apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Eureka! I want this sexy ice blue vac!

The worst mess I have made in my home? Hmmm

Being a young stupid teenager and applying makeup on my parents carpeting...it left a ton of stains, and I had to use Resolve and a vacuum over and over.

looks cool......one more step taken towards going green

Having pets growing up will do some serious damage to your carpets. LOTS of vacuuming and sprinkling the carpet with Baking Powder...

A broken bottle of nail polish, that went all over the bathroom tiles. I had to scrub it off with nail polish remover.

Oh, why yesterday while I was trying to be "clean" and do some laundry, I put a strawberry smoothie on top of the dryer in order to open the washer door. I watched it somehow mysteriously slide off the dryer all over our tiny condo's carpet hallway. How nice it would have been to have a new vacuum to go over the days' worth of cleaning and treating.

We'll having a sick kid in a top bunk does a fairly good job of messing up a large area. I mean, I could hear the "SPLOSH" from the other side of the house. It was dang near impossible to clean up, but a few towels, sponges and mops did the trick.. but really- no fun at 3 in the morning.
But having a new vacuum would surely help my mood!

Younger

Two words: Red Koolaid

Blot, spray (I don't remember what) blot some more, tried to cover it before my mother came home. Then when found blamed it on my brother.

Recently: knocked over a plant, vacuumed it up with my Eureka Maxima which JUST died. So I'm in the market (hint hint)

Red wine after a majic trick gone awry. Had to clean it up with salt and vinegar.

Who couldn't use a nice new vacuum?

when my brother and i were kids - still pretty young but old enough to be left alone for a few hours in the afternoon - we made a real mess with some melted crayons. my brother saw something on tv about breaking old crayons into bits in muffin tins, and making multi-colored crayon discs by melting them. we went to work on this project with the kid next door, but as my brother was pulling two pans out of the oven, my mom came home. he dropped them both on the floor, splattering melted, colored wax everywhere. we were stuck on the floor for hours with spatulas, scraping it all up.

wax on carpet. that one's still there :(

The first floor of my condo was ceramic tile on one half/carpet on the next. I decided I didn't want the tile anymore when I had to rip out the carpets because of a plumbing leak.

Knocking out tile made and ENORMOUS mess of my entire place. Not to mention insane muscles from me slinging the sledge hammer. Very messy.

Oh I am loving all of these giveaways. Biggest mess was when we ripped out the nasty linoleum & put down hardwood floors by ourselves. They look very pretty but our old vaccuum is kaput after a couple weeks of accidental sawdust intake.

oooh! yummy! I wonder how well it will stand up to my long haired cats tender mercies.

One full box of Kix cereal all over carpet livingroom with 2 toddler having a good time stomping on them while i was slightly out of eyeview.

Solution: down on hands and knees picking up the "whole" kernels followed by slow, steady, repeated vac.

nice.

Oh, Lord. Dying my hair a bright (permanent) red and getting scared by my cat jumping on me. I shook my hair and red dye went everywhere in the bathroom, staining the walls, toilet, you name it.

Not only would this complement my apartment as well as the five unpardonably furry animals that reside with me, my "semi" functioning vacuum just turned "non."

Worst mess ever for me was waxing my ski's for the fresh powder in the mountains. All I had to clean up all the wax shavings was a wimpy hand vac. A nice cool blue vac like this would really help get the remaining shavings embedded in the carpet.

My vacuum burst! Had to wipe and vacuum everything again. It was awful! I *sooo* need a better vacuum!

I knocked over a vase of a dozen lillies and the pollen mixed with the water and stained my carpet a lovely shade of orange. I as able to get it out using a clorox bleach pen and lots of vacuuming of the loose pollen.

As a teenager, I once came home stoned with the munchines and spilled an entire large bag of powdered donuts on the living room floor in front of my father. I tried to clean up the mess with a hand held vacuum cleaner, but somehow managed to vacuum my very long hair with the mess. My hair got caught up in the engine so fast that the vacuum cleaner hit me in the head, leaving a rather large bump and a scratch on my forehead.

My most recent Worst Mess is in progress! Redoing my whole apartment, waiting to clean until it's "all done", with a child, her friends, a cat that sheds more hair than can possibly grow, our lack of a No Shoes in the House rule, and the fact that we wear our muddy, sandy boots in from the barn after riding horses.... whew... it's a hot mess for sure!

I tried to clean this weekend. I have a sad, old canister vac with no beater bar. It grinds the cat hair in to the rug, sort of like velcro. I had to put on rubber dishwashing gloves and get on my hands and knees to get most of the cat hair off the rug. I went through two pairs of dish gloves (literally! burned holes in to 2 pairs!), then vacuumed up the shredded glove pieces.

*sigh*

Boy, would I love to have a sexy new vacuum! The blue even coordinates with my design!

Well, there was the time the cat knocked all my dishes off an open shelf. I cleaned it up with a broom and then my tiny dustbuster for the porcelain fragments.

New vacuum please!

The worst mess I ever made...Would have to be the time I sanded the ceiling of my apartment without laying any drop cloth. It took about a month of sweeping and dusting to clean all the dust up.

