I did something stupid and it cost me $50.
I'm a little embarrassed to share this, but I'm going with the theory that embarrassing things are usually very helpful to share.
And I'm sure I'm not the only frugal person out there who has a very hard time forgiving themselves for wasting money.
Ok.
You know the hot water kettle that I adore?
On Monday, I ruined it.
I was heating up a pot to boil some pasta, and as usual, I put a kettle full of water on because the kettle heats it SO much faster than my stove does.
(I put a little bit of water in the pot on the stove so that I'm not just leaving an empty pot on the stove.)
Anyway, the kettle boiled, but when I checked the pot, it wasn't very hot yet. So I set the kettle down on the empty back burner and went back to my decluttering.
Then I got a faint whiff of a plastic-y scent.
I turned around, and lo and behold, I'd turned on the wrong burner initially, which meant my pot was on a cold burner and my plastic-bottomed kettle was on a hot burner.
AUGH.
By the time I noticed it, the bottom of my kettle was a mess of melted plastic.
I took it off the burner, scraped the melted plastic off of the burner with a bench knife, and put the kettle outside on the deck to cool off/solidify.
I hate it when I do things like this. One split-second dumb decision and my $50 kettle is ruined. <sob>
However, I remembered that I had two gift cards left from Amazon's 2016 Prime Day promotion (I found them when I was decluttering my office this summer!).
I typed them in and discovered I had $50 in credit. Yay!
I found a Capresso for $47, with free Prime shipping, so it's on its way to my house.
And I didn't even have to spend any money out of pocket.
Being my frugal self, though, I still struggled to let go of my frustration with myself.
I tend to focus on what other things I could have used that $50 credit for, and how if I'd just been more careful, I could have my kettle AND my $50 credit.
And then I think about how many batches of yogurt or how many home-cooked meals it takes to save $50, which is never a very helpful path for me to go down at such a time.
So I'm making myself think of the upsides instead:
-I had the Amazon credit.
-A $50 kettle isn't insanely expensive.
-I had the kettle for 3.5 years, so I did get a lot of use out of it.
(and use it we did! We fired it up multiple times per day.)
-It's good for me to do something like this once in a while because then I'm more prone to having grace for my kids when they do careless stuff.
I can totally let this go. <deep breath>
P.S. If you want a kettle for yourself (they ARE fabulous!), this is the model I own (owned?) and love.
I did exactly the same thing with my FitBit Charge:-( Half a FitBit doesn't work well. Ended up purchasing a Garmin that's waterproof but was still a $99 purchase I wish I hadn't had to make.
That is a bummer but at least you are trying to focus on the positive. I have melted many things by setting them on burners I thought were off including spatuala handles (sometimes the head of a spatuala is heat safe silicon but the handle isn't - learned that one the hard way!), a batter bowl and two strainers. The worst was when a cheap plastic strainer (that was no great loss) melted into an expensive frying pan (which was a real loss!).
This will sound like a bit of a downer, but it's not meant to be...all material objects come to an end. Some spend their whole existence in one household, being used and loved until there's no use left in them. Some get passed to others through gift or sale. Since humans are not perfect machines, a certain percentage will end before their time despite our best efforts--that's just how it is, no matter how careful we are. Good stewardship calls for care, but does not expect perfection, and sometimes mistakes are the reminder we need.
This is why I kind of hate glass top stoves. I have burned SO many things by leaving them on burners that are still hot, or turning on the wrong burner.
Thankfully I haven't ruined anything this expensive... Yet.
Gah! Sorry this happened! Once I set a plastic container of sugar on a burner that I forgot to turn off. I had melted plastic AND burnt sugar all over my stove. It was such a bad mess I couldn't help but stare at it for five minutes, unsure of how to even clean it up. We all have our moments. 🙂
Okay, I did this jsut last night. I didn't actually ruin the item, but I have stained it, probably permanently. I just yesterday got a new stove top pressure cooker with a gift card and swagbucks. I have used the old style pressure canner before, but this is the first time using one of the new pressure cookers. I put soup in it and started it. It was taking a long time and the pressure still wasn't up. Instead of checking it right away, I kept waiting (my old pressure canner could take forever to get pressure up) until I finally said, something is wrong, there is a lot of steam and no pressure. My husband said he smelt scorching. It appears that I didn't have the lid on exactly right, even though the lock button locked, and I burnt a whole pot of soup to the bottom of my cooker. I scrubbed forever but you can still see the black stains. As soon as the cooker was clean, I tried it again with just water, being very careful to put the lid on exactly, and it came to pressure in about 3 minutes, no problem. So, I messed up the bottom of a brand new cooker, and ruined supper to boot. I poured broth in the scorched soup and we ate it anyway -- my husband was kind about it and said it wasn't actually bad. I still feel like an idiot, though.
