We had a bit of an unexpected home disaster this week. Luckily our house didn't have some massive damage or problem. The issue that occurred was definitely a serious inconvenience, but hopefully our ridiculous experience can help you if you need to handle a similar clean up.

The morning started normally, but as I descended our stairs in the darkness, a scent I wasn't used to hit my nostrils. Was it the pine if the Christmas tree? Perhaps, but why all of a sudden, as the tree's been there for weeks. It wasn't until I opened the basement door to retrieve my coat from the basement stairwell/coat closet that it hit me -- the whole first floor of our house had a distinct perfume smell. It took me a minute to place the smell, and then I realized it was TIDE FEBREZE SCENTED DETERGENT!!!!

Uh oh. Why was the scent of our detergent of choice suddenly wafting throughout our house? It smelled lovely, but I knew something was amiss. Remembering that I had run a load of laundry just before going to bed, I nervously walked down our basement stairs, wondering what I would see. I had visions of a flooded basement dancing in my head. But when I got down there, this is the disaster that lay before me.

It looked like the murder scene of an unsuspecting smurf. It seems that our washing machine was possibly off balance during the spin cycle and rocked the super sized and nearly full bottle of 96 load Tide HE detergent off of the top of the machine and it had fallen to the floor. If you're calculating at home, that's like $15 in wasted liquid soap.

Not only had it fallen, but it had landed on the upper plastic cap and burst open, flooding the basement with the thick sludge of blue soapy freshness. When the bottle hit the ground, the lid cracked and the contents blew up all over the floor.

A nearby pile of wood, an innocent bystander in the ordeal, looked like it was the victim of a crime. Someone call Dexter, because we need a spatter expert to reconstruct the crime and determine just how this wood hoard met its fate.

I had to head to work and couldn't deal with it in the morning, so I put off cleaning the mess until the evening. You know, the evening this week I had earmarked to be super productive and work through my checklist of projects.

When I arrived home later in the day, I had forgotten about the looming chore, but when I opened the back door to the house I was rudely reminded when the smell of a cool summer's breeze smacked me in the olfactory senses.

After screwing around on Twitter for a good two hours, I put my procrastination aside and got to cleaning. Before actually trying to mop up the soap, I first had to clean the mess I had in the basement on top of the spill. We are mid-project down there, so what do you want from me?

After all of my tools were put away and the space cleared, I kicked off my efforts with a wad of paper towels. I didn't have high hopes for this approach, and the hopes I had were quickly dashed. It seemed the paper towels just spread the sludge around.

I knew I needed a better way to clean up the mess, but how? As I thought about how to clean, I figured I might as well try to salvage as much of the liquid as I could. I started scooping the blue goo from the center and pouring it back into the container.

I felt a little like a weirdo doing this, but I figured it was okay if a little dirt got into the container. I mean, it's soap...right?

I was able to reduce the puddle of freshly scented sludge in the middle of the basement by a pretty substantial amount. And once I was done with that piece of the cleanup, I needed to find a good way to get the rest up and off of the floor.

As I looked around our basement for some material to clean the oozing slop I didn't see many things that would work. I was thinking about heading out to the store when my eyes landed on a bag of cat litter.

Though the litter wasn't the clumping kind, it was still worth a shot. I tore open the bag and spread some of it on the detergent as a test. After allowing it to sit for a few minutes to absorb the liquid, I wiped the litter around and evaluated its effectiveness as a detergent cleaning solution.

IT WAS WORKING! The litter had absorbed enough that the floor was no longer blue. 

I dumped out a a bigger pile of cat litter and began spreading it around with my hands.

Note: If this ever happens to you, put on gloves! I got some of the detergent on the back of my hands and it started burning after a few minutes.

I slowly worked the litter toward the middle drain, wiping and cleaning as I went. After about 20 minutes the floor was looking much better, and we just had a giant pile of litter in the middle of the floor.

To clean this pile I used our shop vac, but not just our Shop Vac. 

I knew the detergent and cat litter would fill the vacuum too quickly. To remedy this, I used our dust collection bucket so the litter would settle there rather than in the vacuum.

Once I had the majority of the litter picked up, I had to clean the remainder of the film left by the soap. I first tried water but that was simply making suds and leaving a slick mess. I changed course and tried using some distilled white vinegar, because vinegar solves everything.

After pouring it on the floor I used handfuls of paper towels to wipe up the mess. After about two hours and two rolls of paper towels, the basement was finally clean...err...at least free of soap. I can see the outline of where the detergent settled as the floor is extremely clean in those areas, but it's not like the floor is in good shape, so I'm okay with that.

Finally clean, our basement is as fresh smelling as it's ever been, but I could have done without the wasted evening. But if this ever has to happen again, there are a few things we're going to need to add to our shopping list. Primarily, I wish we had clumping litter and a mop in the house, but I think I did alright with what we had on hand. Though the evening ended up being more or less shot from a project standpoint, I learned a few valuable lessons.

1. Stop putting stuff on the top of the washing machine that might cause a problem if it falls.
2. Cat litter and vinegar can solve many problems.
3. Twitter can be totally funny and awesome and is often a great way to procrastinate.
4. Always keep a massive supply of paper towels in the house, as you never know when you'll need them.

Have you ever had a disaster related to laundry detergent? How about a similar disaster that derailed your otherwise productive evening plans? Let me know what problems have taken your night by surprise so I can feel better about a waste of my evening.