This is a bit of a roast,
I've noticed that me and Mrs SLVA tackle cleaning up in different ways. She gets out a load of cleaning stuff, then starts polishing the windows, then polishes loads of other surfaces, gets the hoover out and so on.

When I do it, I get a box and put everything in it that doesn't belong in that room, then take it out and leave it elsewhere. Then I tidy up what stays in the room, plump the settee up, sweep the wooden floor and the room is presentable in maybe 5 mins when she would still be faffing about with the Mr Sheen. I then go put away the stuff in the box and then get down to the polishing, or more usually move onto the kitchen. Wash up and put the pots away, give the hob a quick going over and wipe down the worksurfaces. Then bathroom etc.

I reckon I can get the full house presentable within 90 mins tops. In fact, I'm off to give it a go.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 17:43, 3 replies)

In my personal experience the kiss of death for most relationships is when a couple move in together
I decided to avoid this by moving into a large room in my house with the missus and some of our friends live in the other rooms. It means that the missus gets pissed off at the others for being untidy bastards and I get off more or less scot free, except I occasionally have to listen to her moan about their lack of cleanliness.

The other week she snapped, though, which meant that they've cleaned the kitchen, bathroom and hoovered the stairs in the past week. To avoid looking bad I've had to fall back on my old staple of "looking after the garden" and hiding in the shed :/
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 17:18, Reply)

Cooking and cleaning:
A couple of friends and I were in a greasy spoon one morning, following a night of heavy drinking.

Having ordered, we were discussing food, and how it affected the running of our relationships in terms of who did the majority of it, when, etc.

I volunteered that I hate cooking, and am terrible at it, whereas Mrs Vagabond loves to cook, and is ace at it. As a result, Mrs Vagabond has the right to use whatever she wants in the kitchen to produce anything at all, and she cooks and I wash up. Criticise it all you want, we like it and that's how we roll.

There was quiet 'round the table - a moment passed - and then, having taken this in and considered it, my good friend offered "Vagabond, man - you've got to get a dishwasher."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 17:09, 3 replies)

Milk.
It's good for you, but only normally when it's fresh.

My final year student house was a lovely old thing, just two of us and it technically wasn't a student house anyway, so it had real furniture and neighbours that didn't hate us. But anyway, one day the milkman knocked at the door and asked if we'd like to sample his lovely milky wares, at a cheap rate for a week. Why not? So we agreed to about three pints a week. Roll on a couple of months, and we're clearly not using three pints a week - after all, milk isn't alcoholic - so it's starting to stack up a bit in the fridge. the whole door was full of unopened bottles, so we decided to leave the poor guy a note saying we'd reconsidered, and we'd like to stop the deliveries.

And still the milk came. A few more weeks pass, we leave another note. More milk arrives, along with a request for some money. Cheeky sod! So we pay up, hoping it's a final payment and some farewell milk, but no - more arrives later in the week.

Fast forward about 8 months. Milk is now the only content of the fridge, and it's also occupying the space on top of, and to the side of the fridge too. We must have 60 unopened bottles in varying states of seperation - brown liquid, white solid. Interestingly, the stuff on top of the fridge where it's nice and warm has decayed quicker, who'd have thought? But the fridge was now out of bounds, only a brave fool would open the door. The trouble is, it was coming up to moving out time, how on earth would we get rid of 60 rancid pints of milk?

Bless my mum, I've never asked much of her but when she phoned and offered to lend a hand cleaning the house, she didn't understand why I was so overjoyed. I hung around at the edge of the kitchen, retching for a while, then went out. When I came back, there were 60 crystal-clean milk bottles on the front path. Bless her indeed.
(Pillock, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 17:08, 1 reply)

I do miss uni
I sleep naked. The campus halls were loud so I wore earplugs. The halls had cleaners that had a key to every room. I woke up many times to a grinning old cleaner biddy in my room with a duvet failing to cover me. One even let a friend in who had been trying to wake me; to be greeted by the same scene.

About 14 old women in western London have seen my cock without my consent. It could be even more, there must be times I didn't wake up.

I even told my mother about this who declared 'aww, it's like their weekly tip!' Wtf mother?!