My mother once left an expensive copper tea kettle, given to her for Mother's Day, boiling and ruined the kettle and almost the stove top. She cried and cried.
When we bought two iPhones from Costco in 2015 (an idea that I wasn't totally on board with at the time anyway, but my tech-loving husband and son convinced me to do), I set down the bag and forgot all about the fact that we were entitled to a $50 Costco gift card from the purchase. I never requested the gift card be mailed to me, and by time I remembered, the deal had expired. I'm still mad at myself for that one.
Oh no! I'm so sorry it happened to you. It actually happened to my mother-in-law once. She forgot the kettle on a burning stove, and yes, it was ruined. It was a relatively new kettle, so she left really bad about it. Anyway, long story short, we just moved on, and it's never happened again since 😀
Poor Kristen! I think of myself as a glass half-empty kinda gal, but I would totally count this as a win. Maybe not a win, but a "no harm, no foul" situation. You get a new kettle, at no cost to you! You didn't lose anything, and you don't have to pay out of pocket for a new kettle. I'm sorry this happened, but at least you're not down a kettle!
I know exactly how you feel. I just finished paying a $1,900 medical bill caused by me not looking where I was going and falling down a full flight of stairs gashing my leg open. Really, though. Three stitches should not cost that much but I had to pay it. A few seconds of carelessness mean big costs later.
But we do have an emergency fund so we were okay. It still stung paying it, though.
Oh my goodness! I'm so sorry that happened to you.
Thank you for sharing, Kristen. I have a strong perfectionist steak and have a hard time forgiving myself for mistakes. It helps to see others go through the process.
My husband has done this. But with a more expensive kettle! A week after I bought it.
It's ok! Mistakes happen! But it's good to know that even Super Frugal Crazy Organized people do things like this, too. 🙂
Did the same thing with my very expensive zojirushi rice maker but managed to rescue it. It made the bottom wobbly but didn't ruin any vital components. Now, it's not allowed near the stove.
Hi Kristen. Sorry to hear about your melted kettle. On a brighter note, your comment about using the kettle to boil water because it's faster than on the stove top made me curious. Can you explain more about that, and what other ways you use your kettle? It never occurred to me to use a kettle the way you described. It sounds handy. Thanks.
Let's see...the girls and I use it to boil water for tea, Joshua uses it to boil water for coffee, and I use it to heat water for cooking pasta/rice on the stovetop. Those are the main things!
Oh no! That sucks. At least it was only a $50 oopsy, could have been much worse!
Could have been worse - a fire would have been a lot more expensive!
Plus, 3.5 years of use of a $50 item isn't bad at all. Lots of other expensive things (like shoes) don't always last that long.
That is a very good point about the shoes!
I do things like this far too frequently. In fact, my husband insisted we buy an electric kettle because I had burned too many stove top kettles by letting them boil dry or turning on the wrong burner. Comforting to know I have company!
I am sorry for you about your kettle but happy for me (sucks how that works).
Your comment about heating the water up in your kettle first, got me to thinking if boiling water in my kettle would be quicker and/or more cost effective than a stove top. Note that we will be running a test the next time I need two pots of water.
So, I asked my husband the question (he always wins at trivial pursuit) and he mentioned that an "induction cooker cooktop" might be a better long-term option.
After doing some research, I found a single burner on sale for $63 CDN (all in). In 15 years, I doubt I've used two burners more than 5 times and now that I have more time on my hands to spend being frugal, I make sure that I have a few things to cook and only use one burner.
Based on our electricity usage, I figure that we would save about $5 a month so it would be saving us money outright in about 12 months. I could save even more or quicker if I could buy the item used.
The only problem is that I use my oven a fair amount (I bake my own bread products; bread, muffins, hamburger buns). Not sure what I could do about that as that is a significant savings and a quality of life issue for my family.
The bottom line is that I never thought that I could live without a standard oven and it looks like I might be able to.
Again, sorry about the kettle but thanks for the idea! Keep them coming.
What a total bummer!!! I'm so sorry for your kettle loss 🙁 But atleast you were able to get a replacement quickly! I can't go a day without mine. I took your advice on getting a glass heating kettle (just bought a simple Faberware $20 one from Walmart a couple weeks back) and its the best thing - heats in less than 2 mins! Plus looks pretty cool while it bubbles up (there is a blue light that turns on around the kettle base to let you know its on!
