Mum's hysterical fail as cleaning hack goes terribly wrong

We all love a good, satisfying cleaning hack.

Often we’re looking for an unusual or deceptively simple trick to transform a grimy everyday item into a sparkling metaphor for domestic bliss.

Sometimes, however, things can go horribly wrong as one mum discovered when her attempt to execute a popular cleaning hack went far more literally than she anticipated, coming out the other end more French Revolution than Betty Crocker.

The normal hack has peppered the internet for years, advising that a microwave can be spotlessly cleaned just by zapping a lemon for thirty seconds or so.

It turns out there are several important steps to follow, however, and this mum learned the hard way when she opened the door of the device not to the smug satisfaction of a sparkling interior, but to a cleaning crime scene of epic proportions.

Taking to Facebook the irate mum slammed the hack, only to be told she had overlooked a tiny, but vital step.

“Not that I use the microwave much anyway, but the hack "Clean by microwaving a lemon" did not work for me,” she wrote alongside the tragic picture of the citrus charred beyond recognition, sitting in a pool of its own burnt juices.

The missing ingredient

“You definitely will have more success putting the lemon in a bowl of water,” another mum gently advised.

“ I think you’re meant to put in water,” another agreed.

“Sorry, I had to laugh,” another admitted. “It will clean up with lemon and water. We all learn the hard way at some stage.”

Another shared she too had suffered a hack hiccup when she attempted to clean her kettle with vinegar and found herself without a kettle to clean.

“It’s ok!” she reassured the mum. “I blew up the kettle I added vinegar and switched it on. YouTube only proved me wrong once!”

“That certainly is an epic fail, but you will be set right here!” another wrote.

Many thanked her for a much-needed laugh.

“This is by far the best thing I have ever seen,” one wrote.

“Thanks for the awesome laugh,” another wrote. “Love it!”

It comes after several hacks went ballistic online, and not for their ineffectiveness.

One woman’s trick of using a dishwashing tablet to clean any and glass surfaces has changed the cleaning game for good, while a very clever trick for making a cheese toastie has also earned thousands of loyal followers.

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