It's no use crying over spilt milk!

Friday a week ago started out like any other Friday - off to the Supermarket to be there when the doors opened. I bought everything in super quick time, including three cartons of milk. As always, they were packed in the soft Esky bag to keep them cool while I went to another store, where I bought more groceries, again in really quick time. At this rate, I was going to have all the shopping done in just over an hour, and have a whole day to do lots of stitching! 

BUT when I arrived back at the car to put the next load in, to my horror there was something white all over the back of the car. My first thought was milk, but when I checked in the Esky, the three cartons were standing up nicely, so it couldn’t be them. I searched everything else – stain remover, dishwashing liquid, etc but none of them were leaking. So back to the milk in the Esky. I picked up one to inspect it and it was totally fine. Ditto for the next one. When I lifted the next one, it nearly hit the roof of the car because it was totally empty. There in the carton was a huge gaping hole! Obviously it had been damaged in going through the checkout. That was the moment  I realized my big long day was fast disappearing down the plug hole!

 I finished the shopping, drove home, unpacked everything, all dripping with milk, washed half a dozen ‘green’ bags and the towels used to mop up the mess and then hosed down the two eskies which couldn’t go in the washing machine.

Now it was time to tackle the Subaru. I spread some carpet cleaning powder over the carpet in the car, which was a disaster! A couple of little brown spots previously there, suddenly became hand-size dark brown stains. I am thinking the powder must have been out of date and certainly wasn’t working as it should! I let it dry a bit to see if it would do any better, and then tried to vacuum up as much as possible. By this time the carpet was looking shocking. Thankfully I had a can of carpet shampoo, so decided to give that a go. That worked a lot better and it all didn’t look too bad after a good vacuum.

Subaru’s have all sorts of nooks and crannies in the back with five or six lift-up areas for storage. I didn’t think milk would have seeped through the cracks, but gave them a bit of a wipe-over anyway. All in all, it wasn’t too bad and only took me about three hours to do everything.

Sunday we came to get in the car to go to Church … and oh, the smell!!!!!! A quick spray of room freshener so we could survive to get to Church, home again, a change of clothes and it was time to start again to find the source. This time I removed the crank-handle, spanners etc and was horrified to find milk everywhere underneath them. I checked the spare wheel well and it looked OK as much as I could see and feel. This time, I surely had removed it all.

Unfortunately, a quick check next day found an even worse smell. So hubby and I struggled together to get the spare wheel out, to make the discovery of about a cup of bad milk in there - another clean up session and this time I left all the windows and doors open to try to remove the odour.

 Six days after the spill and it is Thursday, the day hubby goes off to the University. I did a quick check of the car to see his favourite cushion was in place and thought I would put all the car windows up for him seeing they were still open, … but they wouldn’t work. Oops, a couple of days earlier, I had discovered that the internal car lights had been on for a few(??) hours because the car doors were all open. I mustn’t have discovered them quickly enough because the battery was now flat and wouldn’t start the car! Thankfully we have a camping fridge battery so we were able to use the jumper leads and got the car going.

Fast forward another four or five days into the next week, and it was time to give the house a good vacuum. We have two nice smelly things in the vacuum cleaner so that you get a pleasant citrussy perfume through the house. I can assure you that the odour that was coming out was neither citrussy nor pleasant. Closer inspection of the innards was required. 

 

You guessed it – inside was a wet bag with putrid milk – so much for thinking the car carpet was dry enough when I vacuumed it! That wet bag had leaked into the cleaner and milk had congealed on all the vanes, on the bits sticking out and the filter, with a little pool in the bottom. Thankfully it doesn’t seem to have affected any of the working parts. So another half an hour to clean up that mess.

And the story is still not finished. If we leave the car shut for a couple of days, we’re still nearly overcome with the smell!!!

So, next time someone says, “It's no use crying over spilt milk”, you know what to tell them!

Val 

PS    I hope you enjoy my photos which have absolutely nothing to do with spilt milk!!!