Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with mess

How can I get my cat to stop knocking stuff over?

RobertFrost — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:10:51 -0800

My 7 month old cat won't stop knocking over flower vases when we're out of the house. How can I get him to understand that knocking stuff over is bad? He never does it when we're home but when ever we return from being gone for a couple hours, a vase has been knocked over. He only knocks over flowers. I understand that he most likely just wants to play with the flowers but he needs to understand that it's bad. Up until yesterday we were mostly ok with it but yesterday afternoon while I was upstairs and the lady was at work, cat knocked over a completely full vase of water onto 65% of our important documents (lesson learned - flowers stay away from important stuff).

We are first-time cat owners. How can we keep a cat and flowers? Will he grow out of it? Is he acting out some sort of aggression that we should be more receptive to? How can we effectively reprimand him if we often return to a mess that he created possibly hours before? Is there a way to get him to connect our disapproval with his punishment? Do cats even respond to punishment?

Wax on, wax off

mudpuppie — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:56:02 -0800

How can I safely remove candle wax from metal baking sheets so that a) the surfaces of the baking sheets don't get scratched, and b) they're food-safe again? An extended power outage required the used of dozens of tealight candles (a bag of one zillion can be had at Ikea for $2!). Said candles were deployed on metal, nonstick cookie sheets. Hindsight tells me that I should have covered the cookie sheets with aluminum foil, but hey -- it was really dark.

Now, how do I remove the wax from the cookie sheets without marring the nonstick surface? I can scrape the big clumps off with a piece of wood, but residue remains. I'm worried that boiling water will just make the localized wax residue become a generalized wax film. I've read that metal can be frozen to remove wax, but will it really get even the tiny little bits leftover? (Yes, I could just try it, but sticking a cookie sheet in the freezer first requires emptying the freezer, and if there's another efficacious method, I'd like to try it first.)

Out of the Frying Pan into the Ire

YamwotIam — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:51:50 -0800

What's the sticky glutinous gunk I get on the bottom of the pan when I try to fry rice? Here's how I make it:

Day 1: Make rice (Basmati, if it matters).
Day 2: Attempt to fry rice on medium-high heat with scads of sunflower oil. Gunk results.

Is there a name for it? How do I avoid making it? Alternatively, are there some recipes that thrive on the stuff? I've heard that some cultures use it to good effect, particularly when the gunk fries up into a delicious crispy chip-like substance which I can't, however, scrape off the bottom of my pan without ruining the pan.

Help me graduate from Cooking for Idiot Dads 101!

How can I get college freshmen to clean up after themselves?

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:20:28 -0800

How can I get college freshmen to clean up after themselves? I'm a college junior living with about 25 freshmen in a dorm as an RA. Each suite has their own common room, and there's a common room for the entire floor as well, which happens to be attached to my bedroom. Many of the freshmen choose to hang out primarily in this universal common room, because it has a television and cable.
The first "dorm meeting" we had I explained that my absolute biggest pet peeve was food being left out in the common room. It's disgusting, attracts mice and bugs, and is disrespectful to both me and the custodial staff. Since the beginning of school, there has been food left in this common room *constantly*--mostly old takeout containers with food still inside of them. For a while, I just picked up after them, but it's really starting to grate on me. I did one last giant clean of the common room (thinking about the "broken window theory"--maybe if the room was really clean, they'd be less likely to muss it up) and sent out an email to the floor basically saying, please clean up after yourselves and emphasizing the potential vermin problems and issues of disrespect. The very next day after the superclean and the angry email, there were more old takeout containers left out on the floor etc.
I know who is primarily behind the mess--it's a group of 4-5 boys who are constantly in the room and constantly eating takeout--but I never seem to "catch them in the act," as it were. I'll ask them to throw out their trash when I see them eating, they'll agree, and I'll come back later to find garbage in the common room which they will then deny is theirs (the "takeout containers" I am referring to are the generic cardboard boxes from my university's dining halls).
Every solution I've come up with seems incredibly passive-aggressive to me--taking the garbage and putting it in their common room instead of in the trash, for example--and difficult to accomplish because I don't know, at an individual level, who is responsible for what.
I could ban everyone from eating in the common room, but that's not ideal because there are plenty of people who use the room, myself included, who are capable of eating takeout while watching TV and cleaning up after themselves. (Not to mention I don't really have the authority to accomplish that to begin with.)
I'm not a clean freak, but there is a line between messy and dirty. Old food being left out crosses that line for me. I've read all the old roommate questions about living with a dirty roommate but the solution always seems to be "move out"/"kick them out," which is not possible in this case.
I am so beyond frustrated with this...it is stressing me out and affecting my quality of life, and I don't know what to do. I suffer from mild OCD and it is sending my anxiety levels into overdrive thinking about the mess and the potential vermin.

