My daughter opened the refrigerator door and out tumbled a nearly full 64 ounce bottle of blueberry juice. Its plastic lid apparently broke as it hit the floor splattering half of its sticky, staining contents.
My daughter picked up the remains left in the bottle and casually walked to the other end of the house to find me. She tells me what has happened, but did not mention the lid disappearing or the volume and distance of the mess.
As I am still sick with a BAD coldish virus that I contracted from her, I tell her causally to go clean it up with paper towels while being careful not to get any on her clothes.
She returns to the kitchen and it starts to dawn on me that I should have asked more questions. So, I started yelling questions to judge just what size of a mess had been created. I did not get far into my inquisition when I heard all I needed to hear. “Mom, this is a really big mess. Could you please come and help me?” she asked.
I went out to find half of a roll of paper towels in front of the refrigerator. Most of them were saturated already in the purple stain of the blueberry juice. My daughter was trying to shove some towels back under the refrigerator as she said ” A lot of it went under here, so I am trying to get these under here too.”
I look around as I am collecting the soaked towels into a pile at the cabinets, refrigerator, and even broom splattered with the juice. I am sure the refrigerator and broom will clean up without a problem. The oak cabinets should not be a problem either, and even if it does stain some the dark grain patterns in the oak will hide blueberry well.
My concern is actually the laminate floor. Although it was fairly new when we bought the house, it is poorly made and is not wearing well at all. I wish we had the Pergo that I bought at our old house. I know that is about the same age as this flooring, but it will wear well for next decade.
Still, even the floor would be more manageable if my daughter was not correct about the juice flowing back under the refrigerator. Why couldn’t the floor be angle the other direction? Why does it have to slope so liquid flows toward the appliances and cabinets? An engineer must have designed it. Even I know water and waste does not flow up hill, but that might be a common sense kind of thing.
They say that there are lessons to be learned from every experience. Well, here is what I learned from this experience:
- Fluid still flows to the lowest point.
- Plastic caps can break when dropped.
- I need to ask more questions more quickly when my daughter reports a problem.
- It pays to buy quality flooring.
- Finally, don’t spill blueberry juice; it leaves a very sticky mess.
