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It can be quite easy to misuse objects if you're not familiar with the design. Even things that are obvious in hindsight – for example, the tab on a soda can being used to hold a straw, are rarely known until they are pointed out.

However, some things are obvious full stop. Like chucking your clothes in a microwave to dry, or ironing a cheese sandwich. This list, compiled by Bored Panda, is a series of times when people totally misused common household objects, either knowingly or not, with hilarious consequences. Scroll down below to check out what we mean, and tell us your own stories in the comments!

#1

I once had a friend casually say “you know how when you run out of toilet paper, so you just use a sock or whatever?” No the f**k I do not, Sandra, Jesus Christ.

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#2

Coworker decided to boil her sausages (her lunch) in the office's electric kettle, therefore causing it to overflow, to leak on the electrical outlet and to cause a blackout for our whole entire floor (150 people). Not to mention the murder / baptism (?) of our brand new carpet.

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#3

I was doing a internship in a small office and the engineer (yeah he is engineer) needed to take out the trash from the trash bin (it had a plastic bag with the trash) . He open a new plastic bag (I though it was to replace the old full one) and asked my help to hold it while he threw all the trash from the bin to the new plastic bag instead of just take the trash from the old plastic bag and replace for the new one. I was so confused...

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#4

I did not witness it but my grandma had used a vibrator as a massaging stick for her back pain because the box had stated 'massage stick'. The way we found out was hilarious though.

When we visited her one day she started telling how she went to the shop where she bought her massage stick and asked the boy to change the batteries. She did not understand why the boy had refused and why he acted weird. Then she asked my mom if she could change the batteries and gave my mom the vibrator. I still feel sorry for the kid behind the counter at the shop.

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Kaisu
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I mean, the Hitachi magic wand (which is nowadays used as a vibrator) was originally meant to be used to alleviate sore muscles in the neck and such in the 60s, but women who bought them used them for completely different things

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#5

Walked into my sister's room and she had maxi pads laying everywhere with Barbie's on top. She's like, look at all these Barbie sleeping bags I found.

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#6

I caught a friend of mine rubbing one of the antibacterial hand wipes from KFC all over his friends chicken. The little packet said 'a hint of lemon' on it, and he thought that he was meant to flavour the chicken with it...

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#7

Using my fabric shears to cut wire and plastic packaging. And now he's butthurt that my new fabric shears have a padlock through the handles.

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#8

When I was a kid, my mother used a pasta spoon to clean the cat litter box. I thought this was normal because it was the only way I'd ever seen it used. Then, years after our cat died, I was eating dinner at a friend's house when the mom grabbed the same kind of utensil to serve spaghetti. I freaked out and shouted "why are you serving food with a poop scoop?!" They were so confused and I couldn't eat my dinner because I was so disturbed.

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#9

I caught a roommate cleaning our bathroom counter top with the toilet brush.

He's a doctor now.

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#10

Man, I threw a major fit when I saw a visiting relative get my $100 chefs knife to screw a screw.

What's the big deal? - he asked. Well... if you gotta ask...

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kathryn stretton
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Ye. Get this. Been married twice, and both husbands twisted the sharp pointy ends of ALL my best sharp kitchen knives. I know I am not alone here. We did have toolkits, but they had to go to the shed. ALL THE WAY TO THE SHED. Lol. Memories eh?

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#11

My wife once watched a girl at work stick a ball of aluminum into a microwave with her instant ramen during a break. She said, "the Sparks are just because it's heating up faster," as if it were common knowledge.

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Magpie
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I am a terrrible cook! terrible. But I even know not to put *any* metal in microwave. And only put eggs without their shells in there.

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#12

My mom's coworker (or maybe even her ex boss) used the plastic page protectors for office binders in a wrong way. The page protectors have only one opening on top as everyone knows, but she would always turn them upside down and then used a billion of paperclips on the bottom to prevent papers from falling out.

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#13

Girlfriends brother using my $125 chef's knife to chop ice.

I did make a scene.

got rid of both.

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Martha Meyer
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm imagining a gruesome kitchen knife murder now. Was this written from prison?

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#14

This was a story that a colleague told me that happened on the day I was off back in the day I used to work for a hotel.

Apparently some Chinese guests came to reception to complain that the microwave wasn't working. We didn't have microwaves in the room, so when coming to inspect the problem, she found out that they were trying to microwave a pizza... in the room's safe.

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#15

Using a microwave to dry clothes... There were flames

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varwenea
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Nowadays, microwave. Previously, it was using the oven to dry clothing. Same result.

