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? 🤦🏻‍♀️

@rememberatime - my DS was on the receiving end of similar at a school residential trip last year. He'd just opened his suitcase on the floor next to his bed when his friend, who'd been stuffing himself with sweets on the coach, leaned over the edge of the top bunk and vomited copiously, directly into it. His poor teacher spent the first afternoon of the trip cleaning out the suitcase and getting all DS's clothes boil-washed.

I used to keep a glass of water by my bed at night. This had to end when I apparently tried to take a sip of said water while still sleeping. (I sleep talk & walk so this is totally within the realms of normality for me)

I lifted the glass (while still lying down) and threw it back except instead of aiming at my mouth I went over my shoulder and completely soaked DH, the duvet, the sheets, the pillows etc...

DH woke up alarmed to see me setting the glass back down on the side table (how I had the precision to do that but not get the glass to my mouth I don’t know) and muttering about not being thirsty anymore.

The worst thing was that when I’m walking/talking in my sleep I’m so deep asleep that he can’t wake me so he was trying to strip the bed while dripping wet and all the while I just slept soundly!

DH spent about £300 on some lovely cashmere cardies on the first Christmas after we'd just had our DD. She was about 2 weeks old.

I wore them all then chucked them in the wash (she was 2 weeks old ) and now they'll fit her beautifully when she's about 12...

I also left this wonderful counterbalanced tray on top of the oven, forgetting that there's a vent at the back of the oven. It melted quite spectacularly.

We've had all the usual sudocrem all over the telly/bathwater pouring through the ceiling ones but my best was supergluing both feet to the floor.

I lived alone too and was convinced I'd die the only thing I could reach was a butter knife and I had to whittle my way through my (luckily quite hard) skin to get free.

I had a door plate that refused to stay stuck between the kitchen and living room of my flat so eventually tried superglue and needed something heavy to keep it in place whilst it set, so I used myself!

DS vomited through the mesh of a travel cot onto a chest of drawers. All the drawers were slightly open. It was a friend’s house.

I managed to superglue my forearm to our washing machine

I was sticking one of DD2’s beloved fairy ornaments back together when she broke it, hadn’t noticed I’d dropped some super glue on the top of the washing machine, leant on it while I held the ornament together while the glue set and stuck myself to it

Christmas morning 5 years ago I was mopping through. I’d done the sitting room, kitchen, hallway and bathroom. Emptied the bucket and put it and the mop in the hallway cupboard. I was barefoot. I walked into the sitting room and slid across the room (extremely gracefully according to my daughters) frantically cartwheeling my arms and landed on my coccyx. Total agony for weeks and even now it’s painful if I sit in a certain way or on a hard chair.
Another one of my greats. This was about 30 years ago. I was putting wallpaper up and using a ladder backed dining chair to stand on. As I reached up with the paper to line along the ceiling the back legs in the chair gave way and the chair started to collapse. I tried to save myself by jumping over the back of the chair!!? But the legs completely gave out as I was half easy over and I took out the top two slats on the chair back...with my vulva

Several (ahem) years ago I was making Banoffee tart and was boiling a tin of consensed milk for two hours to get the required toffee/dulce de leche for the filling (you couldn't get the already-boiled stuff then). Unfortunately I forgot all about it once it was boiling away merrily and went out for a few hours.
I returned to kitchen chaos - the pan had boiled dry, the tin had exploded and it had shot toffee-like gunge all over the kitchen walls and ceiling. The saucepan had buckled completely and was ruined and the tin itself seemd to have ricocheted all over the place. That was fun to clear up.
(on reflection it was probably better that we were out of the house when the whole thing went off.... )

Not household but DH left the keys in the ignition of the unlocked car at the station ALL DAY on Tuesday. Car amazingly hadn't been nicked but battery was flat as a pancake.

Mostly DH related (my party trick is usually just taking a drink of coffee and missing my mouth - most of my tops have coffee stains on the right tit part from doing this). He's ended up in A+E slicing the top of his finger end off putting washing in the washing machine before (still no fucking clue how he did that).

Also DH related - painting the kids' room in a shade of purple so purple it could only have been selected by a 6 year old girl whose favourite colour is "very purply purple"... and he spilt the fucking can of emulsion absolutely bloody everywhere.

Dropped an open bottle of cream on the kitchen floor. Anyone who's done this will know how hard it is to clean fat-based stuff off floors/cupboards etc.