There were also a Chinese couple on the floor above, who the cleaners refused to clean for since their idea of contraception involved the fella ejaculating into the bin. Lovely.
( Regger, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 16:41, 7 replies)

I’ve never been the tidiest person in the world.
Just ask poor old FoldsFive. He spends more time putting away books and shoes and CDs of mine than doing anything else. However, it is just clutter and not dirt, or filth. When I first moved out of home at the age of 18 after a massive row with my ma, my older brother and I were both students at Coventry Uni. We moved into a student house together and kept it clean and (relatively) tidy.

The landlord told us that we would be having some more tenants moving in. My bro and me pretty much kept to ourselves so it wouldn’t be an issue, really. Enter Andy and Jess. They were a couple and not students but we let this pass. We really shouldn’t have because in the six months that I lived there they:

1) Left the majority of their belongings in the hallway outside my bedroom which I kept tripping over.
2) Moved in their own manky looking fridge freezer. Once at a party, we looked in it and there was a black plastic sack in the freezer compartment and something resembling a human foetus in just behind that.
3) Only ever used mine and my bro’s cups, plates, bowls, pots, pans and cutlery. And then never washed it up leading to:
4) Me having a quick tidy up before a party only to discover when I moved the sofa plates and with mouldy food on them and cutlery strewn everywhere under the sofa. (Incidentally, it took me longer to tidy up before the party than afterwards).
5) FoldsFive stopped coming round because the house was constantly a state, it smelled rank, of rotting food and body odour (and I swear to Christ, none of this smell was anything to do with me). Their personal hygiene was disgraceful and my bro, me and FoldsFive soon boycotted the chip shop where they both worked. I don’t ever recall them once taking a bath or a shower when I’d been in the house.
6) My brother and I investigated their room when they were out and if the living room looked like a bomb had hit it, their bedroom looked like three A bombs had been dropped on it, along with a fuck load of stink bombs.

My brother was going through a bad time at that point and so had been drinking a bit. He came home one night and tore up the place, kicking fuck out of the bags and boxes that they STILL hadn’t moved from the hallway (they’d been there for about five months by this point). It was after this, I moved out. I couldn't, and still don't understand to this day, how people can live like that.

Possibly gone off topic a little and onto the subject of housemates from hell, but still, they thought it was NORMAL to never ever do the washing up and live like pigs in shit.
( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 16:40, Reply)

There are two kinds of people in the world...
Those that wash up before they have a meal, and those who wash up after. I fall unfortunately into the former category.
(robbersdog, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 14:03, 38 replies)

A little off topic but...
Mr Innogen's aunt died suddenly in her sleep a couple of years ago. Her husband was devestated by his loss as they had been married for a very long time. It was all very sad for him and his children.

18 months later, Mr Innogen's parents went to stay with said uncle and he gave them his bed to sleep in. It wasn't until the following morning that he mentioned that he hadn't yet changed the sheets since his wife had breathed her last a year and a half earlier. Mr Innogen's mum spent the next night sleeping outside the covers.
(Innogen, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 13:27, 6 replies)

My flat is clean now...
...thanks to a relatively clean and tidy housemate who doesn't own much stuff and seems happy enough to do my washing up for me. I do have some (not so) fond memories from my life as a student.

1. Bin Jenga - I'm sure most students play this one where when the bin gets full you start to pile things on top, balancing things ever more precariously, until the one who makes it fall has to empty it.

2. The one housemate who never washes up who left his half eaten mashed potato in a pan until it started to go mouldy. It was then removed to his bedroom where I think it remained until the day we moved out about a year later. I think maybe the mould reached some level of self-awareness by that point.

3. The George Forman grill which was used to cook just about everything and was never cleaned beyond a fairly cursory scrape. We used to collect the fat which dripped off into the tray and decanted it into a series of empty Dolmio jars which we proudly displayed on the windowsill. The most interesting bit was looking back through the layers in some sort of filthy greasy version of what I imagine geologists would do with some sort of rock core to determine the different cheap-ass student food we'd consumed (Co-op burgers made exceptionally thick layers). George never respnded to my emailed photograph asking if they wanted to use it in their promotional literature.

