a gallon of gesso in the backseat of my car. I was not a happy camper.

a bottle of teriyaki sauce fell out of the fridge one day and the bottle broke into thousands of tiny shards of death glass that were hidden both on the vinyl of the kitchen, and in the carpet of the ajoining dining room. Not to mention the sauce seeping under the carpet and perfuming our dining room with the smell of stir-fry until we were able to get the carpets cleaned.

that by far is the worst - unless you count me leaving the tap on while filling up the kitchen sink and then going to vaccuum (which led to me not hearing my mistake) resulting in a mini swimming pool in our kitchen!

Hmm, the time I dropped a very large and expensive container of shredded cheese on the floor was annoying (mostly because of the cost).

But probably the worst was the sugar. I dumped half a bag of sugar, and it was impossible to get all of it off the floor. White floors, white sugar... we had little grains under foot for weeks.

I dropped a squeeze bottle of ketchup once. Although it was a plastic bottle, it shattered and ketchup flew all over the kitchen. Months later I was still finding random "splats" of ketchup on cupboard doors, on the ceiling, behind the faucet, etc. It would've been fun to have a CSI team come in a plot out the trajectory of 16 ounces of ketchup.

I made bbq sauce one day and waited an insufficient amount of time for it to cool before capping its container -- the heat caused pressure to build popping off the cap and spraying thick, sticky sweet sauce all over the kitchen...

Primer on carpet. It was a small tin, but...not fun to clean.

I would def go with the suger. Ak... it killed me a bag of sugar.. on tile floor...

Didn't exactly spill... but the floor-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door suddenly decided to fall like a tree and shatter -- it was apparently held on by a screwed-in rail at the bottom and double sided tape the rest of the way up with no screws at the top. It broke into hundreds of shards across the bedroom carpet, right inside the doorway and throughout the most trafficked parts of the room. It took hours with a vacuum to clean it thoroughly, but amazingly, I don't remember getting any glass slivers after that.

A jar of olives on my hardwood floor - the oil seeped through all the cracks in the floor and slowly re-emerged for DAYS. With every emergence of oil, the smell also re-emerged. Ugh.

I recently dropped a bottle of olive oil which spattered all over my kitchen floor. It is still a little slippery in spots, even though I've mopped it up several times.

Olive oil...all over the kitchen floor. Nothing worse than watching it make its slow inexorable journey UNDER the counters as I frantically looked for paper towels and dishtowels to clean up. Took hours to clean!

a glass bottle full of olive oil on porcelain tile, which broke into tiny pieces and splattered onto the adjoining room.

I'm going to have to say that flour on an old hardwood floor probably takes the cake of all of this. I've done this... here were the results:

1. Tried sweeping - it secluded itself to the shallow dips and ridges of the hardwood.

2. Tried vacuuming - it was blown into the air in portions and settled on various high-reaching places. We were cleaning flour up for months after this incident.

3. Tried mopping - ever added water to flour before? Heh. Yeah, that's right: I made dough on my kitchen floor. Granted, it was easier to pull up after it was collected, but it was awful.

Eventually, we swiffered the dry stuff into a pile and used a VERY long-reaching vacuum hose to suck up JUST that pile.

like the olives i too had an accident with my hard wood floors..

massage oil hardwood floors = stain forever

Being a huge klutz, I just can't pick the worst spill! My top 3 off the top of my head: dropped a liter of olive oil on the concrete front steps of my old house, leaving them slicked over for months despite how often I hosed them off; split open a package containing 40,000 seed beads (6 seed beads lined up are about the size of a grain of rice) onto my living room shag rug (I think I'm still vacuuming them up - 3 apartments later!); and not so much a spill as a HUGE mess to clean up, the time I made home-made coffee liqueur and let the sugar-coffee syrup bubble over, that became the stickiest, hardest-to-remove substance in history, and it flowed all over the stove, splashed up on the wall and ceiling, EVERYWHERE.

Flour. A whole bag of it. In the pantry. ALL OVER EVERYTHING on the shelves. It slipped out of my hand bounced off one shelf hit me then ricocheted and subsequently sprayed the entire pantry with flour. A year later the shelves are still dusty but atleast it's hidden out of view. I swore so loud the downstairs neighbors paid a visit to see if I was alright. Worst spill ever caused the worst mood and then basically a temper tantrum that I've ever had.
PS. I now have all my baking goods in lock top canisters.

very very very hot tea onto my lap, keyboard, and desk
made the paper on the desk bubble and burned my legs

i've spilled nail polish
hit the bottle with my elbow and it went crashing down onto the hardwood floor

A completely full glass bottle of Bloody Mary mix. Yuck!

A jar of kimchee in the trunk of my car. Nothing can get rid of that smell.

I spilled a can of pink enamel paint, oil based, on a large oriental rug in my parent's living room. Hey, I was only 7 years old at the time and was discovering that if you swing a bag with a can of paint in it around over your head, that the centrifugal force keeps the can in the bag, unless you slow down. Slowing down causes the paint to drop from the bag and go splat on the rug.

Primer on carpet here, too! About half a gallon. I was shaking it up and the lid had not been properly sealed. I was standing on a drop cloth but the stuff flew several feet away. Lesson learned, always put a hand on the lid! Left a permanent whitish hue on the grey carpeting. Wonder if the new people have noticed it?

