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Last Friday I had a rare evening home with Nate away and the kids at Grandma’s and I decided to party it up. And by party it up I mean clean the kitchen.
What is with me? I can’t imagine for the life of me that Nate would give up a rare bachelor weekend night to scrub the stove burners. But then, he does the cooking and he leaves the mess. And for some reason other people’s messes seem way way worse than my own.
In my excitement to actually put the spices back on the spice rack for the first time in ages, my elbow made contact with the brand new, freshly opened gihunda bottle of $16 olive oil and in slow motion, I saw it tumbling…tumbling to the ground.
Smash.
Suddenly there was a full liter of the stuff spreading across my kitchen floor like some amorphous monster in a science fiction movie.
All I could think of was how oil and water don’t mix, and that oil and cat hair definitely don’t mix, and that oil and cat hair and shards of glass and a Friday night home alone definitely didn’t mix and ack, how the heck was I going to clean this up?
The logical place to start was the roll of paper towels on the counter. I tried frantically to soak up just as much olive oil as I could with each sheet, hoping it would reduce whatever kind of eco-pennance I would be forced to do to compensate for killing a whole tree.
Next I grabbed a mop and some Murphy’s Oil which didn’t do a bad job at all. If only I had more than about a tablespoon of Murphy’s Oil we’d have been in good shape. So I did what only a total idiot would do:
I used dish soap. And water.
Somehow imagining that the oil/water thing? Yeah, it didn’t apply to me.
Oh, what a glorious frothy mess this was, between the oil and the glass and the slippery floor cleaner and the foamy soap. And with every drop that ended up on my knees or the hem of my jeans, I kept imagining that awful warning on the dryers in our building about how cooking oil in the dryer will blow up the building or whatever.
It wasn’t until a good hour later and a not-quite-clean-but-clean-enough floor, that I had the sense to Google “cleaning up olive oil”
Do you know what evidently absorbs oil even better than paper towels?
Cat litter.
I appreciate cleaning hacks as much as the next gal, but somehow, I’m not sure I could have gone there.
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Wow- cat litter used to clean? That is a great tip- I wonder what else it could clean?
Great post Liz!
I would have tried the paper towels first, plus a bucket of hot water with a whole lot of Mr. Clean dumped in. Even though I have kitty litter (the ’super clumping’ kind, even), I wouldn’t have thought to spread it around on my floor. Because then what? You’d completely ruin your broom trying to sweep up oil-soaked kitty litter. And there’s NO WAY I’d get down on my hands and knees with the kitty litter scooper thing. Hmm.
I hope you were able to salvage the rest of your evening with wine and TV, at least
I don’t know what else cat litter can clean, but I can tell you that it’s great to throw on icy sidewalks and driveways for a little traction. Especially if you live in a climate where it’s only occasionally icy and so you don’t usually keep rock salt or chemical de-icers on hand.
Oh no, an entire bottle of the Catalan Arbequina! (And hey, you shop at the same grocery store I do.)
Have you never seen driveways that have little heaps of kitty litter on them to soak up oil spills? Kitty litter and related substances are great for cleaning up nasty liquid and semi-liquid messes. Absorptive clay particles are one of the technologies used to clean up big chemical and hazmat spills.
On the home front, I can tell you what else kitty litter is good for, if you’ll forgive me telling a somewhat gruesome story.
A friend of mine who lives alone had a bad attack of shellfish poisoning. He barely managed to stagger into his tiny, cramped first-floor bathroom before he collapsed on the floor, voiding convulsively from all orifices. “A little while later my vision went black and I figured I was dying,” he told me, “so after that I got a lot calmer.”
Some while later the attack passed and his vision returned, so he crawled into the shower. That took care of one cleanup problem, but the rest of that horrendous mess was still there, and his bathroom was a pretzel-puzzle at the best of times.
What he used to clean it up: a giant-size bag of clumping kitty litter, plus a shop-vac. Lacking a shop-vac, a shovel followed by a broom and dustpan would do. The bathroom surfaces still had to be scrubbed afterward, but that was relatively trivial.
(And by the way, have you tried Fairway’s Novello? I don’t know how it is on kitchen floors, but it’s great on a piece of baguette.)
Oh my gosh so many kitty litter uses! Who knew we had a fabulous cleaning hack at the ready all along?
I admit I was afraid to use it not because it’s cat litter per se, but because our kittens might um…get the wrong idea? And contribute to the disaster in the kitchen?
Elizabeth, the image of you with the scooper on your kitchen floor is hilarious.
Teresa I am adding Novello to the list - thanks for the tip, mama. If Fairway makes it, it can’t suck.
“I kept imagining that awful warning on the dryers in our building about how cooking oil in the dryer will blow up the building or whatever.”
Yep, be very careful — one of my coworkers filled his house with smoke when his oily clothing caught fire in the dryer. Heat + combustibles = lots of smoke damage. Fortunately the house didn’t burn down, but I’ve since learned never to leave a dryer unattended.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious re: oil and water. I would totally have done the same thing.
Here’s the big question: did you finish the job, or did that totally derail you—-I think that after I cleaned that up, I may have just retreated to the couch with a big glass (er bottle) of wine.
Ha fairly odd mother - I finished the job, but very poorly. I could have used the help of some of the other clean freaks on this site for sure.
Cat litter is also excellent for soaking up motor oil (if you change your own), overflow from deep-frying a turkey (again with the oil), and getting rid of that last little bit of paint in the paint can so you can actually throw it away but not as hazardous waste. Just in case you ever encounter one of those scenarios.
At our house when an unopened liter of olive oil met with the tile instead of using kitty litter, the cat was kind enough to mop up the spill.
No one was home when the incident occurred, and my husband was the one to find the mess. He managed to contain it with paper towels, I believe. The cat, however, had to be washed 3 - 4 times, as well as every piece of furniture he sat, laid, or rubbed on while he was covered. We still have stains from the escapade.
I would say cleaning up olive oil is similar to cleaning any other kind, ie motor oil and the like. Kitty litter has been used by grease monkeys for years, we just don’t normally have that big a spill in the kitchen! I used to change oil in the vacuum pumps at work and what I found to be most useful for cleaning up every little bit of residue once the big mess was cleaned was window cleaner. Specifically (and this stuff is hard to find) the foaming window cleaner. It comes in those cans like aqua net, remember those? It does a stellar job eliminating all evidence of oil. I LOVED that stuff.