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#16

Not really an everyday thing unless youre a tradesman, but ive seen wayyy too many people try to pound screws in with a hammer.

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StinkyMonkey
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I once caught my sister trying to hammer a screw into a wall using a plastic hair brush.

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#17

My friends kid decided to make a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron on the couch. Burned a nice iron shaped hole in the couch. Kid was 15 at the time.

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Kaisu
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm failing to understand this, I need a better explanation. Are you saying that they put the sandwich on the couch and the iron on top? Why on earth would you do that on the couch of all the places?

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#18

When I was very young I used to think that you had to wedge your entire butt into the toilet seat when you have a s**t. Moment of learning came when we went on holiday somewhere and were exploring the house, I saw the toilet with a much smaller seat than ours and said "that's so small, how am I gonna fit in that to poop?" Needless to say it provided some enjoyment for my parents

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#19

A friend of mine was a first generation migrant to my country and her parents had a dishwasher in their house, but due to never having had one in their home country, saw it as a wasteful appliance to use. So they stored clean pots and pans in it, just like another cabinet.

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Emma B
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My grandmother hated her dishwasher because it made so much noise, so she never used it and stored her clean pots and pans in it.

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#20

I used to live 2 doors down from the neighborhoods "crazy lady' and she would often vaccuum her grass after it was mowed.

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#21

I didn't witness this, but I read it in a newspaper article a few years ago.

It was this article about life-hacks, and such, and basically what happened was, there was this "hack" going around about how, if you put your toaster on its side, slide in two slices of bread with cheese on top and toast them, you get toast and grilled cheese all at once.

Apparently, this lady tried it and the melting cheese set her toaster on fire. The whole thing went up and nearly burned her entire house down.

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Kaisu
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Also if you put the toaster on its side and don't watch it and take the toast manually out, then the toaster will shoot your toast out on the floor or something

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#22

My high school spanish teacher would use her computer’s disk tray as a shelf for her coffee mug

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#23

I once witnessed a dude washing out condoms and hanging them to dry.

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#24

My dad's old boss asked a dishwasher at work to wash his car. One hour later the boss goes to look at his brand new BMW and the guy had used a pot scourer ( that metal thing used to clean stuff dunno if that's right word "

Needless to say my dad's boss screamed and that guy ran so far he was never seen again.

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tuzdayschild
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Some people just don't know how to say "no" with words, so they find other ways.

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#25

Saw a woman using an Oyster card (it’s a London bus pass the same size and material as a credit card) as a sort of spoon to eat a lasagna out of a Tupperware on the bus

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#26

I have a tiny computer that is extraordinarily powerful, fits in my hand, and has access to the sum total of all human knowledge since the dawn of time, and I use it to watch funny animal videos.

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Suzi Gauthier
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That's a line from a comedian, but he said we using it to watch funny cat videos & porn.

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#27

My wife routinely uses butter knives as flat screwdrivers. I once caught her using an ice cream scoop as a hammer. We've talked about it, I bought her tools. Now she keeps an old shitty butter knife in the back of the drawer for fast easy battery changes and uses a hammer as a hammer.

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#28

Used to work in a hotel as well. Several times we had Asian guests hang their clothes to dry from the fire sprinklers hanging from their room ceilings... this sets the sprinklers off and caused thousands of dollars of damage to multiple rooms each time it happened. One family was mad at US and wanted compensation for all their wet clothes and electronics. Maybe not applicable here, but we also had a foreign guest call 911 because they were out of tea bags in their room.

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Cactuar Jon
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"we also had a foreign guest call 911 because they were out of tea bags in their room" - here in the UK, that's totally acceptable. But the question is... Did he get his tea bags???

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#29

When was the last time you put gloves inside the gloves box of your car?

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#30

One time I saw someone eat Cheetos with a fork. Does that count?

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chi-wei shen
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I eat many things with silverware to avoid getting dirty fingers, even though most people wouldn't do so, so why not cheetos?

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#31

I've seen quite a few times people re-dip knives as spoons in a Nutella jar and obviously lick it. It always grosses me out and once I see it I start refusing invitations for meals.Not that uncommon but utterly yucky!

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Laurie Ostergaard-Overbey
Community Member
5 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

i ate several times at a friends house, she puts her dishes down for the dog to lick. i can handle that, but the day i saw her putting them back into the cabinate , telling me the dog had cleaned them. was the last day i ever ate there....you have GOT to be kidding??!!

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Note: this post originally had 75 images. It’s been shortened to the top 31 images based on user votes.