I made a standing rib roast for Christmas this year and carved about half of it for dinner. I left the rest on a cutting board (with a groove all the way around to catch juice) while we ate dinner. I went back into the kitchen and saw that the juices from the roast had overwhelmed the cutting board and spilled over onto the counter. From there, they spilled down the front of 6 cabinet drawers and seeped into the drawers. On the floor was a little puddle of juice (which, since the roast was rare, looked pretty damn bloody). When you opened up each drawer there was juice that had covered the utencils and got underneath the plastic drawer liners. All-in-all, it looked like a murder scene. Almost enough to turn the meateater in me into a vegetarian.

A big jar of rubber cement on white carpet. Trying to clean it up only spread the stain, and I was never able to fully pull it out of the carpet, which was tufted together in little spikes. A rug was ultimately purchased.

I managed to drip black boot polish on my bedspread, a sweater on the floor, and on the cuff of my pant in one fell swoop. It was hard to know where to attack with the tide pen first...what to potentially sacrifice to a stain!

Not really a spill but when I was growing up, my toddler sister got into the Easter grass and spead it around the house. I think we found it for years after.

As possible the worlds biggest spaz I've spilled just about everything. I've also shared the olive oil incident (not fun!)which ranks right up there with my husbands cup of coffee on my mac book.. that was a sad day.

I was climbing the industrial-looking spiral staircase in my parent's living room carrying a big (-very big) pitcher of iced tea. I dropped it and the iced tea went all over my parent's couch, chairs, dining set, rugs, etc. Worse than that, the pitcher broke and sent teeny tiny particles of glass everywhere. Sticky staircase and living room (I dropped it from up high so it could reach everywhere!

Yes. I cried.

a pint of Sumi ink on the carpet of my rental apartment in baltimore.

An entire container of pine nuts was pretty fun. Mostly because they're expensive. I picked it up without realizing the lid wasn't on.

My absolute favourite? A 30 pound bag of dog food that ripped and went EVERYWHERE.

The dog was pretty enthusiastic in helping us clean it up, at least.

...or an entire container of rubber cement which (due to a terrible sinus infection) i couldn't smell so i didnt notice until after it had already dried.

still havent found a way to get it out.

A caraffe of red whine on off-white carpet.

Man, these are awesome. I have a tie: spilled a bottle of nail polish inside my purse in the 4th grade (it was a prized possession, so apparently I was carrying it around with me). I tried to clean it up in the bathroom at school and got nail polish everywhere, and then tried to stealthily leave and not claim it. Of course I got caught and got in trouble with the janitor and the teacher, in front of all my classmates. Sniff.

About 20 years later, less embarassing but smellier: A catering-sized tray of green curry, not well-secured, spilled in the backseat of my car. The car smelled like spoiled coconut milk for the rest of its natural life.

The day before our advertised open house to sell our home, I ran a bath in our carpeted master bathroom. The phone rang, I took the call (almost an hour long business call), and went to the front to access paperwork. Imagine my horror, standing water in the bathroom, the bedroom, my closet (MY SHOES!!!), and had seeped under the walls. I called my husband, and when we saw the carpet pad was soaked through, we ripped up all the carpet, rolled it up, and disposed of the carpet, and the pad (it looked very suspicious) in a dumpster in the middle of the night. We called our realtor, and said we were very sick and had to cancel the open house, and posted signs at the front door that the owners were too ill to show the house. $1000 dollars later, we had laminate floors put in...My husband still teases me.

2 Things:

1. A large container of Mod Podge (glue) while I was working at an art store. The cap was already broken and leaking by the time I reached for it, needless to say, it slipped out of my hand, fell to the floor, covered my shoes and half an aisle. The manager was so mean about it that I nearly cried.

2. An entire carton of eggs one morning when I was in a huge hurry. Half went into/under the fridge and the other half splashed all over my bare feet and the kitchen floor.

Back in the day when I was making jewelry and doing beading, I spilled one of those large, multi-compartment containers filled with seed beads onto the carpet in my bedroom. I never fully got all of them up until I ripped out the carpet a few years later.

Container of milk in the trunk of a car - rotten milk smell for months.
Carton of eggs, also in the trunk of a car - rotten egg smell for EVER!

Melted candle wax on a brick fireplace.

I borrowed a huge bottle of iron-out from a friend.
It leaked (without my knowledge) first a few drops on my desk at work (had to clean that after the weekend).
A cup or so spilled on the carpet by my door (baking soda, i love you!).
I spilled a large quantity of it outside during use.
THEN tightly capping it and placing it in a new clean bag it dumped the rest of the contents (tons and tons of it) into the trunk of my car as i was going to return it to the friend I was borrowing it from.
ugh.

while camping an open jar of sauerkraut spilled on the floor of our van.

The aroma still lingers, that was 4 years ago (yes we've shampooed/hosed/everythinged the interior).

I spilled a gallon of Pepto-Bismol pink primer on the carpet as I was moving out of my apartment. After a lot of water and swearing and the help of a steam cleaner I was able to get most of it out but the carpet always had a pink tinge to it.

I knocked over a vase of lillies once. It doesn't sound all that bad unless you realize the staining quality of the pollen from the lillies. They were orange and mixing with the water from the vase left a nice orange stain on the area rug. I haven't bought lillies since.

Cup of coffee flew from the cup holder to all over the back seat in my car when I dumped the clutch the day I bought it!

davollbach's comment reminded me of another spill. I was bringing sweet and sour meatballs to a potluck in a crockpot when the car in front of me slammed on the breaks and the pot went flying. I never totally got rid of that smell either.

#1: A full bottle of liquid smoke on my sister's new slate-looking (vinyl) tile. OMGBBQ.

