Uh.. ya, don't do that....

[nekoro]

It's called Splat and I get it through Walgreens.  The trick I've learned with it is to add some shampoo to the leftover dye (Side note:  I buy two and have about a half bottle left when I'm done) and use that once or twice a week til I redye again.  You leave it on about five minutes or so.  Ahem...just make sure you add the shampoo (and probably wear gloves) or else it looks like you were killing small animals. 

  I've read the whole thread, and this is bugging me.  How much shampoo?  Do you want it to be mostly dye, or mostly shampoo, or mostly equal?

And my addition, don't store flour and powdered sugar in similar containers.  We had to throw out the pizza dough...

[dawbs]

...

And my addition, don't store flour and powdered sugar in similar containers.  We had to throw out the pizza dough...

On that note, if you invite your kid and his GF (your future daughter in law, me ;-P) over to use your kitchen and you have decided to partially scratch off the label "flour" and put in powdered sugar, don't just  assume anyone would taste it before they added it...Peanut Butter Cookies will have to be thrown out.  Although I must admit the dough was VERY good eating!

[VorFemme]

Don't put salt and granulated sugar in matching jars - Dad saw TWO jars of "crystals" and combined them.  The Kool-Aid (a brand of powdered fruit flavored drink mix in the USA) was TERRIBLE................although, thinking back, it tasted a lot like Gatorade (sports beverage with various electrolytes and sugar).  And this was in 1969 or 1970 - the church would have been wealthy now if they'd patented it back then............

[Cardboard Knee]

In a similar vein, storing custard powder and powdered milk that come in near-identical bags next to each other in the same cupboard is a bad idea, particularly when the milk is meant mainly for tea & coffee. Granted, we were on a yacht at the time, so storage space was somewhat limited, but still, I think I was the only one of the 18 people on board who actually enjoyed the custard-flavoured tea...

[White Dragon]

Things my father taught me not to do:

If you have child who a) loathes squash in all it's incarnations and b) is a naturally slow eater...
...it might be a good idea to have a parent supervise...
...it also might be a good idea to cheer her up by playing your guitar...
...and it might be fun to stand on a chair and dance while you play your guitar...

...but it's not a good idea to forget that you are 6'4"...
...and that the kitchen lights have low hanging glass shades...

...because when you bang your head into the glass shade and it shatters all over the table, your darling daughter cannot eat her squash when it has bits of glass in it.
(But I guarantee you she was very happy to get out of eating her squash!) 

Second Lesson from my Father

Using up leftovers is an economical use of resources.

Combining leftovers can result in new and tasty creations.

Some foods...like squash and liver...should never, ever be combined into the same dish.
Trust me, you don't want to try squash stuffed with liver. It's baaaaadddd!

[JadeGirl]

Apply talcum powder after putting your contact lenses in.  Real talcum powder is made by grinding down talc rock.  Little pieces of rock on your contact lens really hurt!

I did wash my hands before I put my lenses in, but there must have been some residual powder in the air or something.  Ouch!

[Outdoor Girl]

In the same vein, don't put moisturizer on until after you have put your contacts in.

[Black Delphinium]

Looks like we should make an "always contacts first" PSA.

[Pinky830]

I was cleaning the kitchen once so my hands were wet from wiping counters and stuff. I needed to move the toaster so I picked it up by sticking my thumbs and fingers into the slots.

Oops. I was always a little afraid of that toaster after that, like it was going to randomly reach out and shock me.

[Slartibartfast]

My college roommate dyed her hair bright purple.  The showers in the dorm were white tile.  We spent a good two hours trying to clean up, but it still looked like someone blew up Barney in one of the shower stalls.  Conclusion: don't do that.

Corollary: if the shower clearly still has a good deal of purple dye left in it, and the floor drains don't work all that well, wear tall shoes to shower.  Dying your feet pinkish-purple up to your ankles is very difficult to explain when it's summer and you want to wear sandals.  (It took weeks to come out!)