I too have burned and melted a tea kettle (only mine was the traditional metal one). I forgot to put water in it and set it on a hot burner to make tea or something. When I realized it and lifted it from the burner, the bottom of the kettle completely fell out and went plop on my stove. I was mortified. Thankfully I had only paid $1 for it at a yard sale... and now I have a little metal "keepsake". We need to remember to give ourselves grace too.
I did this with our beloved slow cooker. I set the insert on the stove to dry and then turned on the wrong element, and it exploded into multiple pieces. I was so frustrated with myself!
That's a serious bummer. But, yeah, stuff happens. My mother still has the sculptural remains of a pot that melted so completely on the stove when she forgot it there on a hot burner AND LEFT THE HOUSE (this was 30 years ago now) that it turned into this artistic-looking pillar of melted metal. I think she keeps it on her shelf not only as an object of curious aesthetic appeal, but also as a reminder that she's lucky it didn't burn the whole house down.
I've exploded a casserole dish on a still-hot burner, forgotten my beloved stock pot drying on a hot burner and burned the bottom off, irrevocably scorched the bottom of my enameled cast-iron pan when I had to rush out to deal with some errant sheep . . . perhaps ruining cookware on hot surfaces is an inherited genetic trait. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.
I think most of your readers have been there. I know I have. More than once, unfortunately. I agree with you that my careless and expensive mistakes do make me more understanding when my children occasionally do the same. Be gentle on yourself (I know, easier said than done!) because, as I remind my children and myself, the only perfect person lived approximately 2,000 years ago and had the considerable advantage of being God as well. The rest of us just muddle through as best we can.
When my youngest was a baby I melted all of my breast pump supplies and bottles on the stove top while trying to sterilize them. I had a multicolored plastic disc that vaguely resembled bottle parts for a very long time after that to serve as a reminder and a little laugh. The Dr. Brown's and Medela parts are expensive but when melted into some other cheap bottle parts the value is so much less. Expensive frisbee, I guess?
I left a tea kettle burn to my glass stove top. Permanent damage. Way over $50. The stove still works but I flog myself every time I have to look at it and that was three years ago when the stove was new. Why oh why can't we forgive ourselves? :-/
Yes, I can so relate to all of this. I have perfectionist tendencies and when I make mistakes I have a really hard time moving on, I can't seem to forget about it. Life does move on somehow, but the "mistake" is still there in the dark shadows I guess.
I have a couple doosey's I can share....
A couple of christmas's ago at our last house, I was microwaving butter for a recipe one afternoon while my husband was at work. I went to take the large glass bowl out of the microwave and it slipped from my hands...right on to my glass cooktop. Shattered glass cook top and splashed butter all over my outside pantry wall. I was devastated. I ended up getting the stove's warranty to replace the glass cooktop (so, so lucky here!), but it took lots of work and paint to fix the buttery wall. From that day forward, I always keep a folded towel covering my cook top.
A few week's back, I dropped my cutting board on to my wood kitchen floor. It left a dent in the flooring. I can't look at it. I ended up buying new kitchen rugs so that I could "cover it" from my view. My husband can't even find the area, without me pointing it out. I am sure no one else would ever see or notice it when they come to our home. But, I know it's there.
I am such a careful person too! What the heck is it with me dropping things?!!! My husband teases me and playfully brings up the "stove" incident. I can laugh about it now, but man was that a really really bad night.
Sometimes dents in wood can be removed with a damp cloth and steam iron. BUT, it may also damage the finish somewhat, depending on what the finish is, so I would test it somewhere inconspicuous. I have done this on furniture with good results.
Whenever I make a financial boo boo I tell myself "Well,at least I did not lose all my savings in the 2008 stock market crash.!" Makes me feel a wee bit better.
I'm still trying not to kick myself for leaving the hose run all night. I was going to water a tree for 5 minutes, went back into the house to start dinner & got distracted. None of my neighbors came to the door when water was running down the street all night...I didn't notice it until 7AM the next morning when we were leaving for work. Still haven't seen the water bill yet...I think I am going to be shocked.
I did the exact same thing!! Only I was lucky to have a neighbor thoughtful enough to call at 3 am and say, "I am sort of an insomniac so I am staring out the back window and I think I see water pouring down your back lawn." (It is light at 3 am in June in Fairbanks). I was so thankful I brought him a loaf of homemade bread!
I had this same problem....turning on the wrong burner. I'm also addicted to label makers so, I combined my joy for labeling things with my challenge of turning on the wrong burners and I labeled my burner control knobs (front vs. back). While I used to make the burner mistake several times a week, I now only make it a couple of times a month. As far as heating up water, I use a little $15 electric Hot Pot.
While trying to sell our home I use to hide dishes in the oven when potential buyers were coming over to look at the house. Forgetting about it after the people left I turned the oven on and like you, Kristen, could smell plastic. Tupperware does not fare well in the oven!