#2: That same week, my mother spilled an entire bottle of Clinique Happy (perfume) on my sister's new shag carpeting. (Isn't it fun to have your family help you move in?)

Oh boy... baby poop springs to mind real fast. I was changing my little sister when I was 13... let's just say I am ready for fatherhood and all the "wonder" it entails.

I concur with many here that oils on hardwood seem to be a bad one. I ended up "resealing" (with linseed oil) about 500 sq ft of hardwood in a rental due to an olive spill (the landlord actually liked it).

Hydrofluoric acid was really bad, too (the downstairs neighbor was PISSED). What, it was for a class... really.

While moving, I managed to pick up my unlocked toolbox and spill HUNDREDS of small penny nails, tacks, screws and the like... it was so awful picking them up all over the apartment!

I dropped a vase of flowers (where the water was none to fresh) on the carpeting of my living room. The stench was amazing- and it lasted for days and days.
I also had a gallon of milk spill in my trunk when I lived in Phoenix. The smell of rotten milk would show up every once in a while until I sold that car 6 years later.

The newly-filled gallon tank of my humidifier slipped out of my hands as I headed into the living room in my old apartment ... and split open upon hitting the wood floor, suddenly turning the tiny living room into a lake. I hurled down the hall and back for a bath towel, trying to stem the rushing tide before it hit my record cabinets. I failed.

That was supposed to be "hurtled" ... but I guess I "hurled" myself down the hall!

It's always worst to spill in the car... So many little crevices, so frustrating to clean in such a cramped space.

My college friends and I had a Thanksgiving dinner every year. Senior year I was responsible for the gravy. I made a huge pot of it, got myself all dressed up for the formal affair, and drove over. Made it all the way to their driveway with no mishap, and then I slipped getting out of the car. I arrived on their doorstep with an empty 2 gallon pot and sobbingly asked for some paper towels...

I make a traditional gravy that includes goat cheese, broth, butter, and flour. I actually had to throw my floor mats away to get rid of the smell.

I thoroughly enjoyed the responses to this post! My favorite though was the two dogs getting paper mache-ed together!

Thanks for the laugh!

A huge bottle of liquid Tide all over the carpet. It NEVER comes out and the lovely blue stain it leaves eventually picks up ALL the little grimes from foot traffic and the blue turns to brown. And it never really dries, oddly...when you touch it MONTHS later it's still tacky. GROSS UUUGGGGGHHH!!!

When I was 12, seed bead bracelets were all the rage. I had a mayonnaise jar full of them. And not one of those tiny "buy it in a convenience store on vacation and use it for three sandwiches" sized jars, either. A big family-sized jar that used to hold Best Foods (Hellman's to those east of the Rockies). Full. Of seed beads. One afternoon, I was making a daisy bracelet, sitting comfortably on my burnt orange shag carpet, and I turned to talk to my mother, who had come to my doorway to ask a question. My gangly knee hit the jar and thousands of seed beads lost themselves in the dead muppet that was my carpet. I did my best to clean it, but our vacuum made clinking clacking noises for months afterward.

I spilled an entire gallon of navy blue paint on the maroon carpetting in my parent's just built house. Needless to say, Mom didn't talk to me for a week.

My mom once put a chunk of frozen butter on the fireplace to thaw. She forgot about it and it seeped into the air vents. It smelled like rancid butter every time we used the fireplace for years.

My best one has got to be the jar of honey that went all over (and into) my white kitchen cabinets when I was away for the weekend. When I returned I wondered what the dark fluid was on my white tile floor.

When I was a kid and babysitting my little sister, she dropped a HUGE jar of grape jelly on her toe. It was the worst mess: blood, glass, jelly. You couldn't wipe up the jelly because of the glass and you couldn't sweep up the glass because of the jelly. And she was screaming, standing in the middle of it. My response was to run and get the neighbor who was very helpful. But to this day, I will buy a plastic jelly jar. It was very scarring (but funny to think about now).

I can't think of any spills, but I'm sure I've just blocked them from my memory, I'm a huge klutz. Once, I dropped a pyrex bowl on granite floor. I vacuumed thoroughly, but I was still finding needle-sharp shards weeks later.... in my feet.

Oh, I also dumped eggs all over the floor... my fridge has a section in the top of the door for them, but they're held in by a removable metal bar which I accidentally pulled out one day when I was trying to close the door.

At work, a guy put an 8 cup coffee press (full of 8 cups of water and coffee grounds- not pressed down yet) right near where I was working. Of course, 2 seconds later hot water, coffee and coffee grounds were all over me and the floor. I'm so glad I was wearing black pants because I had to wear them for the rest of the day.
------
"#2: That same week, my mother spilled an entire bottle of Clinique Happy (perfume) on my sister's new shag carpeting. (Isn't it fun to have your family help you move in?)"--- Haha, aww, well at least it must have smelled better (and stained less) than BBQ sauce or old flower water?

These are hysterical! The dogs are the best.

I have a tie...

- Spilling an entire tall kitchen garbage can full of garbage down the carpeted steps in the hallway outside my apartment. Said garbage included used kitty litter and tomatoes which were quite stinky.

- Bought a bottle of a pesto-like salad dressing and forgot that it was from the refrigerated section of the store. Sat on the top rack of an over-the-door rack that was my pantry in a tiny galley kitchen in a rental apartment. Started smelling something weird, and one day came home to a rancid pesto coated kitchen. Took forever to clean up and the ceiling/wall was stained green till I painted over when I moved out!

once, i spilled a quart of semen on my floor. it took me 5 hours to lick it up. i'm still finding patches on the wood

An entire brand-new bottle of expensive tea rose perfume, on the office floor. Oh my.