4. The bathroom extension built at the rear of our house in the age when outdoor toilets were being replaced. Sadly they neglected to provide any sort of insulation to it and it used to suffer massively with condensation. When we moved in the bathroom had recently been painted white but as time wore on it gradually all began to turn green. First it started from behind the tiles around the bath and then white furry stuff started growing out from underneath the bath, along the carpet. When tiles started falling off the wall, being pushed off by streaky black fingers of mould I made one of the decisions I regret more in my life. I unscrewed the panel from the edge of the bath, "just to have a look what's happening underneath". The oozing blackness beneath, looking like some sort of Cthulhu-type horror is an image which still haunts me. I used to leap out of the bath in the morning lest it's inky tendrils grab my ankles and pull me down into damnation.

...but the grimmest one was

5. Again at the place with the bathroom of horror I was discussing the state of it with my housemates when one of them made a horrific admission. The toilet was in its own little cupboard at the end of the bathroom and it had a very long pull-cord for the light switch. He said, "Oh yeah, and I hate it when you're wiping your arse and you get the cord gets all tangled up with you". Queue a moment of disbelieving blinking while the realisation of what he said sank in and then trying to remember all the times where you went to the toilet and turned the light of using what now turned out to be a soiled pull-cord and then maybe gone to make a sandwich without adequate handwashing. What followed was much scrubbing of hands then donning of rubber gloves and cutting the light-cord to remain at head height.

There are many things about being a student I miss: casual sex (or at least the thought of it maybe happening to me one day), cheap booze and cheese and tuna toasties. Living surrounded by filth is not one of them.
(bigjonnydynamite, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 12:56, 2 replies)

She's done WHAT???
When I first left home, I moved in with a colleague's family which was nearer to work. This didn't really count as 'moving out' as I still had everything washed and cooked for me. The next place however, was different. I had a room in a shared house, shared kitchen, bathroom etc. The people seemed nice; I hardly ever saw Wayne upstairs but heard his bed threatening to fall through my ceiling every time his poor girlfriend visited. The couple downstairs; Steve & Dave were nice and always friendly, especially when I brought my mate round, who they had a soft spot for. It was the weekend I first moved in that was the problem. I'd brought one load of stuff round on the Friday and was coming back with another on the Sunday when Steve and Dave met me at the door.
"We're really sorry, there's been a bit of a problem," they said.
"Oh?" I replied, getting slightly worried.
"It was last night and you'd left your door open."
"Uh huh?"
"Well, we've had to clean your duvet" they said, shame faced. "Not just the cover, the whole thing. It's in the launderette now."
"Oh Jesus" I thought. Here I was, fresh from the countryside into the big city. What could the camp guys from downstairs have been doing in MY bedroom on a Saturday night that would require my duvet to be cleaned?
"It's Britt" they said. This was their enormous bull terrier, the world's ugliest dog. "She pushed your door open with her nose and...."
"And what?"
"Had six puppies on your nice warm bed. We're so sorry."
To tell you the truth, I was quite relieved.
(Mr McKenzie Mr McKenzie, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 12:41, 2 replies)

I think that as a student the most reasonable excuse I heard from a landlord for keeping our collective £1,000 deposit was
"Well the oven hadn't been cleaned."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 12:13, 10 replies)

I'm not the cleanest of people but....
I'm generally ok with mess. Clothes on the floor, books and mags strune around the place, fine. I'm not quite so good with food mess. You know, crusty left overs with a cigarette stubed out in pool of glazed ketchup. No thank you.

Some of student friends, however, didn't share my values.

I went round to the house (let's call it the Palace as that, in their beautifully ironic wisdom, was what the 11 inhabitants called it) of some of my friends and it was a shithole. I mean really disgusting. 11 lads living in an old house with mould, mice and all manner of insects. With 9 of them being smokers and the windows not openable the place stank of stale smoke.

They also never wash up. Ever. The kitchin was huge yet the worksurfaces were completely crammed with old plates, saucepans, etc.
To begin with they just kept buying new plates, but as room was running out/the cost got too high they moved on to buying paper plates.