I am one messy person. I spilled "high pulp content" orange juice all over my kitchen one day, and I was running late for work. I was conducting interviews that morning and it was 100% necessary that I leave right then. I threw some towels on the floor as best as I could and sadly left. when I came home I had dried pulp stuck to my cabinets. stuck in crevices and leaked in drawers. It was DISGUSTING. Not to mention like cement to get off.
*sigh*

After pleading with my friend's drunk husband, he put out his cigarette (no smoking in the house, but did you get the drunk part?) on our living room floor. Most vacuums couldn't take out a burn mark, including our now-broken vac, but I'd like to think this eco-number would wreak such magic on my floor.

The worst mess in my home was made by my dog, who was roughhousing with another dog and proceeded to get a cut on his paw. He ran all about the apartment leaving bloodstains everywhere. Oh yeah, this was while we weren't home. 2 cans of Spot shot and a lot of elbow grease was all it took...

hmm...worst mess...ripping the carpet off the stairs and stripping and sanding them down...still in the process of doing it and my place is a wreck! dust and paint chips and carpet rolls all over the place...a new vacuum would make me feel a little better because it had cleaned the place better than the one i have now.

I was living in an apartment with tan carpet and taking care of my parents' dog, Harrison (a white and black Lhasa). I had just made a plate of very meaty and very sauce-y spaghetti and was carrying it over to the sofa to eat. As if in slow motion, the spaghetti slipped off the plate, covering Harrison, a footrest and the carpet in pasta and sauce. A can of spot shot, a well-placed rug, and an angry Lhasa (for a while PINK and black) later, "The Harrison Spaghetti Incident of '01" is something my family still teases me about.

I was trying to polish an antique wooden table and accidentally spilled wood polish all over my tile floor. The stuff is like a mixture of paint and tar. Five or six times trying to get it out with soft scrub and various other cleaners and it has faded but still there.

Oh my! I guess the worst mess we have made so far was during our kitchen reno. Tearing out the old counter tops and other old kitchen stuff made a huge mess. It took many times with the vacuum, mop, and dusters, to make it clean again.

I spilled a full glass of merlot on the ivory carpet in a rental, no less. I cleaned it by covering it thickly with salt and let it dry. The salt sucks it out of the carpet, and all you have to do is vac it up the next day. phew.

A bottle of fabric softner spilled. A whole bottle. I scrubbed and scrubbed my hard wood floor. They are still a little slimy in spots.

A really large plant in a pot
Moving it to a new spot
Over the dog I tripped
Out of my grasp it slipped

Leaves, plant, and soggy dirt
On the floor, couch, and shirt
Old school way to clean the room
With just a dustpan and broom

Clean *and* green - what a perfect vacuum!

Worst mess: My mother-in-law dropped a cup of coffee. Or so she says. I wasn't around to witness the incident, but it honestly looked like an entire pot of coffee *exploded* all over the open kitchen-dining-living room area of our condo. Bless her heart, she felt awful, and tried her best to clean it all up, but we found coffee spatters in the oddest places for months after that! Not to mention the stain in the carpet..

The bagful of shredded paper I was taking to the recyclle bin split and I had paper shreds everywhere. Two weeks later I was still finding shreded paper.

I'm a vacuum cleaner fetish.

I knocked a box of laundry detergent (powdered) off a shelf in my closet, it got all over both my hanging clothes, and into the piles of (mostly clean) clothes on the floor. I keep my laundry detergent on the floor now.

Red wine in my kitchen, all over my newly white-painted cabinets. Stained the paint something awful. Unable to remove stain despite various sprays and oxygen cleaner applications. Feh.

I really didn't make the worst mess I had to clean up: my husband bought a sectional sofa, set it against 2 walls and never moved it. I moved in 6 months ago, started cleaning (he really isn't a pig - he just works 14-16 hours a day, and spent all his free time for the past year with me) and discovered several garbage bags and 2 vacuum bags worth of dog hair.

~Sigh~ I'm SO not a dog person!

I was snacking on Cheez-its and conversing with my boyfriend when an absent-minded gesture by me resulted in the entire contents of the box being flung across his living room floor. We had just started going out at the time and I was mortified!

He insisted on cleaning it up, and told me to just sit tight and hold onto his cat (who is way too fond of people-foods). When I saw him sweeping up my Cheez-it mess, I knew he was a keeper. =)

Hmmm, worst mess in my home ... Ok so when I was a young teenager my parents taught me how to cook. By the time I was in high school I was cooking dinner most nights and having it ready (or almost ready) by the time my folks got home. I loved to cook and on my mom's birthday thought I would surprise her by making her favorite - french onion soup - from scratch. I found a recipie in a cookbook, ran to the store and got the needed ingredients and got to work. In my eagerness I put oil in the pan to begin sauteing the onions and then began peeling and chopping them ... forgetting that I'd turned the burner on already. With my back to the stove I heard a strange and ominous "whoosh". I turned around to find the pan of oil (and the stove) on fire. Luckily I kept a level head, dug the fire extinguisher from the pantry (used speed-reading to check out the instructions) and put out the fire ... and then I spend the next FIVE HOURS cleaning up the tiny particulate dust from the fire extinguisher. Mind you we did not have a small kitchen but that stuff gets EVERYWHERE and pretty much EVERYTHING in the kitchen had to be cleaned (it even reached the top of the cabinets!).

