Three large stains from sick dog right in the open space of the dining room...after cleaning with a mild solution of dish soap and water, still stained. Got the carpet spray out and worked on them and they disappeared for 1 full day. I was dumbfounded to see them return...so I got the bathroom cleaner out (contains bleach) and sprayed and scrubbed. I now have 3 large stains framed by very bleached out carpet as though I was showing them off! We're going to tear out the carpet and put in wood floors but I'm fearful of what dog puke might do to a wood floor finish. Also, I have another of those stains in our bedroom that I've had the sense to only scrub with water until I find "the right" solution. (The comments have been so funny. Great morning coffee read.)

This happened to a friend: she decided to dust her furniture, reached under the sink and grabbed the yellow can, sprayed it on her antique piece, only to turn it around and see that it was oven cleaner!

Peroxide is wonderful on cleaning up things on carpet. Do a test first, but it took out food coloring that my daughter used on our new ivory carpet, mud, pet puke... a myriad of stains perfectly. It is especially wonderful on blood (for laundry, I have not had to clean blood off of furniture/floors yet!).

@shelleyhmin, do you dilute the Peroxide for the carpet stains?

Peroxide definitely do a color fastness test FIRST!

I cleaned our pop-up toaster a little too well and discovered that I had scrubbed all of the numbers off the temperature dial. Making toast is more interesting than it needs to be now since you have to guess when setting the level of dark or lightness.

I would have to go with my toaster cleaning, I only know the settings for the "burnt" end of the dial, everything else is just a guess!

I decided to spritz some allergy dusting spray on the broom to help sweep up cat fuzz balls. Worked like a charm, but the floors were an ice skating rink.
Then there was my husband using the shop vac on the clogged disposal. While he tackled the DIY plumbing I went to get take out dinner. I knew it was bad when I saw water pouring out from the garage door as I drove up. The 16 gallon shop vac spilled into the pantry and garage as he wheel out the back door to garage. Luckily I arrive after he had hosed out the garage and was mopping the pantry.

I was bleaching my white strapless bra and then I left the bleach in for too long and the bleach turned the padding or the bra red so now I can't wear it anymore it was for graduation this sucks

Same as a lot of other folks - Magic Eraser on wood floor & faux wood doors. Oy!

Anything with bleach. I have ruined more clothes. A great cleaner for dog stains on carpet: blot as much as possible and then spray with water, liberally sprinkle on cornstarch and let it dry at least 24 hours. Vacuum. Test first, but I've never had a problem, and anyway a more bleached area is better than the alternative.

It was late in the evening of our House Warming party and I was in the living room/lounge talking to friends. When I came back to the kitchen one if our friends had graciously cleaned up and used a bleach solution on our black kitchen counter. It took off the glossy finish in several spots! I couldn't be angry with them but every time I look at the spots my blood pressure rises. Ahhhhhhh!

Poured something called ZEP on shiny chrome bathroom faucets to remove calcium deposits at the back base of the knobs that couldn't be reached with a sponge. Forgot about it for three hours. When I went back, the calcium was gone but the chrome was covered in permanent blue and white splotches. Only bright side is that the house was a rental and I got my security deposit back despite that.

Good cleaner for red wine on fabric is OxiClean. Freshly mix about 2 tbsp of the powder with one quart of water. Shake. Spray on. Let sit for about 10 minutes. Blot from both sides. Let dry and vacuum or launder. Trick is the OxiClean powder must be freshly mixed with water. This also works great with coffee stains.

Washed dry clean only curtains after listening to a friend who said the dry cleaners would just throw it in a washer anyway. Curtains shrunk but fixed by sewing a border to the top in a coordinating material.

I've enjoyed many of these, and I too have shrunk/ruined many a "dry clean only" item because I thought I knew better. But I wanted to give thanks for some of the chlorine gas stories... I never realized how quickly it can form, and, while I admit it never has happened to me, I have been somewhat lackadaisical about mixing cleaners, and I will be much more careful in the future.

I washed a load of laundry with a red lipstick. One of my bras was all marked up. No biggie until I was in an accident and went to ER will a dislocated shoulder. One of my thoughts was that I should be wearing something not all marked up with (by then) faded red lipstick.