Patchouli in a carpeted closet.

I had to nuke it from space. It's the only way to be sure.

a large can of some carbonated orange energy drink that had been left in my car.

picked it up as i was getting out intending to toss it so as NOT to spill it in my car... EPIC FAIL!

I bumped the steering wheel and knocked the can upside down on my lap and under my tush! giving me that classy "i just wet myself" look. and Yes, i had just pulled into the parking garage at my work.

A jar of molasses, from the top shelf of a cabinet to the kitchen floor. It took *forever* to pick all the shards of glass out of the sticky mess, but after reading these posts, I'm feeling lucky it didn't have a lingering odor or any long term damage.

It doesn't really fit into the 'spill' category. Let's just say that the first time I tried making polenta, my stove top was way too hot and I spent a week getting the polenta off the ceiling!! ...and yes, it was 'pop-corn ceiling'.

Ryan, I did that same thing. It sure is a bitch, wouldn't you know it.

A huge mound of cocaine on a shag carpet.

Methinks Apartment Therapy could use a "report this comment" function. Then again people might just use it when they get in angry fights over what color to paint the wall.

Anyway, the worst thing I spilled was a really big bottle of baby oil in the bedroom. It tumbled off a high shelf and managed to get on the bed and all over a pile of clothes.

The wooden floor of that place was so crappy you couldn't tell the difference, but the clothes were another matter. I was stupid enough to think "Hey, it's just baby oil, surely busy parents wouldn't use anything staining" and threw the whole mess in the laundry machine.

Turns out if you put baby oil in the wash before working it all out with a degreaser beforehand, you set the stain... forever.

I ruined a lot of clothes that way, including my husband's best dress shirt.

A bottle of red wine in the kitchen after the guests had finally gone home after our New Year's Eve party. It was about 3 am and my husband and I wanted nothing more than to just go to bed. He went to hand me the bottle to put away and it slipped and the whole thing shattered sending glass and wine everywhere (including under our fridge and into the dining room).

Well, we went away for a weekend, and I don't want to imagine what my housemate and her then-boyfriend were doing while we were gone. but there were drifts of very tiny red glitter hearts everywhere when we got home. Not just here and there, but all over the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen table... We even found glitter in our bed! She and "Mr Right Now" moved out, but we kept finding bits of "lust dust" for several years afterwards

Copier toner...a whole cartridge, onto myself and carpeting. It is so fine, it was stuck in my pores.

Purple nail polish on a white carpet.

Paint thinner nail polish remover rubbing alcohol hairspray salt Oxiclean = works like a charm :/

I was 16, borrowed my brothers car to drive to Stewart's in the next town for milk. In those days it was in a plastic bottle with a foil lid. Put milk in the back seat and took those turns all the way home like I was a NASCAR driver. I didn't realize until i got home that the whole 1/2gallon of milk spilled into the seats. He basically sold the car because he couldn't stand the milk-seeped-into-leather smell in the summer.

I turned on my juicer without checking to be sure that my boyfriend put all the parts on correctly.....orange pulp was spewed everywhere.

Fish oil in trunk,,,,nough said...

While grinding pepper into a pan with this, the top pops off (while inverted) spewing peppercorns into the pot, all over the stovetop - a "budget" model gas stove, where the burners just stick out of a pressed-metal, continuous top surface, peppercorns falling down in there...peppercorns falling behind the stove, behind the refrigerator, between the stove and refrigerator, under same, under the adjacent boiling pot of water becoming even more blackened (and subsequently charred) than they were to begin with....then finding peppercorns randomly for weeks, getting crushed underfoot.

Not quite a spill, but explosion. I was cooking a log of gefilte fish (ground fish log). it was wrapped in paper to cook, in a small pan filled with water and a few cups of sugar. I left it in for too long and it exploded. I had fishy sugar water all over the non-self-cleaning oven. Ugh, it was awful to clean. Took days.

As a teenager, I spilled bongwater in my Dad's car. The temperature was about 10 degrees F that night & my friends and I spent the entire night driving with all the windows down trying to get the smell to go away. Luckily for me, my father never said a word about the stink that I know lingered in his car for days.

While in film school I was transporting dinner to the crew. What was dinner? Fried Catfish and much grease and other fish juices. Somehow it spilled in the trunk of my new car and the smell was there for a good year or so after.

I never transported food again.

Never.

I can't beat these, but I had two incidents worth mentioning.

First (not a "spill", exactly) -- my washing machine's hot water hose burst. In the five minutes or so before we were able to get the main turned off, it caused about $4000 worth of damage to floors, ceilings, walls... Thank goodness for insurance and ServPro!

My own nastiest spill... At work there is a small staff lavatory with a counter. We get these packets of air freshener that are supposed to be installed in a wall mounted device that releases the scent. I had never seen a packet not installed before, but one day there was one sitting on the counter. I couldn't figure out what the scent was, so I grabbed the foil container with the waxy looking freshener in it a bit too fast -- only to discover that it was a liquid, NOT a wax! There is nothing like having super concentrated thick scented liquid (think dish detergent in texture) all over a counter, the floor of a tiny room, and one's clothes! I did what I could to clean it up, but I pity the cleaning crew that had to finish, and everybody who had to use that room the rest of the day!! And me, since it was REALLY obvious who made the mess!
(It was apple cinnamon, by the way!)

a jar of sculpey clay GLOSS on my desk. then my cat stepped in it and put her paws all over my apple studio display.

i cried.