While trying to empty my current vacuum cleaner (very poor quality) i ended up spilling all of the contents (cat litter, cat hair, lots of other dirty stuff) all over my carpeting. I ended up having to sweep all of it up with a broom because my vacuum stopped working. :( This vacuum is very much needed.

Spilled cherry koolaid on my light tan carpet. You want a big mess!! I scrubbed and scrubbed , cried and scrubbed more. It never came up fully

I was sick at my girlfriend's apt so she made me tomato soup. I spilled the soup all over her white carpet. I had to pay a lot of money to get the stains removed.

we just moved into our new place with wall to wall beige carpeting. too new to rip out and replace. so my first purchase was a carpet cleaner. the next day my son threw a bottle of ketchup against the wall thus splattering all over the wall to wall beige carpeting. with out shedding a tear, i whipped out the carpet cleaner and immediately started cleaning. surprise it did a good job of cleaning. you could barely see any spots. i guess it was good to be prepared. now we have a puppy....

Had I known what it would mean... I never would have adopted one white cat and one black cat those many years ago. But I love both of those critters... and boy howdy do I love this vacuum cleaner!

Moving day traffic.....lots of shoes, shuffling, boxes, furniture, newspaper print and no concern for the carpet in our new place. Then to top it all off, our cocker spaniel pukes on the floor to christen his new home!!

I borrowed my sisters carpet shampooer and it worked miracles!!

We came home one day to find blood on our carpet. Our cat who was 15 was terribly ill and was vomiting blood. We took him to the vet immediately and, after an overnight stay, had to put him to sleep. Hydrogen peroxide soaked up the mess but that was nothing compared to our loss.

the washing machine drainage hose came out and water went everywhere.mopping towels fans and alot of swearing

Worst mess? Well, my significant other just moved in. Me: minimalist neat-freak. Him: not so much. Cleanup is an ongoing process.

Ive had several big messes that other posters have had : like red koolaid in carpet still have the stains from toddlers sippy cups leaking (before the leakproof cups) and the kids are teens or young adults now! Or huge double size box of Cheerios scattered ALL over my living room carpet by 3 mischievious toddlers, vaccuum got fed real good from that mess! Now its dust from my hubby blowing out a computer he's working on with canned air or air compressor! the stuff goes EVERYWHERE!

Thats Frogz60@hotmail.com not drogs60@hotmail.com!!! Dont know where that comes from!

Oh this would be perfect! I currently only have a little hand-held deal.

My biggest mess was probably dropping a sack of flour. Used the above to clean it up.

According to the statistics, I'm a vacuuming freak.

Oh man! The worst mess I made and cleaned up was yesterday. My daughter had a big bowl of sunflower shells on her bed when I attempted to move them (because I didn't want them making a mess) I spilt them everywhere!!! So down I go on my hands and knees cleaning the little buggers up. What a mess! Picking up wet soggy chewed on sunflower seeds!

Thank you for the great giveaway!

apartment therapy rocks!

spilled a plant on the carpet. I took a broom and a dust pan too get the worst off. Then I tried the vacuum. I ended up shampooing the carpet to get the rest out.

My "worst mess ever" was an act committed in one of my great aunt's guest bathrooms when I was about 12. I had a can of spray-on green haircolor and wanted to streak my blonde hair green for a concert I was going to (I wasn't supposed to streak my hair or go to the concert). The spout was somehow faulty and the stuff sprayed all over the walls in tiny speckles. I was horrified and didn't want my aunt to see the mess, so I got out a bottle of nail polish remover and some cotton balls and cleaned the mess off the walls as best possible (meaning not very well). Fortunately both my aunt and her maid had poor eyesight and never really noticed how the paint had suddenly gotten rather streaky.

Worst messes (more than one):

1) pulling out 1000 sq ft of carpet and trying to put in laminate by myself. This was in the glue days. FAILURE on every level.

2) S/O's dialysis fluid all over floor. This just happened recently and was a total nightmare in every possible aspect.

3) daughter's elderly pug having poop attack on a light blue comforter. Immediate run to laundromat -- home machine not big enough for an oversized queen comforter.

4) S/O with no concept of the term "trash can" combined with dogs who enjoy breaking the rules.

Pugs as a breed seem to hate having their nails clipped. So when I have to clip my pug's nails, he squirms and struggles like a tasmanian devil. I once clipped into the quick of his nail and blood started gushing out. I reached for a styptic stick but he got away from me, running through the whole apartment, over two couches, a bed making a bloody mess. Once I caught him, we went into the bathroom with the biggest mother of all dog treats.

The worst mess I ever had to clean up took place in 2003. My partner and I bought planters for our very small porch and made the mistake of buying stinky fertilizer soil instead of planting soil. After two days, we had to empty them out. Fertilizer everywhere - all over the porch, tracked into the living room, the kitchen. Took forever to clean up (hands and knees with a small brush and dustpan) and even longer to get the smell out!
Love the new vacuum & hope to win! Thanks for the great site!

My personal best?

I offer only one piece of advice for all the kids out there: NEVER have seven vodka tonics in 90 minutes at a bar where the bartender likes you.

This vacuum would have been zero help.

owned a pug...enough said.

i've had the same crappy vacuum from kmart for 6 years.
salvation now!!! :)
e.

Three words...bean bag chair.

I made s'mores over a toasty fire on the floor of my parents' kitchen. I think I'm still paying for it...

broke a bottle of jelly in the kitchen, took forever on my hands and knees to make sure i got all the glass

I'm getting ready to move to a new apartment, and my old vac is toast. This would be perfect.

