Whoever coined the phrase “It’s no use crying over spilt milk (or spilled depending on your preference) was not a mom. Every mom I know has experienced a darn good reason to cry over the spilling of the milk.

I came to this conclusion after a long day, when I was confronted with this awful mess, and the tears just started welling up, because underneath that mess there was a busted sippy cup and an ungodly stench. I sat there and realized I was legitimately about to cry over spilt milk.

And it wasn’t the first time. I clearly remember that incident, around 2AM, after getting up in the middle of the night to pump and then stumbling in the kitchen, my hard-earned ounces splattering on the floor. There were tears then too. And lots of cursing. And then more tears.

And that’s when I thought about that whole saying and how annoyed I was and how many times milk has upset me in the past few years. Like when it gets spilled all over your clothes and you know you have to wash it right away or it’s going to stink. Or you drop a carton of $5+ fancy organic milk. Or your toddler dumps a whole sippy cup on the carpet and then covers it with a pile of toys that you make some big stand about not cleaning up, only to discover the whole room smells like poop the next day because you didn’t know there was SPILT MILK under there!

So go ahead and cry next time.

And then grab some baking soda, dump a bunch on the spot, rub it in so it is saturated with the baking soda, let it sit for a few hours, and then vacuum it up. Stink gone.

And if it got on your clothes and you can’t get the smell out, put 1/2 – 1 cup of vinegar in the softener container of your laundry machine when you do a stinky load. This also works great with stinky pee smells.

I believe in taking a moment for a good cry, but then I get my butt on Google and find out how to take care of it. There’s a lot of stinky stuff involved with being a mom! I learned to always at least have a giant jug of white vinegar in the house. When in doubt, dump vinegar on it! Just not at the same time as baking soda or then you get the fizzy volcano action and you should save that for a future science fair project.