NEVER put dish soap in the washer.

FOAM-TASTROPHE

I flushed about twenty bucket loads of foam down the toilet. You know how a lot of toilets are finicky and don't like to flush twice in a short period of time? Yeah... Well, I actually had to alternate between our two toilets. Each toilet needed time to recuperate after swallowing giant gulps of foam.

Here's the background story: I've found that dish soap makes a great spot treatment for grease stains. Last week I was dabbing dish soap onto one of my shirts, rubbing it in to eat up the oily spots. There were so many splatters that I ended up pouring dish soap all over the shirt. The more the better, I figured. That oil-spotted shirt needed a lot of help! I made a mental note to myself to start wearing one of my various cute aprons while cooking.

I decided to take the cleaning one step further. This was my rationalization: if dish soap works as a spot treatment, imagine how well it'll work as laundry detergent! I threw my greasy little pink shirt into the washer, slammed the door, and drizzled dish soap into the detergent compartment. I started to pull the soap bottle away from the washer...but then I decided to pour in some more. A lot more. Maybe a full cup more. I set the washer to the heavy duty cycle and walked away, congratulating myself for salvaging that poor, innocent shirt.

About midway through the wash cycle I passed by the washer and couldn't see through the front window.  Only foam was visible. I shrugged. It just needed more water to dilute the foam, right? I stopped the washer and set it back to the beginning of the heavy duty cycle. When the buzzer sounded I casually walked over to the washer, excited to see my sparkling clean, beloved hot pink shirt. A gasp escaped from my mouth. 

The foam had somehow escaped from the sealed and locked confines of the washer and managed to pile up in front of the machine. The window was still blocked by foam inside the machine. I quickly grabbed two beach towels and started wiping up the floor. (FYI, in case you're ever stupid enough to cause a foam-tastrophe of your own, it helped to squash the foam with the towels. That lessened the volume and made it easier for the towels to soak up the liquid.) After mopping up the floor, I opened the door of the washer to clean out the foam. No! Bad! Wrong! Fail!

Have you seen the chocolate making episode of I Love Lucy? Surely you know of the episode, at least. Well, Lucy and Ethel switch stereotypical gender roles in that episode. The girls go out and find a job (chocolate factory fiasco) while Fred and Ricky take on the day-to-day domestic duties. While planning their dinner menu, Fred and Ricky decide they should cook one pound of rice for each person. Here's how that turned out:

That's what happened with the foam when I opened the door of the washer. And the shirt still has oil stains!