Worst mess?

Shortly after moving into a new apartment when I got my first full-time job out of college - I bought a brand new cream on cream sofa piled with cushions. Loved it! (at the time)

My landlady had installed brand new cream colored carpeting throughout prior to my moving in.

For some reason I thought it was a great idea to take a glass of grape juice (purple... not white grape juice) into the livingroom with me. Before long, I managed to spill the juice on my new couch AND the new carpet!

I sopped it up as best I could and the next morning set off to rent a Rug Dr. When I got back to the apartment my landlady was there checking on the property - and due to my strange inability to lie - I told her what I had done!
She calmly recommended white vinegar to get rid of the stain.

I can't tell you how much vinegar I dumped on that carpet... scrubbing and rubbing to get the purple stain out. I was disheartened as it didn't seem to work despite how convinced she had been in her recommendation.

Once the vinegar dried - however - the carpet was spotless. The only indication of the incident was the hideous square foot of frayed carpet as a result of the scrubbing and rubbing.

Note to self. Next time just pour the vinegar on it - sop it up and wait for it to dry.

When we got our wonderful dog, he was a six month old rescue with a horrible separation anxiety problem that went unsolved by us, behaviorists, and three vets. I came home one day to discover he had somehow trapped himself in our bedroom and had shredded a down comforter and two down pillows. He had also, in his panic, taken the entire top off our king-size mattress. After I got him settled down and cuddled and he had had a walk, I attacked the mess with a duster, broom and dustpan because I was afraid of burning out my vacuum with all the feathers. Then I vacuumed, laundered what could be saved, sewed the mattress top back on (it was only a month old), and remade the bed with different linens and an old non-down comforter. Then I figured out how to work from home, and we have lived happily and peacefully for over thirteen years. :)

Too lazy to bring in the catbox from the porch as a rainstorm hit L.A. a few years ago, I paid for it after the storm passed.

The clay litter INSIDE the box got all wet and overflowed out onto my deck floor.

For some reason my apartment owner saw fit to have the decks carpeted with a crappy cheap dark gray berber back in the day.

I vacuumed up as best as I could (I always feel like a loser since I have to vacuum my deck. Who vacuums their deck??) and let the darkish stain dry under the California sun.

A potted plant sits over the stain.

Last week I made a jug of sun tea. I opened the fridge to put the tea in and a bottle of wine rolled of the shelf, slamming into the tea jar. The jar shattered, splashing tea all over the inside of the fridge, under it, between the fridge and wall, all over the stove and the cabinets, and the entire kitchen floor. My hubby walked in to see me holding just the top of the tea jar in my hand, my clothing dripping with tea. LUCKILY, the wine only bounced, it didn't break and add to the mess, I cleaned up the big pieces of glass with my hands, mopped the floor with a mop that I had luckily decided to buy earlier that afternoon, and cleaned the tea out of the fridge with paper towel and dishcloths.

When I was a teenager, and deathly afraid of spiders, I was up late watching an old movie one night. I think it was a Creature Feature on Channel 9 (shout out Chicago!). And THEN I looked down and saw a spider crawling on my shoulder! FREAK OUT!

The next morning my parents asked me what all that orange stuff was all over the walls and on the ceiling.

Answer: I was eating a bowl of orange sherbet when the spider attacked me. Oops.

The worst mess was bird seed from my kids making art projects for homeschool. We cleaned it up with broom, sweeper

I conserve energy by not vacuuming excessively. One hour a week sounds excessive to me.

Worst mess...can't think of too many at home. My roommate once dropped a bottle of bleach in front of the W/D closet in our rental. It didn't all spill out, but some sort of splattered on the carpet. Fortunately, the carpet was beige and only turned a little pink in spots.

O, and one of my labmates dropped an entire bottle of bromine on a cement floor once. But you don't actually clean that up. You just pull the fire alarm, call hazmat and get everyone out of the building.

Sigh. This is about the worst it's ever been. New black puppy (shedding away happily), 12 year old boy ("what mess?"), and me, just after surgery. Can't answer how I'm going to clean it up......anyone believe in angels? Or maybe a Eureka Envirovac?

kids, pets and plants... i'm never done...

The worst mess I made was when I dropped a full pitcher of Crystal Light pink lemonade and it went throughout my kitchen and dining area. How did I clean it up? Crying, with paper towels, water, soap, and dish detergent. cdziuba@aol.com

gotta have something that can hold up to a german shepherd's hair! she sheds so much it's a wonder she's not bald. (my boyfriend won't let me shave her. i even offered to throw in a mohawk. no dice.)

Thank you so much for this giveaway. The worst mess I've had, is when I was in the middle of making chocolate chip cookies for the holidays. I was making huge batches, to give as gifts. I had a batch all mixed and stopped to use the restroom. When I came back into the kitchen, I found my 2 year old son had gotten hold of the whole batch and basically got it all over the place in the kitchen and in our family room. I had cookie dough on cabinets, floors and rugs. What a mess!
Thanks so much for this giveaway. With young kids, I could really use this. lol Thanks so much.

Other than my ongoing drama from getting cat hair off the couch? Once I opened up a bottle of Rockin' Rye (a red soda) that had apparently been jostled around a bit. I had pink droplets all over my kitchen.

