there were flames pouring out of it.
Got the kids out, phoned fire brigade in floods of tears...by the time I’d put the phone down it had burned itself out. Rang to cancel...but they came any way...so embarrassed.
Especially when they rushed into my house...shoutwheres the fire love..lm going red just thinking about it.
Worse still...the toaster lasted another several years

Decorated dd's bedroom, decided the carpet wouldn't need replacing, just put a nice rug down. Ds 2 decided the carpet would look better with white gloss paint stripes....

I had a diary when I was a teenager, and after filling it realised there was a lot in there I didn't want my mum to see (and she would be the type to read it).
My genius solution was to set fire to it in the bathroom sink I then decided the bath would be a better place to put it and subsequently managed to melt part of the bath! My parents came running upstairs smelling the smoke and I sensibly rinsed the bath out and went and hid in my room, leaving a huge grey mark and a sort of dip where the plastic had melted.

Ex dh put up a shelf. I put the Llandrindod ( never a big fan) that mum had lovingly brought me back from Spain on it.
A few months later, I thought it looked a bit wonky, but ignored it..too much going on with little kids
A few months later, I watch d them go crashing to the floor and was powerless to stop the it

Mum never forgave me for that

I’ve inherited some of her pieces,. Don’t particularly like them, but darent part with them

Sept time, 3 young school age DC, all new MandS shirts, 4 each including PE polo's, detagged, washed, ironed and hung. Three blazers, four pairs of trousers, two skirts, all hanging neatly on door frame waiting to go upstairs. I'm painting a dark red feature wall on opposite side of room, standing on a chair, paint tray resting on top of tall dresser. DH gets pissed off at items in his way and silently moves them to a closer doorframe just as I slip and knock red paint filled tray flying. Every single item had to be replaced!

Small child, high bunk bed, tummy bug, vomit spray over entire room.

Rubbed my eyes when I read that, RememberatTime, in case I'd somehow typed it without remembering doing so!

Ah, but did your child vomit into the basket of clean washing when you dragged it in to finish changing the sheets?

Don't worry OP - I remember a poster here who once told the story of buying the WRONG house! They viewed two in the same street, got confused and put in an offer and bought the wrong one. Pulled up outside on moving day to be redirected to the shabbier house down the road! (Possibly an urban myth but OP was very convincing in the telling!)

The iron story reminds me of the time we were on holiday with our three aged 4, 6 and 8
Exdh had spread a towel on the floor and was ironing a shirt. DS6 came dashing up all upset...I think I’ve swallowed a pen top. Sheer panic ensued while he was upended, bashed on the back. I was probably crying hysterically , and shouting, well did you or didn’t you, as I was useless in a crisis. While all this was going on, ds4 backed into the iron and burnt his leg.
Dd 8 who probably had moresense than we all had put together. Looked for and found the pen top.

So we had one battered child, one burnt child, two frazzled parents, one fed up daughter...and we’d been there half an hour.

Had been strawberry picking with the kids one summer and had millions of the bloody things so decided to make jam

It was doing it’s thing on the hob when the phone rang - my Mum. Half an hour later I suddenly remember the jam and leg it back to the kitchen to find the jam had boiled over all over my kitchen - like a jam volcano, all over the hob, work top, down the front of the oven door, the kitchen floor. It took hours to clean up.

I was making marshmallows with the kids to give out as Christmas presents. Managed to set fire to a bag of sugar and a whole kitchen roll

I'm HOWLING at these!

Dropped a HUGE jar of very expensive Manuka honey when getting it out of our under-stairs cupboard, which doubles as a larder and shoe cupboard. It landed on the tile floor and exploded everywhere - broken glass and honey over every single shoe we owned, the hall floor, the kitchen runner. The range of the mess was truly remarkable and it took me hours to clean up.

Oh, and DH once broke my toe with a jar of pickled onions on

He was standing on a kitchen chair rummaging at the back of the top shelf of one of the high kitchen cupboards. Knocked the jar, which fell out of the cupboard on to my foot. Huge mess that stunk to high heaven for bloody weeks.

Plus a broken toe and black toe nail for me