Stories Collected While Living in France

French la Vie

How to Make a Mess when doing the Housekeeping

  housekeeping

Housekeeping, what to do:

After washing and drying the antique monogrammed bed sheets put them on the beds. Then go around to the different beds, plug in the iron, and iron the sheets right where they are. Of course only iron the top half, the monogrammed lacey part, that is folded over the bed covers. The rest can remain wrinkled.

Here is what not to do when ironing bedsheets right on the bed….

Do not leave the iron plugged in and upright on the bed.

You see, I went to shut the bedroom window.

While shutting the window the iron fell off the bed on to the vacuum cleaner, and burned a hole on the plastic suction tube.

In a split second, I had a black gooey melted plastic mess on the iron, and a nice big hole in the vacuum cleaner.

Lovely! What a reward for cleaning the house!

It was an act out of a comic movie, all I could do was laugh, and figure out how to clean and repair the two.

Note: I managed to remove the gooey plastic mess by keeping the iron on low (so it wouldn't boil, or harden, or burn my hand) and wiped the goo plastic mess off. Then I duct taped the vacuum cleaner tube.

Cute.

Next time I will forego ironing the antique sheets.

Do you have a funny story regarding housekeeping? (please tell me you do so I don't feel so bad.)

Comments

39 responses to “How to Make a Mess when doing the Housekeeping”

  1. Ana

    I positively hate housekeeping! There was a time when I loved it, I used to fly round the house and it was all neat and tidy and remained that way. since the advent of teenagers, I loathe it, I will tidy up and clean leaving them a blank canvas to create some modern surreal art! which I have to clean up, so I feel like I am on a treadmill like a gerbil going round and round. I have found myself opening the oven to put the washing in, stopping just in time. Not a very funny story but it goes to show sometimes multitasking just doesn’t pay.

    Reply
  2. Rachel Lees

    I don’t think I have a funny housekeeping story – I’m sure there are plenty, I’ve just wiped them from my memory. But all I could think of when I read this was what a relief that the antique sheets weren’t damaged! Vacuum cleaners are not as pretty, so it doesn’t matter. :o)

    Reply
  3. Paulita

    I would say that could only happen to you, Corey, but I bet your readers can top it. I have gotten the curtains stuck in the vaccuum before when they are sucked up the tubes.

    Reply
  4. Debbie

    Many years ago when I was 21, I was living in an apartment building in Izmir, Turkey with my Turkish partner. I was doing a spot of cleaning in only my skimpy summer dressing gown – as you do, and I opened the front door and took a step out into the corridor to take the rubbish out – a gust of wind slammed the apartment door closed and I was locked out!!! With no key. Not the best way to meet your neighbours but they kindly invited me in while I phoned my partner who was at work in the city. I smiled embarrassingly and nodded and spoke a few words in a language I could hardly speak for a good 45 minutes in their lounge. in my skimpy dressing gown, waiting to be saved by my partner arriving to open the front door. A mistake I never repeated!

    Reply
  5. Theresa Smith

    Corey you are so funny! I’m beginning too think lady luck doesn’t like you! I don’t have any funny stories cause I hate to clean. Used to be a clean freak, but the older I get, doesn’t seem to be that important any more! Have a great Sunday! Would love to see you again!
    Theresa
    aka:tot

    Reply
  6. Candace

    My husband and I were painting our living room. It was totally empty except for a floor lamp and a paint tray. My husband managed to knock over the floor lamp which fell in the paint tray which sprayed paint over everything including the hard wood floors. Funny now but not then.

    Reply
  7. Sam

    I once waxed my kitchen floor and waxed myself into the far corner, I had to wait for it to dry to move. Accidents happen to me all the time while I clean, as long as no one ended up at the hospital, you’re doing good.

    Reply
  8. jackie

    I once stepped on the top of a paint can (goopy side up and still wet with fresh paint) while painting my dining room. The first reaction was to hop off-quickly. Which I did, right onto the hardwood floor. I slipped, hopped and slid to my (tiled) bathroom, took off my sock and commenced the clean up.

    Reply
  9. Rhonda P.

    Oh Corey, I would laugh as well. Once it’s happened all you can do is fix it.
    My story is slightly different, I accidently entered the men’s locker room at a health club looking for my friends. There’s a vision I will have the rest of my life. I ran out – tripped on the cord of the vacume cleaner – a man was vacuming the carpet in the hall, unplugged it for him and died laughing all the way to the raquetball court.
    I no longer vacume or work out. See – I killed two birds with one stone.