---------------------------------------

A few weeks ago, my parents came to visit.  I was trying to run the vacuum, but it was making weird noises and smelled bad.  Dad, in all his tinkering wisdom, figured it was probably a clogged tube and volunteered to fix it.  There was indeed a large hairball clogging up the tubes inside.  After picking at it for a bit, dad decided it would be faster to open up the connecting tube and run the vacuum for a few seconds, loosening the clog and making it easier to remove.  Dad leaned over so he could see what was going on, turned on the vacuum, and (you can see where this is going . . .)

Cue a "foop!" noise and a mushroom cloud of dust spewing from the vacuum in a good eight-foot circle around dad.  Whose face and hair were suddenly completely gray.  The clog came out just fine - the dog pounced on it and promptly shredded it into approximately 6,000 square feet of dog fur and dust.  And then proceeded to make a game out of dodging past us, picking up dust bunnies, and "hiding" them in another room.  She single-handedly repopulated the dust bunny warren collection under the bed.

[soetkin]

Don't unscrew your entire book case in one go before taking it apart, do it step by step, otherwise you'll end up holding the top piece you just lifted off while the rest of the bookcase will cartoonishly collapse around you in a giant heap of noise and wood. Also, as a final insult, you'll be brained by the teetering side just when you put the top down.
Then, when the pain has receded and you have stacked all the loose boards against the wall while cursing, one piece will fall over just to have the last darn word.

[nekoro]

Oooh, oooohh, I have another one!

If you have a dish covered in plastic wrap that you need to let rise overnight...
And you have a teenage boy who has volunteered to put the dish in the oven the next morning...

...be sure that the instructions you leave specify to take off the plastic wrap before cooking.

We were just lucky he doesn't get up that much earlier than the rest of us.

[purplemuse]

If your husband has volunteered to get dinner for you, and part of your dinner is a food that he never eats, it might not be a bad idea to supervise.

DH and I were having leftovers last night, and part of what I was having included (cold) macaroni salad (which DH doesn't like).  So DH was microwaving stuff, and I happened to wander out to the kitchen to see my macaroni salad in the line-up of things that were going in the microwave.

Thoughts that went though my head:  No, he wouldn't... but I'd better check...

Me:  Did you microwave my macaroni salad?
DH:  Not yet.
Me:    *explains that macaroni salad is eaten cold*

[White Dragon]

Do not, while standing under the running shower, note that the light in the shower has burned out and now would be a good time to change the bulb...

Happily, I went "D'oh!!" before I got the shade off.

And from a gentleman friend:

Do not cook with dried peppers and then go to the washroom.
Some places to get pepper oil are, apparentely, **far** worse than others!

[Paper Roses]

OK, here's one.

It was the summer of 1992.  At the time, we only had one child, and he was only a year old, so he wasn't eating grown-up food yet.

I had just gotten an absolutely killer recipe for Ceasar salad.  The recipe called for a whole head of Romaine lettuce.  I had never made Ceasar salad before, and didn't realize that the whole heads of romaine were, at that time, extraordinarily big.  So this recipe made a huge batch of salad.  DH and I loved it, so we ended up having it about 3 nights in a row for dinner.  And that's all we had for dinner on those nights.  And it was just the 2 of us, so between us we ate a really big bowl of Ceasar salad every night for 3 nights in a row.

Soooooooo, I was walking by a produce stand that Friday, and they had a bunch of huge ears of corn, 6 for a dollar.  (That summer was apparently a really good one for produce).  So I decided to buy some to have with our Ceasar salad that night for dinner.  As I was gathering my corn, the man at the stand said to me, "Ah, go ahead and take 8 of them.  8 for a dollar."  So I did.  My mouth was watering in anticipation of a wonderful Ceasar salad and corn on the cob feast that night.

The catch:  The next day, we were going on vacation.  A six-hour flight.  And there was no way any of that corn on the cob was going to be wasted, nor the big head of romaine lettuce I'd already bought.

The moral of the story:  No matter how tempting, don't eat a huge ceasar salad and 4 big ears of corn the night before you go on a very crowded six-hour flight.  An airplane is not where you want to be when your digestive system finally begins to experience the effects of all that lettuce and corn.