Great. Your important peeps are coming over. Your missionary is coming home. Your uncle is returning home from the army. –And there are scuff marks all over the baseboards!! Nothing could be worse, right? Yeah. I know.
You don’t want to paint all those baseboards again! Besides, there are scuffs on the linoleum, too (do people even have linoleum anymore? Anyway.)
Tip: On the floor or baseboards: Use baking soda on a wet toothbrush and most of the time they will come right off. Yay! Baking soda rides again.
What have you done with easy, at-hand home products like soda? Let me know in the comments.
So there I was on my driveway under the 1987 Honda Civic that I love. I was removing the plug bolt from the oil pan. As usual the black oil streamed out into the black plastic dirty oil collector. I loosened the oil filter with the handy oil-filter-remover tool and finished unscrewing it with my hands. I set it on the half circle of the same black plastic oil collector. Come to think of it, I think I took the filter off before the plug bolt.—No matter.
I successfully replaced the new blue filter. Everything was going perfect! (I know, “just wait.” Psh! Well, anyway.) I realized that the plug bolt was really stripped. When I put it back in its spot it screwed in tightly, then with another half-turn it was loose again. “Ah freak.” So I called my brother and asked what I should do.
We concluded I should get a new plug bolt. (I know, how amazing is that.) I had already poured in the 4 or so quarts of new oil because it seemed like the old bolt might hold its own for a while longer. AFTER that is when we decided to get a new bolt. Whatever. Anyway, I would just have to take out the old one and hurry and plug in the new one before too much of the new oil squirted out.
I backed down the driveway looking behind me. When I looked in front of me again there was a large river of oil running down the driveway!!! A-a-a-a-g-h!!! I dashed into the house for a container to get any more oil that would come out of my car—both to preserve it, but also to keep oil from going down the gutter drain. So that was a happy little adventure.
When we got my car pushed back up into the driveway (and newspapers from the neighbors recycling bin and our old boxes all over the spilled oil) my brother Clarke and I began looking for the cause of the oil explosion. He was convinced that it squirted out from the old loose bolt (aha! You were too, weren’t you.) I said, “No, because it is also above the area of the bolt.” “Oh, well it splashed up there and then came down again,” he said. I wasn’t convinced. I said we should look at the oil filter.
The gasket from the old oil filter was under the new oil filter!!! That is like putting a circle spacer on your garden hose before putting on the nozzle and expecting it to have a tight seal!
The end of the story is that I didn’t collect much more of the oil out of the car and had to put basically 4 more quarts of new oil in it, I replaced the plug bolt, and I put saw dust all over the driveway. We didn’t have kitty litter, sand, or sawdust (hence the neighbor’s recycled newspapers). There was still tons of oil to be soaked up. So, Clarke, being a helpful brother, went to the garage and drilled away at something and made a whole ton of sawdust. (Because that’s how much was needed.)
I spread sawdust like a sawdust fairy all over the driveway and to the gutter. Days later I swept it all up and squirted dish soap all over the grease spots (gasoline was in it’s high-and-mighty prices at the time). It was conveniently raining and I used a push-broom-like brush and did a fabulous brush-and-soap dance on the oil spots!! *sigh*
Anyone wishing to verify the truthfulness of this story is welcome to visit me and view the tragic stripe down our driveway.
Tip: If you have grease or oil spots on your driveway soak up the bulk of it with kitty litter, sand, or saw dust. Then use gasoline to get the rest. Dish soap didn’t work very well.
I think I heard Coke works, too! –To get oil spots off.
I don’t have the changing oil experience on video. But this is me trying to find my alternator on the same car.
Please visit the post entitled Curse You Bathroom Scummm!!! under the Housekeeping Tips Category to see how to get stains out of other surfaces.
Comment with your own housekeeping tips and I can publish them!
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