    Reply
  10. Cheryl ~ Casual Cottage Chic

    This is why I hate house cleaning! And have three lovely ladies come in every 2 weeks to do what I hate…lol! Now for my own experience, last summer Mr CCC was out of town so I was in a “cleaning mood”. I was standing atop the guest bed dusting the ceiling fan blades. When I was finished I started to step off the bed backwards (yep, dumb) and fell off, falling to the floor and hitting the back of my head on the wall. It must have been hilarious to watch, but no one was home to appreciate my acrobatics. I was knocked out by the smack to the back of my head for about 5 minutes. Had a big bump on the back of my head and my back hurt from the fall, too. Lesson learned….don’t do that again!! Leave it to my experts 😉

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  11. Lilly

    Thank goodness you didn’t burn the antique sheets!

    Reply
  12. Sugar

    One day, while polishing a wooden rocking chair a little too enthusiastically, I
    didn’t realize that some of the polish
    spray fell to the wooden floor below and
    I walked on it and went SPLAT! Fell
    right on my bum.

    Reply
  13. Shelley@thiswhiteshed.blogspot.com

    I detest housekeeping but love your spring pics! Why, oh why do those painted shutters delight me so? Probably because they seem the perfect solution to anyone discovering my lousy housekeeping.

    Reply
  14. *French Curiosités*

    Stories like my insane need to swap the locations of 2 armoires in the house? Emptying the out the contents of both on to the floor, sliding the furniture in between the two rooms and finally going back to the last armoire to put everything away….only to realize that one of the cans of paint that were in my arms was leaking? Paint on my hands, the floor, the pile of vintage FRENCH FABRICS, my pants and now my jacket….oh and then realizing that all of the junk I had stacked on the floor was blocking my path to the bathroom?
    Yeah, I have several of those:) Glad that you are okay and that the house is still standing!

    Reply
  15. Denise Moulun-pasek

    Thank God you saved the sheet!

    Reply
  16. cynthia Wolff

    I dropped a bottle of olive oil while wiping off the rim of the bottle. a hideous mess.

    Reply
  17. Lgirl

    I sprayed my sofas with Bathroom Bleach instead of the fabric refresher I thought I had in my hand!
    Yup! genius!

    Reply
  18. Tracey

    It’s practically a law of the universe that when I get in the kitchen to do some tidying I will spill something or break a glass. Recently swept floor, why not knock a glass off the counter and add a rain of sparkling splinters to slice your feet? Freshly washed floor, know what looks good on that? Freshly made cup of coffee that was supposed to be your reward for washing the dang floor in the first place. I know the saying “don’t cry over spilled coffee….” or whatever, but there are days I tell ya… It happens so often my kitchen spill klutziness that I started a tally on my fridge to keep track of “days with out a spill”. I am proud to admit I am up to 12…sweeeeeeeeeet…if mentioning it here jinxes that though…….ah well, I still have swear words in reserve for just such an occasion, plus I just cleaned the floor yesterday…..oh no…I am seeing these are all the elements gathering for the making of…THE PERFECT SPILL…..that’s it, I shall not enter the kitchen today. I will get my coffee the old fashioned way. “Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetie pie…..can you do me a favvvvvvvvvvvvor….?”
    haha

    Reply
  19. Alan

    No funny story, but I’d throw out the iron, and duct tape the vacuum hose.

    Reply
  20. Linda P.

    When I was a pregnant young married woman, we didn’t own an ironing board, and our kitchen countertops were practically nonexistent. One day when I was ironing on our dinette table, I took a break to chop up the next ingredient going into my stew. I chopped right through the iron’s cord, blowing a cord-shaped hole in the thick knife blade and knocking me back and blacking my hand with the smoke. Fortunately, the daughter I was carrying is now a 36-year-old attorney, a mother of three herself, so she was fine.
    I can reiterate the locking-oneself-out story told previously, too. I’m far from a young married woman now, and one early morning about two years ago, I was sweeping in my pajamas. I went to hang the broom back on the rack just outside the back door, in the closed garage. For some reason, my husband came out in his briefs to ask me a question. You guessed it. The door locked behind us. We live in a neighborhood with acre lots, so it’s not easy to slip to the neighbor’s house. Our nearest neighbor was a single woman, so we deemed it best that I be the one to run barefooted down the street in my pj’s to knock on her door. I called the petsitter from there. She arrived twenty minutes later with her key, my husband hiding behind one of the cars while she opened the door and let us in our own house. The neighbor sold her house and moved not too long after that.

    Reply
  21. martina

    I tried to use the microwave to melt/reusethe candlewax in a glass votive holder. I forgot about the metal wick holder..Cranberry red wax all over the microwave-looked like a CSI scene.
    Once saw a little plaque that said “housecleaning doesn’t kill, but why take chances?”