I tried to clean the fireplace with a wet/dry vac and succeeded in blowing ash dust all over the living room...what a helluva mess....just lots of dusting and vaccuming once the dust settled.

In my younger days I was renting a place with ugly kitchen carpet. My brothers and sisters and their young children came over for a family get-together, and I prepared a homemade "giant" pizza with all the trimmings. It smelled wonderful as it baked, and everyone was excited to taste this creation. At the time I did not realize I was in the beginning stages of M.S. When I opened the oven door to get the pizza out, the blast of hot air hit me and scrambled my nervous system and made me weak. As I tried to lift the pizza pie out of the oven -- with the help of oven mitts -- I lost control and the pizza tumbled upside down on the kitchen carpet. Fortunately, my family applied the six-second rule and began grabbing pizza and toppings and placing them on plates. I will never forget my sister Diana just standing there laughing her head off at me. My kids helped me clean up the remains of the pizza with a spatula, and then we used some Windex and water on cleaning rags to get the stains out. Twenty-some-odd years later, I have never forgotten the incident.

I picked up a bag of red lentils from a top shelf in my pantry. Oh, it was broken. Red lentils rained forth from about 7 feed in the air. And bounced! They covered quite a radius. I swept a little but was moving out a couple weeks later so saved the rest of the sweeping till then...

But when I unpacked my kitchen wares, I noticed that quite a few red lentil stowaways had spread through the box and moved with me.

So many messes, it's hard to pick the worst one. When I was a kid, I spilled a bowl of soupy ice cream on the rocking chair, carpet and dog. The dog smelled like ice cream for a week. It was kind of nice, actually. As a college student, I moved in with a boyfriend who had two roommates. They owned no paper towels or kitchen towels. If something spilled, they would wait until it congealed and then scrape it off the floor. More recently, I broke a glass vase. I had it earthquake-waxed to the shelf, but then I hit the shelf from below with a chair and the whole thing fell to the ground- and the vase was full of decorative stones and peacock feathers. I had to lock the cats out of the room while I very carefully made sure every speck of glass was picked up. I'm sure as soon as I hit "submit" I'll think of something truly outrageous.

The worst mess? I was building a 9 foot dragon puppet in my 10 foot kitchen. Polyfoam, contact cement, airbrushed fluorescent paint. Not pretty. We ended up eventually remodeling the room. That stuff does NOT come off.

My worst mess was when I gave my Maltese a haircut, not realizing the amount of hair I would have to clean up off of the carpet! I decided to use the dog's brush, the one with the strong metal teeth. It took me forever, and I still found white fluffy hair on the carpet two days later.... I really NEED the Eureka envirovac, in a soothing blue finish!

It actually wasn't me but my daughter. I returned home from a trip to find the house in a "post" crazy party state. How does one get salsa on the walls and ceilings??
How did it get cleaned up? It took all day but I had help - my daughter!

I spilled a cup of coffee on the carpet in my bedroom. I used quite a few rolls of paper towels to blot up all the coffee. After that was done, I sprayed with a carpet cleaner, and when dry, vacuumed.

One mess was a stream of ants crawling across the walls of my apartment. Another mess was me dumping over my orchid and all the bark-ish interiors. My handy vacuum sucked up both problems! Of course, it needs replacing so a new one would be splendid! Did I mention that today (July 10th) is my birthday?

Unfortunately, I can't divulge my worst mess story. But some key words from that incident: northern California, "back to the land" parents, late teen years, tipping an instrument with "dirty" water, not cleaning for days.

My mess I had to clean was absolutely disgusting. My cat was sick, and has long fur. My boyfriend and I were sleeping, and were awakened by his litter box umm mess. He didn't quite make it out of the box clean, and it was all smushed into the carpet, it was on the walls, the bed, the other cat, the counters and us. Not exactly something I wanted to clean at 3:30 am. I especially need a vacuum because I am moving on my own into an apartment.. and being as broke I am from school, I could really nice something new and nice!

the biggest mess I've ever made? Adopting 5 longhair kitties! I'd love that vacuum.

I knocked over a can on lead-based paint that I use in sign-painting. All over my kitchen counter. I had set it down to pop the lid with a screwdriver from my junk drawer before I headed outside to paint the sign. Extremely toxic stuff. Took a lot of paint thinner. I should have called Hazmat.

I throw my litter box messes in a bag and throw that out every week.. Well I was carrying it through the house and you guessed it.. the bag broke... yuck! what a mess! I vacuumed and vacuumed and mopped up.. I double bag most of the time now!

I have 3 boys, 2 teenagers, so my biggest mess exists now and I have more to come!

Worst mess ever:

As a teenager I had an obligatory "parents out of town" party. Unfortunately, the combination of a torrential downpour and tons of people traipsing through our front yard left the pink living room carpet a muddy brown. Our attempt to steam clean the dirty area left it a much cleaner and lighter color than the rest of the room. We panicked and steam cleaned the entire carpet, finishing hours before our parents came home. Do you know how long deep pile carpet takes to dry? Way longer than a couple of hours.