This particular time that I visited, however was right at the end of term and loans were all but gone. I was asked if I wanted some toast, and, having said yes was duly bought a plate of headed bread munchables.

Yet it wasn't a paper plate, oh no. They had gone for a much cheaper option. My toast was delivered to me on a plate covered in the remains of some ancient meal: crusts half dipped in harden sauces; mushrooms, srivelled and leaking foul juices; and mould. the whole plate was covered in white and blue mould. I may have been happy about that if I was discovering penacillin, but as I just want toast....

All that seperated my food from this monstrosity was a layer of cling film. Yes. They had reached that point where every meal was eaten on a layer of cling film separateing it from the merky remains of meals past. God knows how they cut their food with out piercing the film. I never asked. I didn't want to know.

I also never ate round their house again.
(ab1kenobe, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 12:06, 4 replies)

sobs
I may have mentioned this before but I own a couple of properties that I let out and have a number of tales that are worth telling this week. I have my fair share of tenants that I have booted out due to them growing weed/ threatening to stab the neighbours etc etc but this weeks QOTW is about filthy places and so I thought that I would share to you the tale of S.

I had invested in a decent little place based in a very picturesque place. The place had a lovely view of the mountains and was located near to a number of rivers and was also a short walk away from the local forest. The place itself was a tip when I bought it but after a bit of work with the house itself and improving the garden walls it looked pretty decent.

As the place was in a decent area the rent was also more costly the only potential tenants I had were all a tad older and either professional types or old geezers that had retired and were trying to spend whatever money they had before shuffling off the mortal coil. The first one to take a keen interest in the place was S. He was a semi retired bloke that was still working despite his age. He loved the place and the location and paid the deposit straight away. I should have been pretty suspicious of a bloke paying me cash in hand straight away but to be honest a few other things were on my mind that day (tenant at another property had just been caught growing drugs in their attic 5 mins before S turned up).

Anywhoo as S was a bit older I thought that I would not be calling round to check up on things like I did with the other lower cost properties with dodgier tenants and would only turn up to the property if there was any problems or if they had not paid. S always made sure I was paid each month so I really had no need to visit him until one morning early March a couple of years later when a concerned neighbour rang me to let me know there was a disturbance coming from my property. I called round the next day to see what was wrong and immediately realised that I should have been keeping track of this place a bit better. Bloody hell.

The front gate, a pretty sturdy thing I had paid a bit of money to install had been totally ripped off its hinges and most of the front wall was also partially knocked down. I realised that this probably wasn’t going to be the end of the damage and headed up to the main property muttering to myself about the cost of a good repair bloke.

Nothing could prepare me for the main building though. The whole place was flooded. I don’t mean none of this namby pamby “oh no a roof has caved in because of the water” kind of flooding I mean a large puddle of water had actually surrounded the place, causing a mini moat effect that had also flooded the nearby pit that S had dug himself during his spare time (Lord knows what the hell he was doing but I mentioned he had to let me know of any building improvements etc so that also pissed me off).

I was angry now as this old bloke had fucked up the lawn, planted a number of trees in the place and ruined a good property. S was gone with no forwarding address and I was left to foot the bill for repairs and removal of the crap he left in his place. The whole thing needed refurbishing from top to bottom and amongst the litter and piles of various animal bones I found several giant rats, these things were hairless and looked pretty fucking scary despite being dead and covered in pieces of fallen tree.

I still haven’t had a chance to get my money back from the old twat and I don’t actually know why I have decided to censor his name throughout this reply as a user of B3ta may take him on as a tenant or may even live wth him now. For any of you that know Saruman or may bump into him tell the old sod that he owes me a shitload in repair and maintenance bills (you should see the cost for disposing of dead orcs these days) .

This post has overrun a bit, sorry for that.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 11:42, 12 replies)

My sis-in-law's addiction
Emma's a strange one. She's me wife's twin (not identical) and has 4 kids whom are all good, but constantly on the go. To go with them she has two dogs (one of which is more like a grizzly than dog) and god knows how many cats (due to kitten-making activities of the furry slags).

As the kids and the dogs play out the back garden on a trampoline most of the time this leads to Emma cleaning and hoovering like a fucking trojan.