A brand new economy sized toner cartage…in my office…with no vacuum! It was like a mushroom cloud of black powder covering everything within a 10ft radius of the copier. I was also covered, head to toe. VERY embarrassing!

I took the bottle of lemonade out of the fridge to pour myself a glass. When I went to open it, I remembered that I had to do something in the other room first so I set it down on the counter. When I came back, I picked up the container and shook it to mix it all up, but I forgot that before I left the room I had started to open it, so once I shook it the cap came flying off and I had lemonade all over myself (mostly my face) and the kitchen. I was cleaning up little sticky streaks on the cabinets, floors, fridge, stove, sink, walls, dishwasher, etc. for a week.
Note to self: Always check the cap before shaking.

I personally spilled wood stain all over the carpet at the last apartment. Hubby was not happy, but we miraculously got our deposit back anyways! (frigid Michigan winter=staining wood indoors).
More recently our toilet tank exploded, causing water to forcefully shoot out everywhere until hubby could figure out how to turn the water off. Shards of porcelin and gallons of toilet water flooded everything in our apartment... at 3AM after a party at our place just ended. The emergency maintenence comes and there are wine bottles and dishes everywhere, we are half drunk, totally soaking wet, and hubby is bleeding from falling on the new ice skating rink in our bathroom. Fun times.

Ultra fine glitter. In our conference room at the office. We won't get rid of random glitter on people unless they tear this building down and burn all the pieces. Until then we sure do look festive!!!

I watched the son of my first boss spill a bucket of brown paint from the top of a 10 foot ladder onto the concrete floor of the office. Holy moses was there yelling. But that's what you get for being too cheap to hire labor.

I dropped a jumbo bottle of concentrated detergent a while ago, but that was in a parking lot.

The top of my fridge is really slick (this reminded me i need to find some silpats to anchor all the jars on the top of the fridge), so last week a quart-sized mason jar of coffee beans crashed down, and before that a jar or splenda. It was not pretty. I'm still finding stray beans dusted with white powder.

A glass of merlot, over my hedious looking pink carpet.. I couldn't get the stain out in time. Looks like I will be paying for some carpet cleaning when I move.

I once tried to make lobster bisque soup with a Cuisinart. It ended up spewing all over the kitchen, from floor to ceiling. The fishy odor made it easy to find any missed spots after cleaning. It kept us sniffing for weeks.

My most heartbreaking spill was dumping a cardboard box of the best pieces in my pottery collection down the attic stairs, where they shattered. I literally stood there for five minutes without moving, just staring at the shards.

GLITTER. There is a reason why they banned it at Scores!

a gallon of canary yellow oil paint on the driveway. the lid wasn't secured even though it was a brand new can and it tumbled over when I opened my hatchback. surprisingly, my husband and i got it all out.

Many years ago (much younger and stupider) I spilled a tupperware container of 7 bean salad down three flights of my apartment stairs. The lid wasn't on tightly enough and all the little chick peas went bouncing down the stairs. I was running for the bus and had recently gotten into big trouble for being late. So I'm ashamed to say that I left it until I came home from work. The beans had all dried out so were easy to sweep up but the smell of garlic and olive oil lingered for years. The building manager never knew why...

A family friend (chef) spilled raw fish juice in the fridge when he was at our house cooking dinner. We didn't notice the spill until it started to smell. And then it smelled for months.

At work, printer toner waste (permanent black dust that smears at the slightest touch) EVERYWHERE.

there's 1 inch gap between the stove and the rest of the counter top in my kitchen. one day i went to fry up an egg. the pan was on the stove heating up. i took an egg out of the carton to crack on the counter. the shell opens and its contents immediately get sucked into said gap. there's no room to maneuver the stove out to get to the egg. it's gone forever. I go to crack another egg and the same thing happens!! two full eggs, now l trapped to dry and rot where I can't clean it out. i'm constantly reminded of it when our cat goes over and tries to stick his nose in the gap at the floor level to get to the dried egg. cat's been a lot more successful than I've been.

in a rush to get to a wedding i painted my nails in the car. car goes bump, nail polish goes down. pink polish on black dress...not a very flattering mark.

A few years ago, my roommate dropped a bottle of Italian salad dressing in our kitchen, which sprayed dressing absolutely everywhere. We even found it on the living room ceiling (!) Our coat rack also lived in the kitchen and it didn't occur to us until weeks later to check the pockets of our many coats -- and there was rancid dressing pooled in there, too. Arrgh!

a watermelon...

Left one on the floor of my car in airport covered parking while on three day trip. When I came back it had exploded all over the rear carpet. Took three cleanings and several weeks to get rid of the stench. OK, not an actual spill, but traumatic nonetheless.

Next worse? Glitter.

My own worst spill was bong water on carpet.

But my sister-in-law's cats got up her chimney while she was at work, then spent the whole day running around covered in soot jumping on every surface and every bit of furniture.

My worst spill was a small can of dark walnut stain. I was too lazy to go outside with my project so I decided to do it in the living room near the front door instead. I spilled an entire can of the darkest stain imaginable on my hardwood floors. Luckily I grabbed a nearby towel and got it up immediately with no damage to the floor.

I became enthused about painting a old wall in my newly refinished wood floor house. The lid wouldn't open, so I grabbed another can.

Before trying the lid, I thought I would shake it up by viciously shaking the can and the lid wasn't on tight. Paint was EVERYWHERE. On my face, my eyelashes, all over my clothes, and I stood in a puddle of it all on my beautiful, hardwood floors. a real tragedy.