To this day I maintain the claim that my younger sister spilled grape juice all over.

my worst mess would have to be when my daughter was about 3, she fell asleep on my living room carpet. i let her be, didn't want to wake her up by moving her.... little did i know that she had been holding a completely unwrapped hersheys bar in her hand when she fell asleep... on her belly! I went through a moment where i was so thankful it was only chocolate and not something else that it resembled... but then reality set in... completely melted hershey bar all over about a 2 foot section of carpet, as she squirmed, it smeared.
It took me weeks of scrubbing to get it completely out of the carpet. Needless to say, i don't eat that much chocolate anymore after realizing just how much "oil" is underneath the brown coloring! what a mess!

i NEED THIS BADLY! our cat is born with many quirks. one of which: he is freakishly obsessed with the big boxes of new litter we buy. i forgot to hide it away last week, and when i nonchalantly walked into the (carpeted!) bedroom, i suddenly felt like i was at the beach! he had knocked the box over and dug it ALL out into a nice, thick area of litter heaven on the carpet.

we only have a tiny dustbuster. and let's say, i STILL haven't been able to get every last litter grain out yet.

this would help!!!!

bachelor, first place rented by my lonesome, no room mates, feel like a grown-up. Only been two weeks. I hate my carpet and I hate it having things on it. Would be great to vacum my 450sq. ft. studio, my slice of heaven :)

WE made 3 kids within 3 years...

None to report. I still could use a vacuum...

Huge chocolate cake fight on my 21st birthday...

2 dogs, 2 cats, none of them neat and none know how to clean up after themselves - their messes are probably the grossest, but *I didn't make them... My worst mess probably involve kitchen disasters - like taking the top off the blender, which was puree-ing black beans, too soon... OR dropping a molten goat cheese flatbread face down on the floor (last night) ... OR dropping a punchbowl of sticky punch ... OR dropping a pot of pea soup ... sigh. Cleanup? None of this involved a vacuum - lots of rags, soap and water, mops etc. I'd still love a vacuum. Mine is on its last gasp.

i was eating a bag of doritos then decided to put them away before i ate the whole bag. so i roll the top to close it. i don't know how i but i rolled the wrong end. the end that was all ready closed. when i went to go put them on the shelf all the chips hit the floor cause the open side was wide open and i wasn't even looking at what i was doing. to clean it up, heck i had to use my broom and dust pan. chips all over the place!

The worst mess by far was made by two cockateils their birdseed, feathers and other poopy stuff.

I stepped on broken glass in the kitchen and had to use diluted bleach, a scrub brush, and lots of paper towels to get the blood stains out.

my son smeared suntan lotion on the tile and i had to scrub and wahs it for a long time. it was awful.

just about anything and everything you can imagine, i dont know who is worse me or my 3yo!! toughest one was dropping a glass canister filled with 15lbs of floor in my kitchen. i think im still cleaning it up! paper mache anyone?

my husband was redoing the 2nd floor bathroom-he thought he would pour in some insulation. He poured it in the wall and it came out downstairs in the basement. had to use my broom and then the vacuum

I knocked a glass of red wine from the kitchen table with the phone cord and it splattered ALL OVER the wall, ceiling, tile, refridgerator and dining room carpeting. Not to mention my clothes.

I cleaned it with lots of stain remover, water, sponge and paper toweling.

I was putting the cap back on a large bottle of corn oil and I dropped it and the oil was a big mess on my kitchen floor.

I sprinkled a box of salt on top and put papers on top of that.

It was very hard to clean up.

I clean up so many messes. I have to say the worst messes are the ones my kids make. My toddler loves smashing eggs all over the kitchen floor. That makes for on slippery mess. I end up wiping it up with paper towels then mopping after.

I am known as the family klutz and would spill something almost every meal. I once shattered a plastic bottle of ketchup covering the entire kitchen but I think the worst was the sour milk (we are talking non-refrigerated, accidentally left on the top of the fridge for over a week past due date) that fell covering the entire fridge and made the house almost unbearable to be in. It was so hard to even get near it without getting sick.

I think I went through a basket of towels, some serious bleach cleaning spray and at least two t-shirts. Never again.

oh, i could use that once our remodel is done!

I spilled a cup of melted crayons down the front of my parents' new kitchen cabinets. My friend held a blow dryer to the mess while I gently scraped it off with a knife and sucked the purple crayon flakes up with a vacuum. It worked, thank God.

The worst mess I ever created was when my son was born I was pretty busy with that and left a bag of garbage in the cellar. It leaked and created a nasty mess that sunk into the cement. But that is not the worst part. The worst part is the Lestoil that I dumped onto the cement and then could not get up. The noxious fumes of the cleaner filled the house for days and no matter how many times I tried to mop it up I still has more fumes. Finally,while waiting for my daughter on the school bus, a van from an Industrial Cleaning Company drove by and their magnetic sign flew off. I valled them to tell them I had their sign. When they came to pick it up ,I told them my problem with the Lestoil. They cleaned it up for me. The smell of Lestoil has made me nauseas ever since!

Okay, last week we "rat sat" for our nextdoor neighbors. They went on vacation and we cared for their pet rat. Let's just say that rats don't keep all of their food and waste in their wire cages. It was a huge 3 level cage, and I swear that rat was throwing his droppings as far as he could across the room. The only solution to this mess was lugging our shop vac upstairs from the garage.

I was drinking soda and went over to reach for a napkin (ironically) and sent the cup of Coke flying, spilling soda everywhere, including on my computer!

