The Many Times I Have Ruined the Floor
I have ADHD and a lot of potentially hazardous interests and habits. This, predictably, results in a number of “mishaps” occurring in my life and around my person. My absolute inability to pay attention to life’s finer details has resulted in my ruining the floor in at least one room of every house I’ve ever lived in.
My first foray into the world of floor-ruining occurred when I was about 17 and had gotten in the habit of straightening my hair with a flat iron on a daily basis. I was obviously living with my parents at the time and their house had no where to sit in either of our bathrooms. I did my hair and makeup sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of my open closet door, on the inside of which was mounted a full-length mirror. I actually did my hair that way long into my adult life; I don’t anymore because muscle memory has rendered the mirror obsolete. One summer afternoon, I was sitting in front of the mirror, doing my hair and preparing to go to work at my job as a hostess at a high end restaurant. I finished up and started deciding what I was going to wear. I put on an animal print polyester skirt (don’t judge, it was 2001) and decided against it. In my typical careless fashion, I took it off, tossed it on the floor and put on something else. I gave myself a quick glance in the mirror, decided I looked acceptable and left for work.
A little while later, my mom and dad are sitting on the couch watching tv.
“Do you smell something?” My mom asked my dad.
“No. What should I be smelling?” Dad inquired.
“It smells like something’s burning,” my mom said as she got up to investigate the mystery smell.
With a sneaking (and accurate) suspicion that the smell had been caused by something I did, my mom started her investigation in my room…where she saw smoke coming from the floor.
I had (not for the first time) forgotten to turn my hair straightener off AND had accidentally tossed the polyester skirt on top of it, where it had begun to melt. My flat iron was slowly melting the carpet underneath it and the skirt on top of it.
That was over 20 years ago and the floor still shows the evidence of my negligence.
My mom cut most of the brown melted part out, but the evidence remains.
The second time I ruined the floor was at my own house. One evening, I was doing something wildly out of character-I was ironing. In the years between the straightener incident and this one, I had gained some additional self-awareness. I never again bought anything that heated up and didn’t have an automatic shut off.
You will tell me, I’m sure, or are at least screaming it in your head, “Don’t depend on that! Just shut your stuff off!”
Well, my friend, it’s not that easy. I have tried for many years to acquire the kind of situational awareness other people have. ADHD medicine helps, but if you decide to read on, you will discover it is far from infallible.
So I’m ironing, feeling all domestic and shit but ironing is somehow both boring and tiring, so I set the iron down and head off to bed. I close my eyes, confident in the knowledge that if I hadn’t remembered to shut off the iron, it would certainly handle that task itself.
At about 2 o’clock that morning, I heard a crashing noise coming from the living room. At this point in my life, I lived alone in my house so I knew it was either an intruder, or my cat had knocked something over. Now, a normal person would have sat bolt-upright, grabbed something that resembled a weapon and investigated the noise. If I was a normal person, these stories wouldn’t be half as entertaining, now would they? So I rolled over, saw the cat dash under the bed (that is his feline “safe space”) and figured I didn’t have anything too serious to worry about. I knew I should probably still investigate whatever the furry one had done to cause the crash, so I got out of bed, albeit with the speed of a giant tree sloth.
I went into the living room and I saw the ironing board had been knocked over and the iron was sitting face down on the carpet.
“No worries,” I thought. “It has an automatic shutoff so it’s not hot.”
I tried to pick the iron up, but it was stuck to the floor, glued down by the melted carpet underneath.
APPARENTLY, while this iron did have an automatic shutoff, it was triggered to turn itself back on when the iron started moving again. Why on earth would this feature exist?! I had no idea that was how it worked; it seems completely against what the automatic shut off was designed for.
From then on, every time I walked into the living room, I was reminded of my dumbassery. Since I was able to do little about it, in 8 years that followed this incident, I had an oddly placed rug in the living room.
The third time I ruined the floor happened just recently, and while I was on medication designed to prevent just this sort of memory lapse.
My husband and I both work from home so there is always someone here, usually both of us, much to my chagrin. I like to take “cleaning breaks” to break up the day and get things accomplished while I work. It’s easy to throw a load of laundry in the washer or do some dishes while you wait for the microwave to finish.
I like to run the Roomba during the day, but the noise tends to bother my husband. One afternoon, he had a doctor’s appointment so I thought, “now’s my chance!”
I picked up the obstacles and turned the Roomba on. Then I noticed there were a lot of dishes in the sink, so I decided to fill the sink with soapy water and soak the dishes for a while. I turned on the faucet…and immediately lost my focus and walked away to do something else. About halfway through the “something else” that I’ve since forgotten, I decided it was about time to get back to work. On the other side of the house. In my office. WITH MY HEADPHONES ON.
I was watching a webinar and I don’t know exactly how long I was in there, but it was a while. I briefly took my headphones off at one point and I heard water splashing. I thought my husband had gotten home and was taking a shower-it sounded like a serious amount of water. But it would be very unlike him to come home and not say hello to me.
I got up to investigate and realized what I had done. I had left the sink water on, full blast, for over an hour. The sink had filled up quickly and water was pouring onto the floor. The kitchen had about an inch of standing water on the floor and it had begun to leak into the living room and dining room.
I went into full on panic mode. Four years ago, my husband, father and I had spent a grueling week in June replacing all our carpet with laminate flooring. Laminate flooring cannot withstand standing water for more than a minute or two. And by the looks of things, it was going to take me much longer than a minute to rectify this situation.
I threw every towel we owned onto the floor…and it soaked up only a tiny fraction of the flood waters. I ran next door to my parents’ house and returned with every available towel they had as well. And they had a massive amount of towels. I quickly soak them all and, out of ideas, I throw a comforter on the floor of the kitchen to soak up the remaining water in there. It did not work. Not even a little.
In my panicked state, I was able to mop up much of the water within about 30 minutes, but the damage had been done. I was able to save the dining room floor, but the living room took a hit. The laminate flooring was no match for the massive amount of water I had neglectfully let wash into the room. The damage had been done-probably long before I even noticed I’d left the water on.
My buckled flooring
The living room floor now reminds me daily to pay attention to what I’m doing. Maybe that reminder has saved me from a worse fate? It’s impossible to know.