Two weeks later, did the EXACT same thing.

And a year later dropped an open bottle of vegetate oil.

I'm really good at cleaning spilled fatty liquids now

Flooded the bathroom a couple of weeks ago trying to clean the bastarding spa bath. Water running into the cupboard where the boiler lives in the kitchen. 😳

My children did this to me when I was 34 weeks pregnant and had terrible SPD. The icing sugar nearly blew up the vacuum cleaner.

One time when my parents had new carpet laid, my uncle unexpectedly dropped round a tiny lamb to be a pet for us (its mother had died giving birth). The carpet layers tracked lamb poo all over the carpet as they laid it...

I need to read all these later, but just wanted to add my red wine related mishap.

I was watching tv, half led on the sofa, our old ginger tom sat on my chest/stomach, supping a nice glass of red wine. I woke up to cat claws after tipping aforementioned glass all over him and me! Not nice at all, and poor cat looked so pissed off. Thankfull sofa then was red, so any wine stains didn't show up.

Finished drying dishes so tossed the teatowel onto the counter, part of it trained to the cooker where the gas was still on.

Teatowel went up in flames so I picked it up and just sort of yelled in the kitchen. Wasn't until my partner came in he opened the back door and tossed it outside to spray with the hose. 😂😂

Had couple of fridge incidents. Once opened it and the milk shelf collapsed and had 2 x four pints of milk everywhere.
Another time i was a work and some cans of cola exploded when I opened the fridge door, i am not sure which one was worse the milk or cola everywhere.

Ive done similar to a few of these.

Left my iron sitting in a clean frying pan on top of the oven instead of putting them both straight away. Somehow the knob got knocked and i ended up with a melted iron!

Sneezed while holding a huge bottle of soda and involuntarily squeezed it causing it to go absolutely everywhere! I was too short to reach the bits on the ceiling and had to mock up a cleaning brush out of my broom and an old tea towel.

First time using spray paint, didnt see why using it indoors for a small project would be a problem with windows open etc. it wasnt until everything had time to settle that i noticed the fine layer of paint over everything in the room. OOPS!

Growing up we used to cook chips using oil in a huge saucepan. As a teen i was babysitting and decided i wanted chips. I forgot about them and my little sister ran into the lounge to tell me the kitchen was on fire. The oil had caught fire, i managed to put the lid on and thought that took care of it until i lifted it and the flames were still there. So i panicked and tried to carry the pan outside to 'cool down' i got half way to the back door and had to put it down because even with a towell it was too hot to hold. After a few minutes i picked it back up and took it to the back porch, problem solved. Except i had left a perfect circle of burnt/darkened wood on the kitchen floor where i had sat it down, i dont know how my mum never noticed!

One summer day, I was sitting on the couch, when a wasp flew in. I swatted at it with a notebook that happened to have a gel pen clipped to it - the pen came apart and sprayed black ink everywhere!

It was on the hearth rug, up two walls and the door, and on the couch too. It took me hours, a lot of mopping and a lot of bleach to get it clean, and there are still stains on the couch and the skirting board (small and not noticeable, thankfully).

Years ago I was making traffic light jelly for ds1’s birthday party - it wasn’t setting so I put it on the top shelf of the freezer - because our kitchen was so small, the fridge freezer was in the dining room. I was careless, and didn’t bother to clear the shelf I put it on - I just balanced it on other stuff - and when I opened the freezer to check on it, the bowl slid out, hit the floor, and sprayed half set lime jelly all up the walls!

The ceiling fan in my bedroom was squeaking, so I thought "I know, I'll spray in some WD40"

I turned the fan off, sprayed in the oil, turned the fan back on and the squeak was still there, so I thought "ahh it must need some more" so merrily sprayed in some more, when something caught my eye ... there was this really strange line on the wall a few inches from the ceiling, then in slow motion I stopped sprayed as I looked around the room and yes, all 4 walls had a very oily line dripping down!!!

I started laughing at how stupid I was and jumped of the bed onto an upturned stiletto .... OOOOWWWWW !!!!!!!

Once the pain had subsided, I did briefly consider getting a can of spray paint to repeat the exercise and resolve the issue, until I gave myself a reality check, and realised it just wouldn't work out like that and I had to decorate the whole room.

