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!
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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.
I have had to cut up old shirts & stuff when I couldn't afford toilet paper. It works. I also had to s**t in bags & p**s in cups when I didn't have water in my trailer a long time ago. Made me less afraid of things the experience & stronger for it. I also had to bike ride all my trash to a dumpster because I didn't have trash can. I had a job too & worked my butt off in a nursing home. I lived in a trailer outside my family's home. It was rough & sad. I left everything behind & moved out of state. Life is better now.
Yeah, gross. But what would you guys do, in case you run out of toilet paper? Better the sock than the hand...
if im home? hop in the shower or use Kleenex or paper towel lol. if im in a public restroom? do 1 of 3 things, ask someone in the restroom for tp, text someone you know is nearby to come get you tp, or do the awkward crab walk to the next stall and pray it has tp lmao.
Load More Replies...Shamed to admit it but when we were younger, me and my brother were forced to do that because our crackhead parents rarely bought toilet paper.
I had a roommate that would only use the bathroom right before he showered just so he didn't have to buy toilet paper. I was so happy when he moved out.
I always had a 20-question application-list I went through before deciding on a room-mate ... far better as well as much safer - and that was back in the 80s!
Load More Replies...Better to use water and a hand than a sock! At least you can wash it off your hand without leaving a stain.
My grandson - and I don't know why kids do these things - used a flannel to wipe his bum then left it on the side of the bath and I went and wiped myself with poo. :( Had to change the bath water. Had to bathe again. Not nice.
Paper towels, Kleenex, newspaper, any of these are acceptable substitutes - NOT clothing!
Paper towels, tissues, newspaper, all of these are acceptable substitutes but socks????
I am more disturbed of rubbing a dirty sock in that area than getting pee on the sock.
Maybe that is why there are missing socks, they aren't lost in the laundry they are thrown away because no one is ever going to wear it again.
Now that is something one could use the one sock that never found its mate after washing, but I bet you would never remember where you put that odd sock when you run out of toilet paper! Thumbs down.
I don't think Sandra was thinking about home when she said that. Most probably she had in mind explosive diarrhea at school or at an excursion.
"..and then flush as normal, can't have stinky bins at home. Coincidentally, it's always at my friends' houses that I use this trick as I can't spot the TP. And apropos of nothing, you seem to be one of my many many friends with blocked toilets that run over as we speak, see that water trickling there in the corner?..."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
I caught a roommate cleaning our bathroom counter top with the toilet brush.
He's a doctor now.
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...
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?
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.
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.
Girlfriends brother using my $125 chef's knife to chop ice.
I did make a scene.
got rid of both.
I'm imagining a gruesome kitchen knife murder now. Was this written from prison?
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.
Not really an everyday thing unless youre a tradesman, but ive seen wayyy too many people try to pound screws in with a hammer.
I once caught my sister trying to hammer a screw into a wall using a plastic hair brush.
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.
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
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.
I used to live 2 doors down from the neighborhoods "crazy lady' and she would often vaccuum her grass after it was mowed.
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.
My high school spanish teacher would use her computer’s disk tray as a shelf for her coffee mug
I once witnessed a dude washing out condoms and hanging them to dry.
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.
Some people just don't know how to say "no" with words, so they find other ways.
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
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.
That's a line from a comedian, but he said we using it to watch funny cat videos & porn.
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.
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.
"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???
When was the last time you put gloves inside the gloves box of your car?
One time I saw someone eat Cheetos with a fork. Does that count?
I eat many things with silverware to avoid getting dirty fingers, even though most people wouldn't do so, so why not cheetos?
Not sure if it counts but I've seen a person to use his phone to take a picture of a comment on his youtube video, take a screenshot of the picture, print it and use his webcamera to show the print of the comment in another youtube video, made solely to reply to said comment.
My brain still hurts
Using a microwave to "dry" a smartphone.
After running said smartphone under tap water to clean it (this was like 7 years ago, I dont think the phone was waterproof).
Person who did this was good academically but had no common sense whatsoever it baffled me
Cleaning with water can work if it's not turned on until it's completely dried again (and the battery is removed beforehand). I've seen people do this sucessfully with desktop computers. Microwaving however... no chance of survival.
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!
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??!!