I scrubbed down hard with misc cleaners and soap and water for about a good 45 minutes. Some of the furniture is still sticky

Hi, Had 8 Friends stay at my small 1 bedroom apt. one New Year's weekend and one friend brought a lot of confetti, a lot of confetti!

Worst mess: my ancient and much loved Lab, always forbearing and patient in her youth, at 14, has begun to let her true feelings be known. We went to a movie last weekend and returned to find the entire contents of the garbage, compost and recycling bins strewn throughout the house. She'd managed to open the kitchen door, pull the stick that serves as a lock on the garbage cabinet out and drag all three bags out of the kitchen--one even made it upstairs to the bedroom. Still finding decomposing eggshells/coffee grinds/bits of shredded carrot in odd places--including behind the toilet and under our bed. Lovely!

Beerpong... and guess what? The person who knocked over all the cups had to clean it up using paper towels... It stunk for the next weeks =\

I was trying to shift an entire shelf full of plants when I knocked it off balance and the whole thing toppled. I have a crappy old cordless stick vacuum that doesn't hold its charge for very long, so it took days to get it cleaned up. I still periodically find random dirt and it's been months!

I decided to be Poison Ivy for a Halloween party I was throwing at my home, and somehow that involved cutting and gluing bits of ivy to my costume in my apartment the day of the party. I did a quick vacuum, which didn't help much, so I dumped a bunch of tiny spiders and webs on the ground, and called it decorations.

the kitten has a fondness for shoulders. she jumped on my back, claws out, from the counter while i cleaned her litter box. i was holding it out and dumping the whole thing into a bag because the litter was ready for a full change, and the box to be sanitized.

i yelped, dropped the box and the bag, and litter and you-know-what went everywhere.

i swept forever, and spent the next two weeks mopping every day or two out of paranoia.

Snoopy chewed into a box I hadn't unpacked after moving. There were styrofoam peanut bits and chewed up paper all over!

1983: Smurf stamp with blue ink all over my mother's bone-colored lacquered sofa table. The only way it came clean was to cover it up with strategically placed silver quails.

I am a jewelry designer and I carve a lot of my original designs out of blocks of wax and then have them cast into metal (much less scrap metal that way which is necessary when gold is almost $1000/oz). Anyway, one day I was gathering up all of my bench sweepings to throw them out when I got a little tickle on the tip of my nose and sneezed... right into my 3" x 15" drawer full of wax fillings. They flew everywhere! I'm still finding little wax shavings in nooks all over my apartment. It would have really helped if I had a vacuum like this one to clean things up :)

In the fall several years ago, several roommates and I decided to have a leaf party. We raked leaves for several days and got together enough leaves to fill our family room to waste high level. There were a lot of leaves. Well - the leaves came in easier than they went out.

Solution: Leaf blower and vacuum - a little blowing and a little sucking went a long way!

dyeing my hair-ruined every bathroom of every house I lived in....

You want a mess? Get any Ikea shag rug. Within a few weeks, little balls of white fluff will drift into the most remote corners of your house. Ironically, you can't vacuum the rug either, as the vacuum's rotating brush will chew up the rug right away. Duh.

a maple syrup drinking contest. yes, it made a mess indead.

Our worst mess was made by my (non-cook) husband, who decided to make a chili dinner on his own for our family and his dad. The recipe called for putting the cooked diced beef in tomato sauce in the blender before adding other ingredients. After a brief search for the blender lid, hubby decided to just use his hand to cover the top. As soon as the blender was turned on, he discovered where the lid was (in the blender!) - also the hot beef was a bit too much for his hand, so chili went EVERYWHERE! He actually put the mixture through a strainer to remove the plastic lid slivers, cleaned up and continued cooking the meal. He didn't reveal his secret ingredient until AFTER we had eaten! Luckily, I didn't arrive home from work until just before dinner was served, so I didn't have to help with cleanup, but I still can't believe he served blender lid chili to us!

The worst mess we ever made in our home happened on New Year's right after our party ended at about 3 am. We were cleaning up and dropped a full bottle of red wine all over the kitchen floor. We were exhausted and spent at least an hour cleaning up red wine and tiny specks of glass from every crevice of our little kitchen.

Wow which mess should I pick, I've spilt potting soil on my rugs, pet accidents and recently a relative that was visiting spilled a package of ground coffee on the rug. I would love to win this prize Thanks

Having two toddlers in the house can get you some unbelievable messes. OxyClean is our friend.

One time I dropped a jumbo frozen mocha and it spewed all over the kitchen. Took an entire roll of paper towels to clean up.

Worst mess was when my 2 year old daughter decided to not only build sandcastles in the cat's litter box, but proceeded to throw kitty litter from one end of the room to the other. I know ... I know.... I spent over an hour on my hands and knees with the shop-vac. It was The Worst. I spent another two hours cleaning and disinfecting my daughter and I. It was like a scene from Silkwood.
gkstratos@yahoo.com

Well, my sister and I both thought the other was watching our samoyed... so the pup was unattended. With the back door open. And a mud puddle in the backyard.

She cavorted through four rooms, splattering mud on the walls, floors and rugs before we caught her. We had to test out a few emergency cleaning tools, like nature's miracle, but we got most of the mud off.

