Along this same line of thought is an event my wife and I experienced a little more than a week ago. We were in the process of going through our morning routine - she'd just gotten out of the shower and I was about to shave (a practice I persist in doing because it is expected of me despite my generally loathing it; I am deeply bothered by the fact that people just can't seem to accept the awesomeness that is a beard in all its glory, but that's a blog topic for another time). My wife left the bathroom in her robe & towel turban (a description of her post-bathing attire included for the sake of thoroughly capturing the occasion, naturally) and went to our kitchen, which is where our stack-able laundry unit is located.
Our laundry unit is your typical washer-on-bottom/dryer-on-top combination. Like most people who live in homes where storage space is at a premium, we make use of the top of our dryer (Er, bottom? I have the image in my head of it having been turned upside down in order to have been stacked even though I know that's probably not right.) as an area where we sit materials like detergent, dryer sheets, and what have you. Being the thrifty shoppers we are, we tend to opt for 150 ounce containers of liquid laundry detergent as opposed to smaller containers that don't offer as much clothing cleansing for your money. The jug-o-detergent, as it were, goes on top of the dryer as this surface presents a stable position from which we may easily access the container's spigot. To save myself some keystrokes (and your eyes the strain of having to read the results of said keystrokes), instead of describing the rest of this region of the kitchen I've prepared a visual aide.
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| The Geometry Kitchen Collection from Ikea |
The only other elements of our kitchen which bear pointing out in this context are our cereal dispensers. They're positioned on top of a rolling kitchen cart, are each capable of holding just shy of an entire "family-sized" box of cereal (bought for the same reason as the laundry detergent; I'm not going to buy a 20 oz. box when I can by a 40 oz. box for less than the cost of two 20s), and dispense crunchy, sugary breakfast-time goodness by way of a rotating knob at their base. Think of them as feed-pellet dispensers for humans, if you must.
It's about 7 AM on this particular morning and my wife has gone to the dryer to get a garment she'd left inside of it. She opens the dryer, grasps the desired article of clothing, closes the dryer, and begins to walk out of the kitchen heading back towards our master bedroom. At this point in time, I'm still lying in bed watching the morning NBC news broadcast when suddenly I hear a calamitous racket coming from the kitchen that sounds like every pot and pan in the joint was simultaneously thrown onto the floor. Like I said, I'm still in bed - as such, my first reaction was to say to myself, "You're still asleep, just ignore it...It didn't actually happen if you don't acknowledge it." Sadly, it did happen, which was confirmed when I heard my wife say, "Oh...My...God!", as I was on my way to the kitchen.
There are a few situations where, as a man, you want to hear your wife envoke the name of God, but this was not one of them. I see my wife standing just outside of the kitchen and she has an expression on her face that could very well replace the definition of the word "shocked" in the dictionary. There was no sense of terror in her face, rather she was startled on a level I'd honestly never seen her. I found out why as I rounded the corner and entered the kitchen to find the floor nearly covered in blue, viscous laundry detergent, the contents of the cereal dispensers, and several pieces of the cereal dispensers themselves which had broken apart.
Confronted with the sight of the mess before me, I couldn't help but laugh. This particular container of detergent was practically brand new (meaning it was better than 90% full) and I'd just recently refilled the cereal dispensers. I guess if you're going to have a mess, then by God you might as well have a really big friggin' mess.
I wound up spending roughly the next 2 and a half hours cleaning up the kitchen. (I handled the task solo as my wife had to leave for work.) I began by picking up the pieces of the cereal dispensers, putting them into the sink for cleaning, hoping that I'd be able to re-assemble the things later on after they'd been washed. (Fortunately, they weren't as badly damaged as I thought they would be.) I very nearly dislocated my pelvis while trying to walk on the wet floor; my wife made a genius suggestion that I put on a pair of socks as they would soak up detergent with each step and provide more grip.