Jar of spaghetti sauce. In the pantry/ only closet in my college apartment. Multiple sets of skis and ski poles, a snowboard, the vacuum and broom, a drafting table I was storing, linens, literally everything I owned that would be in a closet was covered in tomato sauce with little shards of glass.

I've also experienced the pain of a toner explosion - magenta. Besides me and a table covered in papers, it also got all over a color sample board of textured stone. Would your client rather have tannish-magenta or grayish-magenta stone on their building?

Just this morning. Full cup of coffee into my newly re-done rolodex. *sigh*

Papier-mached dogs and sooty cats! Hilarious. I used to live in an apartment that had an ugly patterned carpet in the kitchen; so ugly, in fact, that I once spilled a glop of spaghetti sauce on the kitchen floor and had to peer closely to determine where I'd actually dropped it. While not exactly spills, I have also poofed flour all over the kitchen during a baking experience at age 14* and popped a bright green balloon inside the oven** at age 16. When I told my parents years later my Dad nearly died laughing.

* I tried to use my hair dryer to melt/soften some butter in a plastic bowl while I was making my Mum's birthday cake. Don't ask.
** Recreating something I'd heard about in chemistry class.

Oh my, these are amazing. My own worst:

Shattered champagne glasses on carpet. They break into a particularly fine mist of razor-sharp glass... and of course you are giddy and drunk and unable to clean it properly.
Makeup... dropping a glass bottle on bathroom tiles. Expensive AND instant tiny impossible stains on everything, of course while in a rush to get ready.
Pyrex container filled with cat food on tile floor... I nearly panicked trying to get the cats out of the kitchen before they could gobble up shards of glass with the food on the floor. They are fast!
A giant box of packing peanuts dropped from the railing of our 3rd-floor balcony to the street below.
A giant container of vermiculite (seed-starting medium... lightweight, powdery, not good to inhale) ALLL over the car.

Family best: my brother exploding a Xylene paint pen all over his face (ER visit, hair, eyebrows and eyelashes cut off), two separate Thanksgiving turkeys that bit it on the way to the table, salad dressing, orange juice, and ketchup shaken with improperly secured caps, Easter grass everywhere....

But the worst accident I have seen was on a boat, when a guy was carrying a giant extremely hot pot of Cream of Wheat to the table and tripped and covered his whole arm in it-- it was like being coated in boiling glue, we couldn't get it off of him and it kept burning him. He was badly injured and I've been wary of Cream of Wheat ever since! I assume oatmeal could do the same thing... seriously, it was like molten plaster or something. Horrible.

I have several -

One thanksgiving (my first year making the turkey) a bottle of vinegar fell out of the cabinet and got on, in and under EVERYTHING in the kitchen.

I've spilled a big box of t-pins at work.. that wasn't fun to pick up.

When I moved from Atlanta to LA, I took my cat with me on the cross country drive. I had a temporary litter box set up for her each night in the hotel. I spilled it at one hotel and got kitty litter all over the place. I felt SOOOO bad and tried my best to clean it up but it was buried in the carpet.

I took a bath while burning a large candle on the edge of the tub. While getting out, I knocked the candle with my foot, splashing hot wax into the tub, on my towel and all over the bathroom floor. At least the towel didn't start on fire!

Also, when I was a child, I left a few crayons on the back seat of my parents' car. They got hot and melty; my pal climbed in a ruined her pants. Yikes.

1. Two in one day (in the old apartment): The Unfortunate Sugar Moment was followed closely by The Tragic Peppercorn Incident. All over the kitchen floor, which was peel-and-stick "sculptured" crap tile. Never, ever put that... well, anywhere, but especially not in a kitchen. A broom was useless; the vacuum cleaner only slightly less so.

2. Pasta and boilling water in that one pot I kept meaning to tighten the handle on. The handle came off just as I was moving it to the sink to drain it. The wood floor (current apartment) didn't seem to mind, but my feet did.

Got ya all beat. Once I dropped my tin lunchbox "purse" into a porta-john. Dis-gusting. Needless to say credit cards and lunchbox got washed in HOT soapy water. Twice. Money got laundered - literally. Everything else got thrown straight into the trash.

I read all the comments! This was super entertaining.

#1A couple weeks ago, our landlord came over to fix the washing machine to find that the way it was installed was badly done. So he told me not to use it until he returned a few weeks later and I could use his if I needed to upstairs. It was 11pm, I was in tights ready to go to a party, dressed layed out... cat peed on bathroom rug,.. I had to throw it into the washer, so I put a huge bucket under where the hose leaked.. needless to say, the party was on my mind and not the machine. I walked downstairs to get a drink 5 min before walking out the door, and I walked into a pond. ALL under the cabinets, fridge, baseboards.. Thankfully the cat pee had already been washed away, but the water damage was what I was most worried about and the mold possibility, being winter, I couldn't keep the windows open to air dry because it would freeze. Dehumidifier and a fan worked overtime that night and next day. We didn't go to the party...and FROZE.

I almost cried, but I just looked at it and said "Ive just gotta get it dry and fast"

#2 My Sister had a craving for the sweet tea at Chick-fil-A. She decided to buy a gallon of it. Left it in the car, and it popped open while driving, spilling all over the mats and into every crevice possible. It smelt so rancid, the only way she got rid of the smell was to buy new mats and after several professional cleanings.

#3 No milk is allowed in my car because of being traumatized by the smell of the carpool ladies car. Her car smelt like rancid milk every morning, because she spilt a bottle in the car. EWW!