    Reply
  22. Marie-Noëlle

    I’ve got 2 stories for you. Both happened lately and both while cleaning the windows.
    1- I started with one of the French-windows we have in our dining room. The more I was wiping the dirtier the windows were getting. I changed my cloth several times, I tried several cleaning ways: slowly, energetically, in circles, horizontally, vertically… nothing would do, it was getting worse and worse, leaving white marks and making the window more and more opaque … when I realized I was using the wrong product. It was the “tartar remover” (bad translation of mine – and not from google’s)
    Same bottle shape, same blue liquid but not same effects!!!
    So after this experience, I have kept checking the on the spray bottle 5-6 … or more times while cleaning the windows !
    Second experience. The latest !!!
    Yesterday, when walking into the kitchen, I saw our dog busy licking up a pool of milk from the floor… Then I spotted my daughter trying to get organized to wipe the same pool. I had to be quick for both. I stopped the dog and sent her out. Then I found the right “equipment” for my daughter. I helped her as there was milk all along the doors of the cupboards and of the fridge, on the front and on the sides, and everywhere !
    I finally felt pleased to have finished with it, and to see the place spotless … when my husband came in and straight away said “what happened ?”. I looked up in the direction he was looking to : the window :
    There were hundreds of streaks of milk running down it!!!
    I had done the window the day before !!!

    Reply
  23. Laurie

    Hi Corey,
    I think I have a much worse story. When we were first married, almost 39 years ago, we lived in a old Spanish style home. It had a drop-down front entrance way that we never used. It was on the far end of our house on the opposite side of the driveway and back door. We always used the back door since both doors were on the same side of the house. This front entrance was just large enough to have a little tapestry rug and a small coat closet. It was also very dark. While vacuuming one day with our Electrolux with the power tool device-I just plopped it down into the middle of this little rug to quickly vacuum. What I didn’t see was that our cat had decided to use the rug as a potty and I plopped the power tool right into the middle of the mess. It didn’t end there. The vacuum was on and I actually stated to vacuum-smearing the mess over more of the rug as well as into the power tool of the vacuum. I don’t think the vacuum was ever the same and I couldn’t clean the brush part of the power tool since I couldn’t get it apart. My wonderful husband rescued me and cleaned it up. We had that cat for 16 years and we are on our third vacuum cleaner. Enjoyed following you on your wonderful trip and always love how you tell the tale.

    Reply
  24. Bramble

    I am as accident prone and klutzy as they come but my shining moment was not too long ago whe I went to reapply my lipstick in the dark before we went into a Christmas party.As we approached the door(and the porch light) my husband looked at me strangely and said “Well that’s a new look for you!” I had used undereye concealer instead of lipstick!
    Also should you have any more iron mishaps…put the iron intothe freezerimmediately (unplugged) and the goo will seperate from the iron easily. See? Been there too!
    Glad you are home putting things in order,just Spring cleaning or catching up to go travelling again?!!!Nudge,nudge,wink,wink!!!

    Reply
  25. Sharon Penney-Morrison

    Ok…I was climbing the ladder in the entry hall, with the gallon of paint sitting on top of the ledge of the ladder. I made it up 2 steps and the ladder jiggled, I grabbed the ladder and down came the paint…the whole gallon, partly on the wood floor entry way, and partly on the 6 mo. old carpet, all over the built in book shelves. I just stood there, looking in disbelief at the huge mess. For some reason I grabbed the shop vacuum and cleaned up what paint I could on the wood floor, but the carpet was a goner!! All new carpet had to be put down. There is still faint bits of paint in the groves in the wood floor.
    I don’t paint anymore. I am a clumsy person with paint.

    Reply
  26. Jeannie

    I have 2. My MIL who was Dutch and obsessive about cleaning (which I am not) was coming for a visit. Hubby offered to help and took a window out to clean it. Laid window on the picnic table and rested his hand on it as he cleaned away. Forgot it was glass and crack! Mom showed up with one window boarded up. #2: I spent the whole day cleaning (my Mom was coming)finally finished and was pouring myself a glass of wine before the inspector arrived. Just as I sat down, my cat ran into the house with a bird. A live bird! I jumped up, spilled the red wine, scared the cat who dropped the bird, scared the bird who headed down the hall dropping feathers and other things as it flew. I just got the bird out and my Mom arrived. I don’t clean anymore.:)

    Reply
  27. AmyKortuem

    The house was perfect – I had cleaned it vigorously in preparation for the party I would have after my holiday harp concert. Just as I was heading out the door with my harp to perform, my magnificently white hairy cat (Harry) decided to barf. And barf. And barf. RIGHT in the middle of the dining room carpet.
    I opened the windows, put Harry in the laundry room for safe keeping, and cleaned up the gross-out mess with a hundred paper towels, Clorox wipes and some spray-on carpet cleaner.
    “Your house smells so good,” people said when they came in…

    Reply
  28. julie

    Not quite a “house cleaning” story but a cleaning story just the same. It was 7AM and I am not a morning person.It was a big day. It was my oldest daughter’s first day of school and my husband’s first day on the new job. My youngest was just a baby. As my husband was leaving the house, a painting truck bounced down the street and a can of beige paint flew onto the hood of our navy blue van and splattered everywhere! My husband was in a hurry to get to work and make a good first impression. I flew outside, my bathrobe billowing in the breeze, grabbed the hose and a bunch of rags and tried to hose the paint off the car! We lived in the city and we parked on the street! Cars and people were going by. I panicked when I found the paint can on the side of the road and it was labeled “Epoxy”.I scrubbed and hosed and scrubbed. And….success! Husband got to work, daughter got to school, van eventually got spanking clean, and my neighbors got an eyeful!