After putting on socks (I was still wearing my pajamas as I didn't see the point in changing into decent clothes for this operation), I swept up the detergent and cereal using a broom and dustpan. (Note to self: Invest in a wet/dry shop vacuum...) In order to get up all of the detergent I had to pull out the laundry unit and clean behind it. If you've never looked behind your laundry equipment, I dare you to do so sometime - you'll either find a treasure trove of lost socks and loose change or a bunch of garbage and the carcasses of dead bugs. In this case, what I found included a piece of an old broom, a metal rod (used for what, I have no idea), a broken pencil, 55 cents, a pair of socks I didn't recognize, and a whole bunch of dust bunnies. I felt fortunate to have moved the thing and not been confronted with a spider the size of Shelob.
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| Have you looked behind your dryer lately? |
The broom and dustpan routine got old quickly but it was mostly effective. I'd swept up most of the detergent and cereal, however there was quite a bit of liquid still on the floor. I grabbed some towels (the good ones we got as wedding gifts - yeah, those) and wiped up the remnants as I figured it couldn't do much damage to them. I was cleaning up soap, after all, which in the grand scheme of fluids to have to clean up is fairly desirable. As I mentioned to my wife, at least it wasn't raw sewage we were dealing with. I think if a spill involving the contents of "poo creek" happens in your home, you should just go ahead and burn down the house because I don't see how one could recover from that, physically or emotionally.
After the towels were spent, I attempted to mop the floor with warm water. This was possibly the most frustrating part of the whole process seeing as how I was making progress but at the same time I was creating a whole bunch of suds. Not only that but the socks I was wearing were thoroughly saturated, having become caked up with detergent and bits of cereal. (Interestingly enough, I inadvertently discovered that laundry detergent, when mixed with pulverized Frosted Flakes and Apple Zings, will take on the consistency of partially dried Elmer's glue.) I persevered nevertheless as I finished mopping then went back over the floor with another set of towels to try and dry up the suds, and was finally able to push the laundry unit back into place.
To be perfectly clear, I do not hold my wife responsible for what happened. I have lived in this house for more than 3 years and have kept detergent in the same exact spot that entire time. I can say without a doubt that I have opened and closed the dryer door with more force than she did this particular occasion. The laundry unit is level and it is quite stable. All these factors considered, I have absolutely no idea how in the world the detergent container wound up where it did. It's as if the thing was shoved or otherwise willed off of its perch, following roughly the flight plan seen below (we also inadvertently discovered that laundry detergent containers are incapable of unassisted sustained flight, oddly enough).
To be perfectly clear, I do not hold my wife responsible for what happened. I have lived in this house for more than 3 years and have kept detergent in the same exact spot that entire time. I can say without a doubt that I have opened and closed the dryer door with more force than she did this particular occasion. The laundry unit is level and it is quite stable. All these factors considered, I have absolutely no idea how in the world the detergent container wound up where it did. It's as if the thing was shoved or otherwise willed off of its perch, following roughly the flight plan seen below (we also inadvertently discovered that laundry detergent containers are incapable of unassisted sustained flight, oddly enough).
The thing basically did a swan-ton bomb off the top of the dryer onto the cereal dispensers, rolled out of it and then went for a BME from the lid of the washer to the floor. It was an absolutely absurd scenario is what I'm getting at. But how did it achieve such momentum? As I mentioned earlier in this piece, the container was better than 90% full; it was heavy enough that a fair amount of effort would've been needed to move it. Have you ever looked at this variety of jug? They have wide bases, meaning they're made to be stable and difficult to tip over so as to prevent spillage. All things considered, my leading explanations of what happened are:
1) We experienced a very localized earthquake - as in so localized that it affected 3 square feet of our kitchen and none of the surrounding areas
OR
2) Our kitchen is haunted
As ludicrous as it may sound, I'm somewhat leaning towards the latter. Reason being that not long after I moved into this house I experienced a similar incident. One night while I sat in the living room I heard a crash from the kitchen. When I went in to investigate I discovered that a knife rack/cutting board combination that I had sitting on one of the counters had fallen to the floor. Much like this laundry detergent container, the knife rack was not in a position whereby it would've just tipped over the edge - it was a good 6 to 8 inches back from the ledge of the counter, yet it was in the floor. How? I do not know, but I think I have cause for concern seeing as how we seem to be dealing with apparitions who like to throw things.
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