For some reason I decided to "clean" a shiny wooden coffee table with a Magic Eraser. It left dull whitish streaks that I could never fix.

My Dad got bleach on my brand new dark grey jeans when I was 16, left a white patch on them. Then he brought them to me later and said " look i fixed them! " He'd coloured the patch in with black permanent marker.

My fiances good moleskins got covered in blood when he was hunting, washed them in a hot wash, blood cooked on!

Spilled orange soda on the carpet in our rental house the first week we moved in, its still there!

Also undiluted bleach doesn't make stainless steel benches shiny, in fact it makes them less shiny.

Toilet bowl cleaner dripped on new carpet in our master bedroom, years ago.

Fortunately, it was only on the surface of the carpet and didn't penetrate deeply (although the spot looked terrible).

After a few weeks, I realized I could snip off the top quarter of the affected carpet fibers---it was only a tiny area so was once snipped off, the area didn't show at all.

Disaster! Then, disaster averted : )

Moved into a new house with gorgeous marble bathroom countertops- I thought they were granite. A few cleanings later, totally ruined!

My white range backsplash had a dark gray horizontal decorative stripe that I assumed was baked into the enamel. One day while cleaning up after stir-frying, I used a green ScotchBrite a bit too vigorously and scrubbed off a piece of the stripe, which turned out to be painted on. I figured no big deal, I'll just scrub the rest of it off. It took me about three years!

Years ago, I found a vintage teak Danish modern chair, which needed cushions. I bought an entire cowhide and had custom cushions made, which were beautiful. The cream-colored leather had a glaze which gave it an antiqued look.
I had just hired a person to clean my house, who, while I was out grocery shopping, carefully scrubbed the new chair "clean" with brillo and Murphy's Oil Soap.

omg sstarr....I am so sorry for the loss of your chair :(

I've got a trick that works every time for removing nail polish from carpets. Sunscreen! Spray some on the stain and keep at it till the stain is gone. Finish up with a blotting with cool water. Just be careful, it will ruin your mani too.

I believe my worst cleaning mistake was not marrying Donald Trump so that I never had to clean again! (Well, not Donald Trump, but you get the idea.)

Candle wax on my area rug. I heard you could take wax paper and a hot iron let it sit for a moment and remove. I had tried it before and it worked. But this time I didn't have wax paper so used paper towels. Don't do it. Just made it worse. Luckily I could move rug so candle side was hidden under bed.

This isn't exactly a cleaning mistake, but one of the worst messes I've ever cleaned up was a whole large bottle of mint-flavored cod liver oil. I had read that nursing mothers need more Omega-3 fatty acids, so I bought the bottle and left it on the counter. Shortly thereafter, I was in the kitchen holding my 3-month old son, and he suddenly flailed his arm and knocked the bottle off the counter. Oy!

The oil just wouldn't come up completely even after getting as much as I could up with paper towels and multiple floor washings with Spic and Span. Way worse than cleaning up raw eggs. One time my aunt found a cracked egg in a dozen eggs, and flipped the carton over to get it out. Of course, she feel pretty foolish when she ended up with 11 broken eggs on the floor, and one cracked egg still stuck to the carton!

Dont use vinegar on your tile counter tops,bad,bad, bad...it will ruin it for ever.

Does anyone have a husband that is just destructive in everything he does? Mine is great at doing paperwork, but anything "house-related," forget it. He insisted on having a party for his fantasy football draft, and needless to say the house was a disaster when I came home. His attempt to clean was finding a broom to sweep floors before mopping, so went down to garage and used an outdoor heavy duty firm bristle broom to sweep our wood floors (which are not meant to be distressed-looking). From now on I will NOT be asking my husband to clean up after himself!

I had just moved into a country house that had a kitchen faucet badly encrusted with calcium deposits. I poured a little CLR Cleaner on it, scrubbed a bit with an old toothbrush, and voila---no more 'crustaceons'.

A few months later, I noticed similar, though lesser deposits on a friend's kitchen faucet in the city. "No problem", I thought. "I'll just take care of this and do him a favour." Well, the deposits came away, but, unlike mine, his sink was left with big blue and grey blotches of permanent discolouration. :( Horrified, I immediately confessed and offered to contribute the money for a new sink when he remodels his kitchen (which he has talked about doing some day). He shrugged and said "no big deal".