Once while camping I witnessed a family getting set up. Connect a hose to their car tail pipe and fill up their air mattress with the exhaust.
Little brother tried to microwave a spoon so it would be warm enough to cut through the ice cream.
We have a concrete putty knife at work that is used to cut brownies with.
I hear that blade scream in pain with every chop.
I hear you blade, and I feel your pain.
...
I've secretly used it to do some minor sheetrock work, so it remembers what it was intended for.
My stationary / exercise bike makes a wonderful place to hang clothes ( on hangers) to dry.
Roommates in college used laundry pods in the dishwasher for like a week? I handwashed my dishes, so it did not affect me. They only noticed because I asked why they always left their laundry pods on the kitchen counter.
I think the ingredients in those two products are probably not so radically different. The laundry pods must be less aggressive though, so I wonder whether they actually cleaned dirty plates?
We had a housemate who used to get home very drunk and try and cook himself elaborate meals, which always resulted in a lot of mess and noise. To combat this I turned the oven and electrical sockets in the kitchen off when he went out one night. Foolproof
The fool cooked himself steak in the living room with our clothes iron at 3am.
My best friend uses scissors to cut his pizza. I always imagine Italians screaming when he does that.
There are kitchen scissors specifically to use on food. Nothing wrong with this if you dont have those fancy pizza cutters
We weren’t allowed hot plates or microwaves in the college dorms, so one of the girls on my floor cooked bacon with a hair straightener.
I saw a video once where a woman was using a drill. Nothing weird right? Well instead of, you know, drilling she took a hammer and put the drill in the wall and started hitting the back of the drill with the hammer.
Forgot to defrost a Thanksgiving Turkey. Morning of Thankgiving threw frozen turkey in the hot tub
One of my roommates used a pair of pliers to flip bacon. He did it pretty regularly.
If bought from new and only used for that purpose then that seems okay to me; it grips the bacon rather having it slide all over a spatula.
This reminds me of the time my bf decided to make homemade lemonade. He was in the kitchen when i heard him struggling and cursing at this lemon squeezer. I came in and saw him then asked what was wrong. He started to rant about this dumb lemon squeezer and how shoddy and ineffective it was. And that these "decorative holes" at the bottom arent doing anything to let the juice flow out. I sincerely had never laughed so hard in my life. He had the lemons in the lemon squeezer in backwards so it wasnt getting any pressure squeezed into the lemon. I took mercy and showed him how he was supposed to position the lemon in the squeezer. Of course he got much more juice out of it then. I think he felt kind of dumb but to be fair he is korean american too. His family probably never made lemonade growing up.(or used lemons in general since its not used much in korean food) Although now anytime something doesnt seem to work one of us will ask if it has "decorative holes."
Im having trouble picturing this. What kind of lemon squeezer is this and how can you put a lemon in backward?
Not extreme, but TWO of our graphic design juniors using caps lock for a single capital letter. I had never seen anyone do this and they both joined within a space of a month. Will never understand how or why they can work like that
i notice that very often here at the office where i work, it seems to me that those people find easy to fast press caps lock t wo times instead of holding shift.
Anything that is NOT an ashtray, used as an ashtray
I got on a bus and a woman was eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's with a pair of safety scissors.
About 9 years ago a co-worker hammered a paint tin lid back on with the handle of my torque wrench, still mad at that guy.
Several years ago I worked for natural nail salon as a receptionist. One of my duties was to sweep the floors regularly so clients don't step on nail clippings on their way in/out.
There was a new hire, and my manager was never really around to train her. The other receptionists and I trained her. One day, I asked her to sweep the floors. I showed her where the broom and dust pan was. She was in her early 20s and living on her own - I assumed I didn't have to teach her how to use a broom.
She took the broom, and fanned the nail clippings into the dust pan. She didn't drag the broom across the floor to sweep it - the broom never touched the floor. I tried to show her how to sweep properly. She never took my advice, and I kind of gave up.
She left after six months. She still couldn't sweep, but she could finally calculate tips at least.
There is fine line between can´t and playing dumb because you do want to
We had microwaves, but no stove in our dorms. One of my floormates ended up putting ramen + seasoning in a Gatorade bottle and then microwaving that
I once had a roommate who didn't know how to sweep or mop. I thought he was f**king with me. Nope. He straight up did not know how brooms and mops work. Watching him try to clean was like watching a monkey try to f**k a football.