Help me paint less

jet_silver — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 08:04:06 -0800

The covering power of French wall paint rivals the covering power of egg whites. The British paint we bought for €_BIGNUMBER has the covering power of clotted cream but goes on as thickly. What do Europeans do about getting decent interior paint? What a mess. The stuff you get at the Bricomarché covers in six coats and the Dulux Valentine that comes from the UK is as thick as Béchamel sauce. I am hopeful that Kelly-Moore or another reputable American paint vendor has an outlet somewhere in France. The British expats swear by Dulux but I swear at it, the way it goes on. I would love to have suggestions for what to do short of shipping five gallons of Kelly-Moore over here, but I will do just that if there isn't some more elegant solution.

Eek my pot

gorgor_balabala — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:58:46 -0800

I burned some quince on my stovetop. The sugar from the fruit makes the stickiest black goo when burned. Do I have any chance of getting it off?

Maggots!

ITheCosmos — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 04:47:18 -0800

How do I clean up maggots? This is awful, and I'm sorry for subjecting you all to this, but while I was away overseas, my roommate left a bag of garbage in our backroom (on a carpet) for about three weeks. She's moved out now. When I came back and took the garbage out, there was a puddle of stinky brown garbage juice under it, and, yep, some writhing maggoty-things blinking in the new light. How should I get rid of them? Should I wait a while until I know they're good and dead? This is a terrible state of affairs.

What's going on with my brain?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 07:34:17 -0800

Is this depression, or is it something else? And what should I do to make it better? I don't feel sad or tired all the time. Just utterly, utterly unmotivated. My lack of motivation is messing with my life at home and at work. And I'm drinking, smoking dope and surfing the internet more than I probably should.

Six months ago, I was the happiest I'd ever been (this was me). I wanted more, I went for it, and things don't seem to be working out as well as I'd have liked. I think I'm sliding back toward depression, but I'm not sure if I'm actually there yet.

I'm exercising, I'm eating well, I'm in a good relationship, I'm paying off my debt. I started a new job, and it's got me back in in the city I was yearning for.

But I don't like my boss, and the job isn't what I'd hoped it would be. I'm a very career-focused woman, and I've been angling for this job for six years now. My disappointment with the job is pretty overwhelming, but I'm still dedicated to my career even if I don't like this particular employer. I feel stuck.

I have zero motivation at work. I'm smart and fast, which means I can get the minimum done fairly well in a short amount of time. But I probably spend six hours a day surfing the web and posting to various message boards from work, and two hours scraping by.

I have zero motivation at home, too. I'm leaving newspapers everywhere, dishes everywhere, bills, paperwork. The bathtub is a mess, the toilet is unscrubbed. There's moldy food in the fridge, and when I look at it I just groan and shut the door. I'm having trouble paying bills on time. I can't make myself do anything about it. I keep telling myself I'll take care of things next weekend, but then I never do.

I'm probably averaging 10-12 beers a week. Not as much as during my last depression, but enough that I get a buzz more than half the nights when I come home. I'm smoking pot 4-5 times a week. Again, not as much as I've smoked in the past, but I know it's all about escapism. Mixed with the drinking and my smallish frame it really zonks me out.

And I'm feeling overwhelmed by the stress of my recent move, my new job, my impending wedding, the death of a cat, and the loss of a friend/support network I had before I moved.

At work and at home, I feel like I'm sabotaging my future by slacking off so much.

I'm not sad, really, just weighed down, overwhelmed and unable to move.

I don't know what to do.

Advice?

Please don't tell me therapy. Unless you can recommend a genious miracle worker who takes Blue Cross in the Portland metro area, I don't want to hear it. My experiences with therapists have been universally disappointing.

How can I get my roommates to clean up after themselves?

k8t — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 08:28:17 -0800

How can I get my roommates to clean up after themselves? I am living in a new house situation with people in the 20s, all graduate students, all female -- 2 of us have lived on our own for many years, 2 are right out of undergrad. The 2 out of undergrad are the subject of this post. We have a shared kitchen. We aren't sharing food - using the sticker method instead. We have plenty of plates and flatware but lack in pots and pans. We generally don't cook together. Two of the 4 roommates NEVER clean their dishes or pots. They also tend to leave stuff around the living room area for days on end. I wouldn't care, except when I want to cook, I have to deal with washing out pots myself and cleaning off the counters for there to be space to prepare. And occasionally if I left the plates/flatware stack up, there aren't any of those either. I've been VERY direct (while being polite at the beginning) about asking them to please wash their dishes and cookware after they are done eating. I've done this on a number of occasions. I've also tried being indirect and sending e-mails. I've said it to them to their faces, while friends are over, etc. I also called a house meeting and addressed this (there is one other roommate who is also annoyed but is being passive-aggressive about it.) They only response is that they feel that putting dishes in the dishwasher is ENERGY WASTING. (and this was their one complaint about myself and the other roommate - that we tend to use the dishwasher and the dryer more than they do.) My next idea is to tell them to suck it up and put the dishes in the washer or ELSE. But what can my else be? Thanks! PS, I'm only living here (and in this country) until June, so I don't want to have to buy more pots and pans.

I'm all messed up

GernBlandston — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 10:07:17 -0800

My house is a mess. It's out of control. No matter what we do, we can't seem to keep it under control for any period of time. We don't have systems for organizing our stuff. Laundry, dishes, bills, garage, the whole nine yards. How do I find a way to keep the house in order? Bonus points: we've got 3 children.