#4 Another one for my sisters car, I hadn't seen my friends cat for a long time, and my sister was in the car waiting for me to go home. She asked me to bring the cat out because she loves this cat too.. the cat was not happy, and layed down on the seat of the car and acted calm. I picked him up to find a pool of pee on my sisters cushion. I can still smell cat pee every time I go into her car, so I bring a towel along to mask the smell.

Btw, #3 was the childhood carpool lady... :)

I was making yorkshire pudding for Christmas dinner, and melted the butter in a glass pan in the oven as usual. Went to pour the batter in, and the pan shattered, spilling batter and glass all over the element, the 450 degree oven, and the kitchen floor. The batter that hit the element started on fire, but I couldn't shut the oven door because of the glass pieces. Thankfully, the batter burnt itself out and didn't light the kitchen on fire. It only took me a week to clean out the oven (actually there is still baked on batter), the storage drawer under the stove, and the floor. Christmas dinner did go on however!

Ink spilled and unnoticed on wooden chest- stain can still be seen. Red cordial on cream rug as a child. Stain still there. And although this isn't a spill, I did, as a 3 year old child, colour in my mothers bedspread with lipstick. Stain still there.

Most embarrassing was when I somehow broke the valve of a bulk dispenser and honey continued to pour out and into a stranger's purse on the floor below it. She was not very nice about it.

bkk, same carpet and bed spread in that house? I change my bed spread at least every 5 years... Carpet every 10-15 year...?

When I was in art school, I went through a lot of Xacto blades, so I bought one of those 100-packs in a little cardboard box. It must have spilled in the bottom of my satchel, because I pulled out a book and saw the bottom was stabbed with dozens of blades, sticking out like porcupine needles.

I was so grateful I hadn't reached my hand down in there for a pen, but it took a flashlight and tweezers to find all of them stabbed into the nooks and crannies of the bag - some had cut through into other pockets and to the outside - what if I had run my hand across the bottom?? YIKES. I still get the heebly-jeeblies remembering it. To this day, I'm nervous sticking my hand down into that bag.

I've since bought several more bulk packets of those blades, and now I transfer them to a tight plastic container!

the worst ever for me was when i was 5, me and my cousin found it really cool that crayons would melt when you touch them to a space heater, we melted 2 of those jumbo packs over ugly brown carpeting one thanksgiving.. the carpet was permanently glazed over for years!

My worst is not so much of a spill but an explosion… when I was at university; I wanted to make banoffee pie for the first time. My boyfriend sent me his mother’s recipe which involved boiling a can of condensed milk for about 3 hours. So I put a can in a big pot of boiling water do its thing, and about 30 minutes later there was a huge boom and the kitchen and I was covered head to toe in hot toffee (luckily I was far enough from the stove and had my back to it not to be burned). It took about 2 hours, a jar of peanut butter, bottle of baby oil, and shampoo to get all toffee out of my hair and I never did manage to get all the toffee off the kitchen walls, countertops, stove, floor, ceiling, etc. Turns out I bought the wrong type of can, one with an easy pop top lid. Luckily, when I moved out, the flat was sold and gutted, so didn’t have to explain that one to the landlord, but I have the feeling the permanent smell of warm toffee sold the place.

As a teenager coming home from the grocery store, i ascended a (carpeted) staircase carrying several plastic grocery bags. One of these bags broke at the top of the stairs sending a gallon of milk down the stairs. It exploded on the first step it hit, then exploded a little more with each subsequent step. I think the smell never came out!

This wasn't exactly a drop, but I once managed to squeeze one of those fast food place mustard packets accidentally and it sprayed all over the paper doors in our Japanese apartment.

As for actual drops, eggs are pretty much the worst I've done, and I knocked a mirror off the wall in our shower which broke into a ton of wet shards.

A bag of salt, probably. And it got in to EVERY CRACK between the tiles, to boot! Very frustrating to clean up, and one of our salt-loving cats licked the floor for days afterwards.

First, what a clever post. You paid attention to an annoying household accident, grabbed a snapshot, and triggered vivid memories for all of us!

Bottle of permanent black drawing ink, top of bookshelf, down the front of a once-pricey set of Encyclopedia Brittannica.

Ever bought a high-end balloon bouquet? Did you notice that they line the balloons with some sort of gel/glue before they put in the glitter, so that the glitter won't all sink to the bottom of the balloon? Borrowed car. Hot summer day. Exploding glitter/glue balloons in a hatchback with cloth upholstery.

But studio spills are the worst. For those of us in live-work spaces, that gives us the worst of both worlds. Primer is bad but gesso is archival-grade primer. Flour is bad but cadmium red pigment is redder, finer, pricier and kinda toxic. My heart goes out to the olive-oil-on-hardwood people but nothing can adequately describe the spray radius and adhesion of a quarter-cup of ferrofluid (a dark brown ferrous pigment suspended in mineral oil) after two rare earth magnets snap together violently in the dish.

And Murphy's Law says it will be the last roll of toilet paper in the house that gets dropped in the bowl in the middle of the night, swelling up instantly like an emergency raft, just when you need it most.

I too have seen the horrors of the 'Great copier toner detonation'.
Copy/mail room at work.
Carpeted floor. Textured vinyl wallpaper. Mail slots. Servers. Old high speed band printer. Nooks. Crannies.
IT WAS EVERYWHERE!
Wipe and vacuum and scrub and clean. Repeat x1000.
And it was still visible nearly 6 years later.

