This summer, I will have been married to this beautiful woman for 14 years. She's the love of my life, an excellent mother to my child, and keeps our family and household running on all cylinders. Trouble is, she's trying to kill me.

Dale Short, Facebook

My wife is a bit of a clean freak. And that's understandable, for someone that has to live in the same house as my daughter and I, who are certainly cleanliness challenged.  However, my wife bleaches EVERYTHING. If it stands a chance of being dirty or alive, it must be bleached. She'll bleach YOU, if you stand still long enough to let it happen.  While I'm sure it's a great cleaning agent and germ-killer, the germs may not be the only things in your house that take the dirt nap if you're not careful. Here's a couple tips I've learned recently that may just save your life.

  1. Bleach + Heat = Death Gas.   After determining that our oven needed a good cleaning recently, my wife opted to drag out her friend Clorox to give it a good internal soaking prior to a scrub.  Sounds legit, except that the oven had not cooled to room temperature yet from the previous task of cooking a turkey.  Surely, a little heat plus the bleach liquid would work great to remove the stuck-on stuff, right?  Maybe - but it also heats to a dangerous gas that works great at removing your heartbeat, which luckily we discovered prior to falling asleep that night, and had time to ventilate the house. Allow your oven to cool before using chemicals, or better yet, go the natural route.
  2. Bleach + Pee = Unexpected Foam Party + Death Gas.   Just this morning, I awoke and began the pre-coffee stumble to the bathroom to release the contents of my bladder before letting the day begin.  Suddenly, the toilet began filling with foam quicker than the dance floor at a 1990's beach club during Spring Break - accompanied by a nose-burning gas similar to what we experienced in the story above.  While I'm attempting to wake up and ponder why my lungs are closing off, and what the hell I drank last night to cause my urine to turn into an agent of death, I notice our old friend Clorox bottle hanging nearby.  Turns out, my wife was giving the crapper a good soaking, and unaware, I added my own special sauce, which produced an ammonia-like reaction and resulted in yet another household evacuation.  A quick Google search shows that I'm not the first to experience this phenomenon.

I didn't include it, since it's yet to happen in my house (crossing fingers) - but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that mixing chemicals like ammonia with bleach is a bad, bad idea. Here's hoping that the above is useful in keeping you alive - and please keep me in your thoughts as I attempt to make it to retirement age.