OK, seriously. I've seen this Liquid Plumber ad THREE TIMES and it is INCREASINGLY pissing me off.

[iverglas]

65. when I get around to rerenting the apartment that was my office

until I consolidated back into the house a while back (luckily before I broke my leg; the moving I was doing at the time was the final push, but there's a bunch of work left to be done on it that's on hold), it will come with instructions for what to do if the toilet is fixing to overflow. Don't we all wish that was a life skill we had been taught around when we learned to walk? Never again to be stuck in the bathroom at a party, suffering the consequences of someone else's ..., staring in horror at the water rising ever higher ...

Take the lid off the toilet tank, grasp the metal arm that has the round rubber balloon on it, and lift. Voilà. Simple. You may be stuck with your hand in a toilet tank until you find something within reach that will hold that thing up, or the waters recede, but it's better than standing in a puddle not of your own creation.

Step two is you reach for the plunger around back of the toilet. Which no toilet should ever come without, and every smart rental property owner should provide along with the instructions.

Anyhow, the big modern bulby plungers are definitely what you want for those drains. If the boiling water and the baking soda and vinegar don't work.