Biggest Mess EVER!

The messes Brody creates each day just keep getting messier and bigger and much more of a pain to clean up, but the worse one ever just happened this last week.

In our kitchen we have all the cabinets locked with safety lock minus a few drawers and the cabinet under the sink where the trash can is because it can't be locked. Brody is allowed to get in the drawers, and I haven't had to worry about the cabinet, because he just doesn't ever try to get in it.

Well, the other day Brody was playing in the kitchen when I was in the living room and I heard the cabinet open. Sure enough once I walked in there he had the dishwasher soap and the regular liquid soap out. He loves bottles and arranging them, but I don't think its the best idea to play with cleaners so I took them away and told him no-no. Brody the proceeded to throw a little fit. He ran down the hall crying and yelling the whole way. I chose to ignore the tantrum and walked back to the living room. Just as I have sat down and started back to organizing stuff, I hear the crash.....

You see, under the sink not only do we store our trash can, trash bags, and soap, I also take the oil or grease we use when we cook and I pour it into a big V8 can (which is like 52 ounces) and then eventually throw it away.....so the crash I heard wasn't my trash can or soap, it was a full 52 ounce can filled to the top with oil spilling all onto my floor!

Oh my gosh! I cannot even express the panic I felt. Brody was covered head to toe in old cooking vegetable oil! My favorit shirt of his possibly ruined along with one of his cutest pairs of jeans! I just got mad. I kept saying, "Brody, this is a big no-no!"

I stripped Brody of his clothes and began pulling every paper towel left in the roll and throwing it on the floor in the hopes of seeping up some of the oil. Brody is now screaming at this point because he knows I'm pretty upset and I keep sitting him down in the same spot so that he won't track oil everywhere else. I call Trevor and ask him to please come home now and help me. All he can hear is Brody screaming and the panic in my voice.

Why the panic? Well, at the edges of our laminate wood floor we never finished it off under the cabinets. I realize that the yucky oil is not only all over the floor and Brody, but it is now sliding underneath these floorboards onto the old linoleom! I can't start a wash because Brody won't sit still and I can't stick him in the bath because there is WAY too much oil everywhere that I have to try and get up!

Luckily, Trevor was close by and he was able to come home and save the day. Brody is near hysterical and his breath is catching in his throat because he has cried so hard. While I start a bath and the wash Trevor does his best to get all the oil up, and then he has to move the stove and dishwasher so he can pull up the flooring to get the oil underneath. He begins to clorox every single board he pulls up and the floor underneath while I scrub Brody.

Trevor got the harder job for sure, but when Brody got out of the bath he was still cleaning and I had to try and keep that busy 14 month old boy out of the way. We finally stuck him in his high chair with crackers and yogurt melts and while Trevor kept spraying the clorox I began to mop the floor on my hands and knees to get up the now greasy crap that was tracked through the dining room. Once Trevor was done he had got the oil all cleaned and the underneath floor clean, but the grease was still evident so I had to get new mop water and clean that half. The worse part was I had to work my way forwards otherwise I would be in the grease myself, so I would mop a spot, wait for it to dry, and then go forward and mop more.

So one to two hours after the initial spill it was all cleaned, Brody wasn't crying, and my house didn't smell gross like old food. Someday it might be a funny story, but its still a little too fresh in the memory to be funny yet.