Every single time I visit the place she's cleaning, one moment it's the kids clothes dirty, the next it's the dog-bear caked in mud running into the house, seriously there's days when she doesn't sit down at all for hours on end cleaning and washing. When she doesn't need to clean, she cleans anyway as she's suddenly bored with not having to clean, so she will re-hoover the same rooms she has already done just to be sure.

Coupled with the fact that she lived in Ireland for a few years, she has a subtle Irish turn of phrase which has led me to starting to call her Mrs Doyle.

So Mrs Doyle spends her typical day waking up at 5.30am, starting to get breakfast and school dinners together for the kids and getting their school uniforms ready. After this at 8am she walks them all to school, where 3 of them reside while the youngest is taken back home with her. The morning and afternoon is spent doing washing, ironing and looking after youngest which mostly involves tidying up after the pets and the young-un too. At 3pm she leaves her house to pickup the kids, comes home and cooks them all tea; all dishes are done by herself by which time her husband comes back from work and helps her out in the evening. By 7.30pm all kids are in bed, and by 9 so is Emma (after she has managed to do a 5 mile recreational jog around a local park to unwind). Superhumaaaaaaaaaaan.

To her twin, my wife, TAKE THE FUCKING HINT AND GET YOUR ASS OFF THE FUCKING SOFA YOU LAZY TWUNT, THE HOUSE DOESN'T CLEAN ITSELF :p
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 10:02, 9 replies)

my house is clean
reeeeaaallllyyyyyy fucking clean
( d d, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 8:13, 3 replies)

Want a clean house?
My sweetheart and I are both fairly mature (read: well past student age) individuals, with responsible jobs, and own our own home. However, we both have somewhat laissez-faire attitudes regarding domestic upkeep, which means that our place often looks as if it has been inhabited by a pack of wolverines. Wolverines with excellent taste in furniture and quite nice kitchen appliances, but wolverines nonetheless.

We have adapted to this relative character defect with a simple expedient: Throw a party. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it works quite well. Once things get trashy enough to arouse a sufficient amount of distaste, we simply choose a date about two weeks out, and invite our friends over, or, if things are REALLY desperate, our parents. Because we're of an age where "parties" are relatively classy affairs with wineglasses and canapes rather than student bashes, that means that we have to engage in a frantic top-to-bottom clean of the entire place in order to have things ship-shape for guests.

The incredibly brilliant thing is that most of our guests bring a nice bottle of spirits or wine, so we also throw parties when our liquor cabinet is looking a bit shabby, too.
(herbivorous, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 7:41, 2 replies)

Have you been eating crisps in bed? Oh...
A couple of years ago, I was experiencing the joy of living in various houseshares, as was my then boyfriend, who was still a student. He came back after his long, studenty Easter holidays and I went round to visit for the evening.

His house wasn't too bad; the other tenants were friendly and it was generally quite tidy. The main problem with it was that it wasn't very well-sealed against the outdoor elements. Cold winds blew straight in, and small creatures made their way into the house. I once saw a fat juicy slug crawling towards the kettle on the kitchen worktop, which put me off my tea somewhat.

Mice outnumbered the human residents considerably, and on most nights after the lights went out, they'd start squeaking as they explored the room. You could catch a glimpse of them if you switched the light on during the night.

Anyway, on that evening we'd been lying on his bed, on top of the blankets, as we watched a film. It was time for bed. My boyfriend switched the light out as I removed my clothes and was the first to hop into the bed, in my underwear. I noticed the sheet felt somewhat gritty. It felt as though someone had been eating crisps in bed. I wriggled. There were crumbs seemingly over the entire bed. Suddenly, it dawned on me. I screamed involuntarily and leapt out of the bed. 'Turn the light on!' I yelped.

I looked at the exposed sheet. It was absolutely covered in mouse droppings. There were hundreds or perhaps even thousands of little hard black poos. I had been wallowing in mouse poo. I don't know why they decided to climb onto the bed and poo in it during the time they'd had freedom of the room.