This is why I use an electric tea kettle. It's much faster than heating water up on the stove and I can't burn it up because it shuts itself off.
Yep, that's the kind my kettle was! The problem is that I set it on the stove after I'd heated up the water, not realizing that the stove burner was on.
Whoops.
We've all done what you did in one way or another. I agree that the most positive takeaway from this is potential opportunity to show grace to your children. Thanks for thoughtfully sharing with your readers (another reason why your blog is my favorite blog). 🙂
Oh, that hurts. I think we've all done stupid things that wasted money. If I were in your shoes, my consolation would be that the kettle was 3.5 years old.
There's a silver lining for me in this. My 20-something year old tea kettle finally bit the dust, and I've been wondering whether to replace it with an electric kettle. Neither CI nor CR has reviewed electric kettles so I'm glad to see a trustworthy source recommend one.
Au contraire! CI reviewed electric kettles in 2008 and also recently, and the Capresso came out on top both times.
So you can buy with confidence. 😉
When I do something like this my husband always says to me....'How can you be so hard on yourself? How many women do you know who paid off their mortgage by the time they were 34?'...& on & on if it was a really big goof! I am my own worst critic for sure & an extreme tightwad. So I totally feel your pain.
My husband stuffed dishes in the oven when we sold our first house. We got the same results as Katrina did. yellow Tupperware colander destroy. A mug broke. All these years later I still miss that yellow colander.
Sorry about the kettle. The good news is it's just a thing that can be replaced. All material possessions can be replaced. Yes,it cost some gift cards. But it worked out for you and you got a new one. Good job!
I think we all have frugal fails. Be kind to yourself. I think you should look back and remember how faithful that kettle was. I don't think my mother's kettles ever last three years. Strangely enough the kettle died today so tomorrow I will be looking for another.
When I was growing up I didn't check the oven before turning it on. I melted a bunch of stuff. (After that my parents never stored anything that wasn't metal in the oven, no matter how little space we had.)
Here's my stupid money mistake I made recently. My wife just delivered our baby by c-section and needed some mesh underwear for the time being. I went to the drugstore to get some Tena branded underwear. When I got home and opened it, it was adult diapers that I bought. I guess they wanted to be politically correct and didn't use a term everyone would understand on the packaging. Of course, you can't return opened diapers.
Great advice! I'm trying to remember to be more positive when I make a mistake too.
My dope slap moment for the day was that I ordered a Groupon from Nutrisystem (I know not a sustainable diet plan, but it does help me get back on track) and instead of being just meals during the week, it was for breakfast and lunch. Dinner is my hardest meal to control, and more expensive generally than lunch and breakfast. I was more than a little annoyed, but I can't return it, and I just need to let it go and do my best with the plan I ordered.
Oh man, that stinks!
Bah, 50$ is not so bad.
I just got myself into trouble in a parking lot, bumping into another car. 500$ given to him to repair his car (not using insurances) and I don't know how much for mine yet to repair my bumper. Oh well, it's life, it happens!
Ughhh you have no idea how many times I've done this. This is another reason I hate electric stovetops! Our current stove is electric and the burner switches are backwards from literally every other stove I've ever used. I ruined so many things the first few months living here until I made a rule not to put anything on the stovetop that I wasn't currently heating—period. I still turn on the wrong burner from time to time (which is still annoying because it results in cold things that should be hot) but I'm not ruining things anymore.
I probably need to institute that rule for myself as well.
Question:
Does the kettle still work with the bottom piece being melted? If so, maybe you could get a new part and replace the bottom.
Possibly you could contact the manufacturer to see how much a new bottom piece would cost. If you are able to replace it for a reasonable price, you would have a nice gift for a friend or relative.
Also, what about Facebook or a local area swap board to see if anyone has the same pot with broken glass, but a good bottom you could use? It does seem a shame to get rid of the pot if it still works but is just tippy. Can you tell I have a hard time not trying to "fix" my mistakes? 🙂
Haha, no...the bottom is so melted, the power connector area doesn't even come close to match up with the base anymore.
I totally get your line of thinking because I do the same thing. But this is too far gone to be salvaged.
I just need to learn from my mistake!
I just did the same thing but forgot it was an electric tea pot. So I think I win the stupid award. Wife confirmed that.
Oh man, I'm so sorry to hear you did what I did! So frustrating.
The lesson learned is more valuable ! You can take deep breaths all the time; they are live meditations, knowing that this was only an "experience" anyway. And, that you haven't done anything wrong. There is no shame, no blame. An experience learned from. You are perfect just the way you are !! Smile, and then let it all go; it's in the "passed"/ past. You are loved !!