My (adult!!!) BIL once used steel wool to scrub his parents' oak dining table. That still floors me after like a decade...
I had an extreme itch in my ear and no q-tip. The closest small object that would fit in my ear was a screwdriver, so I used it. I ended up cutting my eardrum and had to go to the doctor. I can’t say I regret it though, it was satisfying to finally get rid of the itch.
Satisfying to get rid of the itch, but you did enough damage to require medical care.... How satisfying was that pain?
I used to work at a golf course doing lawn maintenance. We had a fella on our crew that was older and well, not the brightest. He was kind of a loner so we just let him be most of the time. One day, I saw our guy mowing some large berms with one of our push mowers. To save time, I guess, he left the mower running; then picked it up to put in the back of the truck. He still had all his fingers but the truck tailgate took a good hit.
My grandma smoked in her bedroom and used a bunch of decorative vases as her ashtrays. We never went into her bedroom so we never found out until after she passed away. It was an absurd amount of vases in all different sizes.
Bought a can of butane gas and only looked more closely when I got it home and saw that someone had used it as a hammer. The underside was covered in little dents, like it had been used to hammer in a nail or something.
"These blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them JUUUUUUUST right."
My sister used my tampons to make tiny ghosts for her barbie Halloween party.
My mom used the handle end of a spoon today instead of a knife to spread some mayonnaise. The spoon was clean and not used for any spoon-like activities either. There were other knives to use..
I've seen my grandma open a scissor all the way and use it to carve stuff like a knife.
An old roommate put a strainer inside of a pot of boiling water and flipped both. Boiling went all over the place, but she said "that's the right way to do it, I seen on Instagram "
I sometimes use shampoo as body wash
I also do, but I'm an exceptionally hairy man so it can't be all that wrong.
I used to have a manager who would always use a pen off his desk to stir his money coffee. And he would use whatever kind of candy was in the department to add sugar to his afternoon tea.
My roommate once poured hummus into a pot of marinara sauce.
He's also mixed together a bunch of different types of barbeque sauce and left them out for days. Then he ate it and tried to get the rest of us to eat it.
My uncle had never used a Keurig before, and it seemed to him one would remove the top of that little k-cup so’s the hot water could get to the coffee...surprisingly big mess!
My landlord uses the same rag to wipe off the counters, in and around the sink, etc, that he uses to dry the dishes.
I travel all the time for work. In my travels I bought myself some really nice travelpro suitcases ($300+ ea). My parents don’t travel so much and have old luggage that’s just falling apart. I changed up my main travel bag for something more practical and brought one of my travelpro bags to my parents. I told them “hey use this when you go somewhere”. My dad works in the electrical business, the first thing he asked me is if he can load the bag up with extension cords and take it on job sites. My mom tells me she had to stop him from doing this a few times. I eventually took the bag back home with me.
I don't see anything wrong with this. You gave it to them, don't dictate what they can do with it. You even said they don't travel much, so he's probably trying to get your money's worth out of it.
This guy frank uses a knife to cut hit toenails. He calls it his toe knife. When he frequently botches the job he then used socks or trash basically whatever is around to stop the bleeding when there is not a glove available, he calls them cut gloves. Really weird dude.
Using anything that isn’t floss to get that annoying bit of food out of your teeth.
Tea towels are for drying clean dishes, not for mopping up the pasta sauce you spilled on the counter.
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.
I don't believe it, unless there is something terribly wrong with the electrical installation. A leak on a single outlet could cause a blackout in a small area, but THE ENTIRE FLOOR? No way, Jose.
My Grandmother in Law has been staying with me and my partner this past week. I love her but OH MY GOSH.
The toilet rolls are the wrong way round.
All the chopping knives end up in the drawer instead of the very obvious knife block.
I used my boyfriend's razor to cut the pilling off my hoodies. The razor blunted and I had to get him a new one :)
When the only tool you own is a hammer, everything else begins to look like a nail.
When the only tool you own is a hammer, you need to get a few more tools. XD
Load More Replies...Sometimes I wonder why we have developed so slowly as a civilisation, then I see things like this and remember.