I dropped 1/2 gallon of milk( the old paper cartin) and it hit the corner of the table and split down the side, wit a slight spin it got mild all over the place, it took me forever to get it all off the floor

saradanger you are hillarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
how about dropping an entire bottle of maple syrup on my brand new kitchen runners. wow its been a fun couple days cleaning this mess up.

A toilet that ran, and flooded... all weekend.
It provoked a change to laminated floors.

two long haired cats and litter tracked everywhere. i just found out they are giving me asthma so i could really use this vac!

Me and my sis used to collect bugs when we were little. I was probably in the 2nd grade when this happened, but I had a clear plastic goldfish bowl and was collecting a bunch of pill bugs in them---you know, the little armadillo-like bugs that roll into a little ball when it senses danger? I found a bunch in the backyard, and also found that one of the columns on the patio had a hole in its base with a bunch of them in there. Anyhow, there must have been an entire inch deep of pill bugs in that bowl. I stepped into the house for no more than a minute when my dad asked me what I was doing, frowned at my collection, and told me to take it back outside. As I stepped towards the back door, my hand lost grip somehow, and I dropped the entire bowl and its contents on the linoleum floor and the little pill bugs rolled into little balls and scattered all throughout the kitchen, family room, hall, and foyer.

How did I clean it up? I dropped to my knees and just started picking them up before they all started crawling away. The memory of it is so vivid in my brain.

Blusher.....I dropped it and it broke up in a million little pieces all over the place. Of course it was one of the expensive ones with a lot of pigment. Resolve & alcohol did get it cleaned up for me.

Hmmm...well, one time I was boiling two eggs and I COMPLETELY FORGOT about them!! Well, needless to say, all of the water boiled out of the pot and the eggs exploded into boiled egg bits all over the kitchen! I just cleaned it the old fashioned way--lots of all purpose cleaner and a sponge!

While this isn't a mess I made, it's one I had to clean up. My dog is a rescue pup and when we first got him we had to nurse him back from starvation. Well, his stomach was very delicate and there was one particular time that I came home and he had had explosive diarrhea all over his crate, the floor, the walls, and the couch. It invovled hours of cleaning, spraying walls with a green all-purpose cleaner and then getting in there with vinegar. There were also a few things we needed to haul outside for a good cleaning with the hose. Fun for everyone!

For my 25th birthday my boyfriend came over with a bottle of red wine and tickets for Wicked at the Pantages. In my excitement I knocked over a full glass of the wine.

It was too late for a deep cleanup as we had to leave for the theater, so I blotted the carpet and used a new stain removal tip that I had just read on Apartment Therapy: apply salt. I think I poured on half a container of Morton's ;-)

I didn't touch the spot 'til the next day, and boy was I surprised to find the salt had picked up every bit of red wine!

Too bad I don't own a vaccum, that's the most cleaning my poor carpet has ever gotten while I've lived here...

The worst recent mess was when I made a pineapple smoothie and forgot to put the top on my blender before I hit the 'Liquify' button. I splattered the cabinets, counter-top, floor, and myself! I was so shocked I couldn't remember how to shut it OFF.

need vaccum cleaner! I'm sweeping up cat hair and bread crumbs off of a carpeted apartment with a broom!

(yes, I know you generally sweep things with brooms)

My biggest mess was the mess from flour after I had endured long hours making my first batch of cinnamon rolls. although I didn't use much for the dough itself; it was the after part of the rising where I had to put flour on the table to roll the dough out...not a very pretty site. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to get it all up with a broom and dust pan with a good swab of the mop afterwards. We didn't have a vacuum at the time so that was the price I had to pay.

I would graciously accept this give if I were the lucky winner...you could count on this!!!

Red wine & red wine coolers on new white couch. In my desperation (I was also a bit tipsy - shocker) to clean it, I grabbed dishwashing soap and started scrubbing with a sponge. Needless to say, that method made the stains even worse. That was the last time I will ever buy a white couch...or sit on one at someone else's house.

Just as I was putting my cake batter into the oven our dog jumped and hit my arm. Cake batter everywhere! I tried using my old rag mop to get it off the floor which just pushed it around so I go on my hands and knees with paper towels and Mr Clean and finally took care of that situation..the oven was a whole other story.

Ha! The worst mess I made was when I was a kid, probably 11 or 12, and I had the *genius* idea to put some Coke in a water bottle with a sport top. And then I had the even more awesome idea to SHAKE THE BOTTLE. Nothing happened. So on the walk from the kitchen to the living room, I shook it again. Nothing happened. Once I got into the living room, I shook it just one last time (because third time's a charm, and I have a bad habit of not knowing when to stop). And what do you know? It exploded ALL OVER the living room. But mostly all over the white ceiling. Yeah. That was a bit of pain to clean. I was able to get the ceiling dry, but I don't think it ever actually got clean, I think my dad just eventually primed and painted over it.

Luckily that was a learning experience for me. :)

I also have a dog mess story, my big silly rotty would always find new ways to get into trouble when left alone. One day we returned home to find she ate the linoleum in the living room and had thrown it back up! This gross mess required a combo of strong cleaning liquids and a mop, pail, some parts needed the broom only, and a major league amount of patience!

I only made a mess once that I can think of. I have a scroll saw and it was hot out so I figured I would use in house on kitchen table with fan on. I had sawdust everywhere. Not sure what I was thinking but dusted and vaccumed for days afterword.