(Still got a scar in the centre of my foot)

I once went to make spaghetti bolognese with a jar of ragu. Toom jar out of cupboard, loosened the lid and set it next to the hob where I was frying off my veg and mince. Picked up jar and inexplicably decided to give it a quick shake.
You can guess what happened.....ragu all over me, the hob, the kitchen doors and the floor. That would not have been more than a medium sized inconvenience, everything was either wood, glass or tiles and not that difficult to clean up. However......
At the time, we had a very elderly and neurologically impaired cat named Sooty. She was almost blind and tended to walk, veering to one side due to her impairment.
Sooty chose this moment to blunder wildly into the kitchen and veered directly into the large pool of ragu in the middle of the kitchen floor.
She slipped over, face planted into the spreading pool, panicked and writhed around just enough to ensure she was properly saturated in Italian herby sauce.
Then, in an athletic manouvre we hadn't believed she was capable of, she leapt to her feet, dashed out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Unfortunately, her new found athleticism was short lived and, whilst making her saucy dash up the stairs, she managed to bounce her self off every wall, bannister and square foot of carpet on the way up.
I found her, some moments later, reclining nonchalently in the middle of my superking cream duvet, casually licking tomatoey goodness off her front paws.

The darned cat was massively unpeturbed by the entire experience. I, on the other hand..... have never recovered.
I came back downstairs to be confronted by the sight of Cat 2 (who is perfectly healthy and agile) stood atop the hob, casually eating cooked mince out the pan and DP stood in the kitchen, open mouthed and clearly wondering who had been murdered and where I had hidden the body.

I was painting a high ceilinged room and noticed a spider at the top of the wall, so carefully put down the roller tray of paint on the floor. Climbed the step ladder, caught the spider, came back down the ladder and stood in the paint tray ... DH laughed and laughed at me and was no help at all really.

A few years ago,the bottom of a carrier bag split just as I walked in the front door. There was a jar of korma curry sauce in it,which promptly hit the floor and exploded with such force that not only was there sauce all over the carpet,it was up the walls,the inside of the front door,on my legs,it was even on the bloody ceiling. It took me about 2 hours to clean it off,but I never managed to get rid of the yellowy/green stain from the carpet,or from the walls and ceiling. They had to be painted over. And the place stunk of curry for the next week.

I was 24 years old and a lodger in a family home in Paris. I was home alone making lunch one day, took out a full, brand new 1.5L bottle of coke from the fridge which I promptly dropped onto the tile floor just as I was unscrewing the top. It went EVERYWHERE! It went places I never knew coke could go. It's unbelievable, the lethal havoc a bottle of coke can do! And it sprayed, properly sprayed the entire kitchen. I was covered, soaked. So, as no one was home and my clothes were soaked, I stripped down to nothing but my knickers and began mopping everything up. I was on all fours when I looked up to find the Dad leaning against the door frame watching me in total silence! F*ck me, I was mortified. He had only moved back home a few days before (having previously left his wife for another woman) and I'd never seen or even spoken to him prior to that moment. Didn't speak to him then either.
I moved out pretty quickly. I couldn't face him after that.

My other one is DS (now 16, then 8) coming down stairs to tell me he felt sick, then promptly spraying the walls, ceiling, stairs, and me with his vom, Exorcist style. He was like an indoor fire sprinkler system, vom flying everywhere. I'd never actually mopped a ceiling before. That was a first. It was grim! And then my mum trod in it with her slippers and kept walking up the stairs, schlepping sick around with her. Ugh. The memory makes me feel queasy!

I was going to visit a friend in hospital, and wanted to get dinner on the way before I left. I did some ironing, left it on the table for my husband to put away, then placed the roasting tin under the grill to warm t up as I was in a hurry.

I decoded to nip upstairs to go to the toilet, when the phone rang. I went into the bedroom, answered it, chatting to my mum. A few minutes later I heard my husband yelling so I ran downstairs to see what had happened. The oil in the roasting tin had gone on fire and the kitchen was full of thick black smoke. My cooker as ruined, all my ironing was covered in bit of black stuff, and the smoke was so thick I couldn't see. All the units needed scrubbing , and the living room and kitchen/diner needed redecorating.

I was repainting the loft hatch when I somehow managed to fall off the ladder and then down the stairs. The paint can also fell and bounced white gloss all down the stairs which had been treated to a lovely new carpet the day before and I followed bumping down each step with the paint brush in my hand marking it against the newly painted wall. DH was at the bottom of the stairs just watching it all unfold.

No idea why I didn't just let go of the brush as I fell