    Reply
  29. Brenda, Walker, LA

    I always used to tell my boys to carry a handkerchief but one day they were all soiled and not yet laundered. Creatures of habit, they rolled up tissue paper and stuffed it in the pockets instead! It rained that day, muddy pant hems, so the pants went into wash with those wads of tissue still in the pockets! While drying the tissue mush was distributed to everywhere, and that lint took forever to clear up, it clung to everything! It took several washings to get the stuff off.

    Reply
  30. Vickie

    rolling on floor laughing !!

    Reply
  31. Birdbrain

    #1 Preparing full on Creole/Cajun dinner for eight on Fat Tuesday, and send the shrimp shells down the disposal plugging up both sinks less than 2 hrs before guests are to arrive. Hysterical crying over the phone will get you a plumber in a hurry!
    #2 (I’ve done this twice) Guests arriving for dinner, I light the fireplace and the house fills with smoke, duh the flue is closed! We all smell like we’ve been hanging around a campfire for hours.
    #3 Darling sister (not sure which one) decides the tablecloth is too wrinkled and irons it on the table with the tablepads underneath. Gee, look at that lovely iron imprint on the tablepad!

    Reply
  32. Gillie

    Oh what a treat for a Monday morning! Your post and all the replies just cracked me up. Can’t think of one story but there have been many! Very impressed that you ironed even part of a sheet……..!

    Reply
  33. Merisi, Vienna

    Oh my goodness, Corey,
    I expected anything, but not that!
    Glad the sheets are looking good! 🙂
    I own one of those little stovetop espresso makers, Alessi #9090.
    You may remember the electric stoves with spiral heating elements.
    I forgot twice that I had the espresso maker on the stovetop.
    Each time I found it only when it was already glowing red-hot!
    The second time the spiral gave up, but – unbelievable as it may sound – my little espresso maker is still well and working. Even the original rubber gasket survived. It has made excellent expresso thousands of times and is still going strong!

    Reply
  34. Zosia

    Corey, I think it’s a sing that you need to give up cleaning in favour of brocanting :-).
    A funny story from many years ago: I was still a little kid (late 60’s) and my oldest brother, a young adult, was going to clean windows. At that time in Poland, you didn’t have many house cleaning products. There was a special stone-like soap for washing windows, which you were supposed to first rub on a cloth and then on the window. My brother, eager to clean the windows and not paying attention before when my Mom did it, rubbed the rough stone over the glass pane leaving scratches all over the glass. He was the target of the family jokes for a while :-).

    Reply
  35. liz

    I have a knack for blowing everything in the vacumn bag, back out into the room…

    Reply
  36. Sherry ~Rustique Gal

    Corey, you crack me up! Ironing right on the bed! It was a nice thought though… I have had some disasters when cleaning house and some cooking disasters like going to bed with eggs boiling on the gas stove. I woke up when I heard the popping, shut of the gas in the dark and went back to bed. When I got up in the morning there was hard stuck on egg all over the walls and ceiling! It took weeks to get it all off. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be so efficient!
    Hugs, Sherry

    Reply
  37. Linda P.

    Oh, I’m laughing, imagining you heading into that party wearing under-eye concealer on your lips! Thanks for the Monday morning pick-me-up!

    Reply
  38. Michelle

    repainting a book in red lacquer I put my hair in a ponytail – leaning over to paint the underside ponytail goes in paint when I flip up all the paint goes around the garage,my face etc. -you are not alone:)

    Reply
  39. anna nilsen

    My husband loves feather pillows. Years ago he asked me to please wash his. I had done it before with no problems. But I had always done it in the summer when it could spend the day on the clothesline drying in the sun with just a few shakes every now and then to fluff it up.
    Well, it was winter, so I though I’d toss it in the dryer. Before too long though the dryer shut off. No way could that pillow be dry! I opened the room to find a feathers floating thru the air. Opened the dryer to discover feathers everywhere. The pillow liner had come apart…it required disassembling much of the dryer to get all the feathers out. The dryer had shut off because it had over heated.
    Feather pillows only get washed in the summer since that incident…

    Reply

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