Have you ever actually smelled insulin? Once you drop and shatter the glass bottle on the kitchen floor, you realize how very well the syringe and rubber stopper protect you from otherwise having to know. We have an eighteen year-old diabetic cat, and now always (always) twirl the bottle (to mix) over a towel in the sink. The most acrid smell ever, and still going strong after four months. I never imagined I'd be cursing our original-to-the-house wood floors. Cursed floor.

It's between spilling sugar (we are in the white counters and white floor group) and accidentally spilling the content of my sewing kit on the floor. Luckily the fiance got the bright idea of scanning our carpet with a magnet to find all the needles and pins.

Many years ago I was trying to consolidate two half-full bottles of Tide detergent, and did it over the kitchen floor. Apparently I missed the opening of the recipient bottle a little, so the thick blue liquid began coursing down the side of it. It wouldn't have been SO bad, considering my floors were cheap white linoleum, but the cat was enamored with the process and had planted herself directly under the flowing detergent... At first it was spilling onto her back so she didn't seem to notice - by the time she did, she was covered with a thick coating of concentrated liquid soap (back, head, everywhere), and I had to abandon the bottles in time to keep her from escaping to the carpeted living room (no small task, as slick as she was).

I sincerely hope no one reading this has ever tried to shower a cat free of Tide. For starters, we know about how much they love water - I had to literally pin her down under the faucet and just keep scrubbing her fur - the first few scrubs only activated the liquid. Scrub, rinse, dodge cat-going-postal-in-kitchen-sink. Over and over and over, while she emitted a sound I had never in my life heard, and that warranted a visit from the neighbors. When I did finally get most of it off and let up for a second, she leaped about six feet from the counter and into the next room, dripping wet (cats are really very small, without all that fluff). She just kept stopping every few feet to pause and shake her back legs out, one at a time, and glare at me. It was a sad, pathetic sight. I did not see her much over the ensuing week.

a dolly filled with gallon buckets of gesso stacked on top of each other during the first week of my job at an art supply store.

Bleach. On the (wooden) deck of someone else's sailboat. It ruined it. He was not happy.

Me: Not quite a spill--home from college for the holidays, I cooked an egg in the microwave. When I took it out, it was quivering strangely. Then it exploded. Everywhere. My mother found tiny bits of egg under the counters for years.

Son: A gallon of red paint on Grandma's carpet. And all over himself and his clothing as well. Had to take him home wrapped in a towel.

Daughter: a bottle of nail polish on carpet. Wait--that was SON again! Age two and he did it on purpose, opened it and poured it out while I screamed.

Here's one to rival the insulin. How about Thai hot and sour leaked from a take out box all over the car. In mid-summer. In Texas. The car smelled like vomit for months.

Most recently, son (AGAIN) left his Happy Meal milk in the pocket behind my car seat. A week later, when the weather warmed up, I noticed a slight off smell one morning. By afternoon it was unmistakable. The sour milk had heated, fermented, exploded all over the pocket.

A big mug of latte onto my laptop keyboard. I watched my computer advance through strokes into death. Repair would have cost me $1650, so I ended up having to buy a PC (much cheaper than laptops).

I've only had one keyboard accident - and luckily it was just flavored water. The fiance had to take the keyboard apart and let it dry out to keep it from being ruined. Luckily he got it back together fairly easy.

polyurethane down my pants whille DIy refinishing my hardwood floors; i was carrying it to the backyard

Jello in the fridge. My daughter, who was 3 at the time really wanted some, and it was not set up and had been placed on the TOP shelf to allow for maximum coverage. You have not *lived* until you clean each and every item in your fridge individually, and even disassemble shelves to get at the crannies.

I did think to take a photo for posterity.
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j64/muffeeeeeeee/100_1821.jpg?t=1235327983

Didn't capture the trail of tears that ensued from her walking with red feet over beige carpet to find me and show me her little mistake.

Many of these were so funny, and as a fellow spilling, dropping, breaking kind of person, it is a relief to know there are others out there.

My most recent bad clean-up experience was small in size but big in clean-up challenge. I broke a thermometer in my bedroom. Little beads of mecury went seemingly everywhere. I was in a flu-induced stupor that quickly escalated into flu-induced panic as I did not want my cat sniff it or walk across it and then lick it off. I barricaded the doorway, and that solved the cat issue but cleaning it up safely with a 102 temp was no picnic. In the end, with the help of a flashlight and online mecury clean-up guidelines, I believe I got it all. It seems most of it hit the bed(sigh).

My advice: digital thermometers only.

Kristianna - omg...the picture does tell all...lol

Oh my God Kristianna, your fridge looks like someone DIED in it.

A big pail of chitlins (chitterlings for those who aren't in the south) broke open and flew all across my great-aunt's porch when I missed a step, tripped, and fell *up* the stairs and into the mess with my arms full of grocery bags.

I left the cleaning up of that mess to my cousins while my dad gave me a "d-con" shower with the garden hose and then I went in for a real shower. I threw the clothes away.

I am the laughingstock of my family.

Wow, mine is nothing!

Few toner incidents, but no actual explosions, mostly just neat piles in the middle of the floor.

One I dropped a 1kg, newly opened jar of instant coffee. On tile floor. That I'd just mopped. So it was wet. The coffee adhered in a most disturbing way, and it STUNK! Oh, did I mention I was waiting for a taxi at the time, to go on holiday for a week? Fastest cleanup ever.

Our childhood car had a very artistic yellow crayon sculpture melted to teh dashboard. It sure gets hot in cars in the summer, huh? :P