yesterday i learned a valuable lesson

some days i am amazed at what an idiot i am.

yesterday was one of those days.

i don't know how many times i have put bleach in my bathtub to soak while i cleaned the rest of the bathroom, then scrubbed the tub. but yesterday i did it, then started scrubbing my toilet, and disaster struck.

a disaster that could have been MUCH worse than it was.

i was using a new kind of toilet bowl cleaner, and apparently the fumes from it and the fumes from the bleach don't jive. some deadly kind of awful chemical reaction occurred. within two minutes, my throat was burning and i couldn't breathe. the baby was in the crib, had just woken up. so i ran in the nursery (which is just down the hall) grabbed the baby and ran downstairs. i put him on the floor in our living room, held my breath, and ran upstairs to open all the windows and turn on fans, then drain the bleach water from the tub and flush the toilet to get rid of the cleaner. then i ran back downstairs to open all the windows there as well.

the house started to air out, but i had a terrible headache and was feeling pretty lightheaded. luckily, the baby seemed perfectly fine. i think because i was able to get him downstairs before the fumes really reached his room--it's a good thing i reacted so quickly! after i got dizzy, the baby and i went outside to sit on the front porch until my husband could get home from work.

hubby checked out the bathroom. the majority of the fumes had dissipated, but the smell of bleach was still very strong. he set up a big box fan, and we left the house for a couple of hours. upon coming back, it was much better. the bathroom still smells like bleach, but it isn't nearly as bad as it was yesterday.

when i realized what had happened, i was terrified. i (in my ignorance and stupidity) didn't think that the fumes mixing would cause a problem. i have cleaned my bathroom this way for years and years. i knew mixing chemicals was a no-no, but i'd never thought about the fumes. i will NEVER do that again. we are very lucky that we're both okay. i'm sure i lost a bunch of brain cells, which sucks, since i don't have a whole ton left to my name. i'm just so grateful little buddy wasn't hurt.

so learn from my idiocy. when cleaning bathrooms, use one chemical at a time. and my advice? never use bleach to clean a tub. use something else.

i won't be using bleach in my bathroom again, that's for sure.