Almost wordlessly, we got dressed and walked to my house, where I threw my clothes in the wash and jumped into the shower, scrubbing vigorously. It was a good while before I felt clean.
(Ovaltina, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 3:15, Reply)

More students.
This was originally going to be a reply to someone a few pages back who had a similar experience, but it ended up a bit longer than I planned. Stick with it.

So. Being a student with no hope of getting a job back home for the summer, I decided to stay at on campus at uni and work for the housekeeping department. As I was more of an admin monkey than any of the others, I managed to avoid cleaning and got the job of inventory, aka wandering around with a clipboard... which actually turned out to be more work than cleaning when it got to the stage of running around to several hundred flats with missing kitchen appliances and lightbulbs and whatever else. I digress.

The day everyone moved out, the work started. Mostly alright, a few quite grotty, one or two absolutely bloody atrocious. One in particular stuck with me, in which the tenants had obviously had a massive party on the last night - presumably for the entire block - before simply buggering off with their stuff the next morning and leaving it. Food, drink, cigarette ends, tobacco, remnants of weed, broken bottles, graffiti, wreckage, holes in the walls, all over the kitchen. Both toilets and showers looked like someone had been taken prisoner and staged a dirty protest with a bottle of laxatives. It took five people (three students and two full-time cleaners) six days to clean this one flat, compared to the normal rate of two days (three at a push) for two students. The fridge-freezer was completely knackered, the cooker doors were kicked in so the whole thing had to be replaced, one of the windows was broken, the walls had to be filled and repainted and one of the showers had to be completely ripped out and retiled. They got charged an entire term's rent and were henceforth banned from living on campus.

Over the course of the summer we had various groups of temporary students in. First came the Danes. Not too messy, actually they were just bloody noisy. When they'd gone, a group of Americans turned up. They were great. Then came the French. Y'know when you go to a hotel and leave it in whatever state because you think "meh, it's someone else's job to clean it"? That was them. Two weeks of collected rubbish and filth was less than pleasant. After that, an odd mixed group of Germans and Nigerians. All university students themselves, lovely, tidy, great to go for a drink with - the model for all students, visiting or domestic.

Nothing, however, compared to the day right near the end of the summer when I walked into a flat after it had been vacated by a group of EFL students from a country that will go tactfully unnamed. In their defence, this was the only really grim flat out of the 40 or so that were rented by the EFL programme, but I definitely won't forget it any time soon. "Sorry, it hasn't been cleaned yet but we need you to go and do the inventory, shouldn't be too bad though" said the nice woman in the office. Alright, thinks I, wandering over with clipboard in hand. Keys in lock, door swings open.

...oh fuck me.

That was the first time, not just that summer, but in my entire life, that a smell made me retch. It might not have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that all of the internal doors had been left propped open. It was really hot around that time too - with curtains open and windows tightly shut, it was like walking into a sauna full of rotting corpses. Perhaps the most shocking thing for me was that they'd only moved out the previous evening, so they'd obviously been living that way for a while. A quick and incomplete summary of what I found:

- a chip pan full of congealing oil with bits of fuck-knows-what meat floating in it
- a film of same oil over everything within a metre radius of the cooker (in a student kitchen, that's pretty much everything)
- vegetables left to liquidise in the bottom of the fridge (open, of course)
- an open bag of frozen sweetcorn, left defrosted and rotting in a cupboard (I already disliked sweetcorn, now I can't even look at the stuff)
- an open packet of ham, complete with maggots, left in one of the bedrooms
- various fruit, sandwiches and other short-life food items left to mould in all of the bedrooms
- open 4-pint cartons of milk, half full of what looked like yoghurt
- toilets not flushed, with used toilet paper on the floor and stuffed inside empty Pringles tins
- unidentifiable nasty orange ooze on the desks in two of the rooms
- various other rubbish and detritus

With every shred of my being, I wish I was making this up. It's making me feel a bit queasy just thinking about it.

A team of full-time cleaners went in that same day, opened the windows right through and completely cleared it. Over a week later, the office had to contact the students who were due to move in at the start of term and tell them not to come because it was still uninhabitable. Three days later, after another go from the cleaners and two attacks with a professional carpet cleaner, they were allowed to move in.