True friendship!

Years ago I decided to clean the glass on my expensive artwork. Not removing it from the wall, I sprayed a lot of Windex, which ran down between the glass and frame. The matting was stained and ruined. Lots if tears. Lesson learned.

We let a few friends from out of town stay at our place for our wedding. I am sure one of them dripped nail polish on our dining table, but what I found was a hole in the finish straight to the bare wood from where I assume she tried to fix it with nail polish remover. We left that leaf out from then on.

Tried to clean blood off my carpet in all the wrong ways, first I used just a few squirts of Resolve, then a hot towel, then a scrub brush, then I got drug the carpet cleaner out of the basement and filled it with hot water. Now the stain is 10 times worse than when I started. It's in the middle of the room so a rug looks out of place. Any suggestions?

I don't know but you will probably have a lot of explaining to do to the detectives! lol

how to get color back on stainless steel oven after sprayed oven cleaner on it

After remodeling our garage into a family room and having already laid pergo in the family room and white carpet in the dining room (yes, stupid idea) I still needed to stain and varathane a post where we took out the wall between the dining room and family room. Job was going great until the last couple of minutes with the varathane,,,, yes, I spilled it on the white carpet. Scraped up as much as I could, wet vacuumed the area but is still an amber area of the carpet. Later I found out that if i had called the carpet cleaner,,,, even tho it was 9pm, he would have come over and he could have removed it. So,,, don't be afraid to call the carpet cleaner!!! Wish I had known about using home insurance to replace that part of the carpet.

My daughter's hot dog dripped a quarter-sized plop of mustard onto new beige carpeting. I dabbed. Washed with dish soap. Soaked with laundry detergent. Scrubbed with salt. The rug fibers looked shredded but still bright yellow. Then I remembered the carpet remnant the installers left! I cut out the stain, then cut out a circle from the remnant, and carefully matching up the fibers (the texture can run east-west or north-south) glued in the new piece. So I sort of plugged it. Thinking back, a square shape would have worked just as well.

lgconley, try hydrogen peroxide to get out blood. It might bleach the area as well, so check it. It generally takes out most things and especially blood.

mdnotdr I haven't diluted it, but I'm shocked I haven't had some bad cleaning results because of that!

kind visitor poured boiling hot water on a vintage couch to remove red wine and it MELTED the fibres! Nothing I can do to fix it!

I bought a carpet dye kit online to remove bleach stains on tan carpet and was absolutely amazed at the results. You have to spray the stain, vacuum with wet vac, spray again, vacuum, spray, etc. until desired results are obtained, but, Wow. Amazing results. Bleach stains disappeared.

I literally just sprayed all 3 of our Microfiber Couches with Clorox Spray Cleaner..... because I didn't read the label and all I was trying to do was use OdoBan to get the humid dog smell out of the house. All of our fabric looks like it has been faded by the sun. It is less than a year old.....

I just had a cleaning success! My white stove/oven had a couple of places where sooty oven air had vented and left brownish stains. I sprayed bleach cleaner onto a tissue (don't use paper towel because the texture transfers), which held the bleach in place long enough to really lighten the stain. I will repeat a few more times to see if I can do away with it completely.

Interesting post! Thank you for sharing.

When using oven cleaner to clean an oven make sure you cover any cabinatry below the oven. It dripped on only a drawer front but I'm sanding away now.

IVE DONE THE UNIMAGINABLE HELPPP...ten years in cleaning business and i have mixed windex and scrub free and i didnt clean it up well enough and hours later when my customer took a shower big white streaks appear WHAT DO I DO

I managed to break a hanging pendant in my kitchen with a mop After that, I went back to cleaning the floors by hand!

I used ZEP Grout Cleaner and it RUINED my ceramic tiles. I followed directions and it still left a matte ring around every grout line. Do not use this product.

I used the instructions on Stainmaster's website to clean pet vomit and it ruined the carpet. Left ugly pink stains all over. Carpet cleaner says it can't be repaired. Just waiting to get the carpet ripped up and replaced (obviously, it won't be a stainmaster). Have since found that pure club soda does the trick!!!

Also, red wine cleans up nicely with vodka.