Not really a misuse of anything, just somewhat odd. We have a second bathroom downstairs with a closet in it. We store food in it. So whenever you're on the toilet, you can stare at bottles of salad dressing and cans of chick peas.
Flushing the toilet causes and aerosol effect, landing fecal matter up to six feet from the toilet. I hope you all always close your toilet before flushing and the food is far enough away to avoid contamination.
Load More Replies...I brought an electrical kettle at work. My only colleague (I really had only one person to work with) made a homegrown herbal tea (i.e. big herbal branches) directly inside it. Then, he left the tea there for the whole weekend. Did not even apologize.
I work in an ER, we have had patients call 911 to complain about the wait times
I was once a patient in an ER across from a guy in because he had two fishhooks in his hand. He had tried to remove the first fishhook with the second fishhook.
Load More Replies...I had a roommate in college who asked if you had to empty the water out of the toilet to clean it. I was so very tempted to say yes....
Funny how people use coca cola for all sorts of things other than drinking. There are products made for cleaning toilets and removing rust that work a lot better!
It probably makes u eat it slower too so it'd be more filling....I wish I had your level of self control Lol!
Load More Replies...I was horrified when I saw my mother-in-law put a live gecko in the sink disposal and flip the switch on. 😳😳😳
Alright. I got one that happened to me. I was at a street cafe, and I ordered a cappuccino. It must have been thousands of coffees before this one in hundreds of bars/restaurants from the worst to the most luxurious, but this time it was the first time I got served a glass of water. A tiny glass. And I think to myself " ah that's nice... So you can keep the tablespoon clean after you mix the coffee"....so I placed the tablespoon in the glass after mixing. Sorry...
in our house we call push pins pockieys, said poke ees, and once in 3rd grade I found a push pin and said to my teacher "I found a pockiey!" SO embarrassing
I got a new outfit on my 7th birthday, wore it to school and told everyone all day I was wearing my birthday suit! No one corrected me XD
Load More Replies...I used my boyfriend's razor to cut the pilling off my hoodies. The razor blunted and I had to get him a new one :)
When the only tool you own is a hammer, everything else begins to look like a nail.
When the only tool you own is a hammer, you need to get a few more tools. XD
Load More Replies...Sometimes I wonder why we have developed so slowly as a civilisation, then I see things like this and remember.
Not really a misuse of anything, just somewhat odd. We have a second bathroom downstairs with a closet in it. We store food in it. So whenever you're on the toilet, you can stare at bottles of salad dressing and cans of chick peas.
Flushing the toilet causes and aerosol effect, landing fecal matter up to six feet from the toilet. I hope you all always close your toilet before flushing and the food is far enough away to avoid contamination.
Load More Replies...I brought an electrical kettle at work. My only colleague (I really had only one person to work with) made a homegrown herbal tea (i.e. big herbal branches) directly inside it. Then, he left the tea there for the whole weekend. Did not even apologize.
I work in an ER, we have had patients call 911 to complain about the wait times
I was once a patient in an ER across from a guy in because he had two fishhooks in his hand. He had tried to remove the first fishhook with the second fishhook.
Load More Replies...I had a roommate in college who asked if you had to empty the water out of the toilet to clean it. I was so very tempted to say yes....
Funny how people use coca cola for all sorts of things other than drinking. There are products made for cleaning toilets and removing rust that work a lot better!
It probably makes u eat it slower too so it'd be more filling....I wish I had your level of self control Lol!
Load More Replies...I was horrified when I saw my mother-in-law put a live gecko in the sink disposal and flip the switch on. 😳😳😳
Alright. I got one that happened to me. I was at a street cafe, and I ordered a cappuccino. It must have been thousands of coffees before this one in hundreds of bars/restaurants from the worst to the most luxurious, but this time it was the first time I got served a glass of water. A tiny glass. And I think to myself " ah that's nice... So you can keep the tablespoon clean after you mix the coffee"....so I placed the tablespoon in the glass after mixing. Sorry...
in our house we call push pins pockieys, said poke ees, and once in 3rd grade I found a push pin and said to my teacher "I found a pockiey!" SO embarrassing
I got a new outfit on my 7th birthday, wore it to school and told everyone all day I was wearing my birthday suit! No one corrected me XD
Load More Replies...