Having said all that: I happily did the same job again for another two summers after that. The really grim moments were rare, overall I genuinely enjoyed it - the bosses were really nice, the rest of the staff were cool, the pay and hours were reasonable, free rent, general "go at whatever pace you want as long as the work gets done" attitude... it was pretty much an ideal way to earn summer beer tokens, particularly when my mates were doing it too.

A quick note on my own house right now: not too bad actually. Clutter, detritus and nick-nacks everywhere but it's not dirty. There's no washing up in the sink, which I must admit is unusual. 5-second rule on dropped food is a bit out of the question at the moment 'cos my cat is moulting heavily and I can't be arsed to hoover two or three times a day. Actually, the bedrooms are alright, cat's too lazy to climb the stairs.

Length gag, etc.
(The Duke of Boredom ruling over your boredom since, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 2:14, 3 replies)

Pig tenants rule!
I'm househunting at the moment which means looking at a lot of places I can't ever afford... however!
I found a place that is within my price range only because the previous tenants were such pigs.
It's a three bedroom place with off street parking and a huge yard, the kind of place I usually wouldn't be able to get near price-wise, but in five years of unsupervised renting, the "people" living there have:
Stripped almost all the wallpaper off (it's hanging in sheets, semi-attached in all rooms.
Ditto carpets (torn up, but not completely, like someone was desperate to see what was underneath, then disappointed to find floorboards so they tried again further along)
Pulled bathroom and kitchen cabinets off the walls (almost all of the kitchen is hanging precariously, the entire benhtop is gone, in the backyard somewhere)
Somehow managed to turn the bath into an indoor aquarium for what looks like swamp life and turds
pulled the shower head almost completely out of the wall (they must have been hanging off it)
Broken windows and replaced them with cardboard, carpet and or plastic bags.
Piled rubbish off the balcony into the back yard (real bags of rubbish, not just teh occasional bit of junk)
Let the yard grow to an average of about 1.5 metres high grass plus occasional mini-forests of bush
Started a fire in the living room (burned floorboards in one corner, smoke damage up the wall and ceiling).
Graffitied the walls (and floors) indoors.
Somehow managed to pull door frames off the walls, exposing the inside of the walls
Somehow managed to convert what was a backyard pool into a weed filled dent in the ground. No kidding, the entire pool seems to have been removed and transported God knows where.
Piles of rubbish, clothes, crap and filth EVERYWHERE
etc
etc etc
Basically they've caused a LOAD of cosmetic damage that means the owner is so horrified they just want it sold. So I'm negotiating a cheaper price.
Thanks filthy bastards!
Oh the funniest part is the main "living" room which is now just a pile of junk with holes through to the outside (kicked through? possibly) has a recently installed Foxtel connection. Which means they were obviously quite happily living in this filth watching cable TV.
( difficultchild, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 2:13, Reply)

I shared a flat with a woman who had the most fantastic set of breasts.
And she knew it. But she was a pig.

She never washed up (no, she never washed up), never took the bin bags out, had fantastic breasts, never cleaned the bathroom, was content to live in student squalor, showed me her breasts, never cleaned the kitchen, put out on the first night we went out together.

She screwed me over in the end, but the joke's on her - I only made a half-assed effort cleaning the flat each and every week.
(8allright is praying you've got a cold, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 1:39, 10 replies)

Aaron was his name.
Back in the days when I was a student at a reasonably well known northern land based/agricultural college. I lived in a couple of shared, college managed houses.

Students as you know for it has been archived in many post below and most probably above are some of the least sanitary animals in the world. Some ranking on a par with Tubifex tubifex.
Two of my past housemates were quite memorable as being particularly vile. The first was Sarah. She was proof that’s it not just men whom are lazy, untidy and unclean. Never cleaned had mountains of clothes all over her room the usual. But the icing on the cake was the fact she kept guinea pigs in her room! This subsequently made the 1st floor of the house stink of rodent piss. The other was Aaron.
Now Aaron was studying countryside management*. He was from a traditional countryside, Yorkshire background. “Strong in arm, thick in Ed”. He truly was a choice filthmunger. I shall now regale you with a few tales.

1. There was the time he brought a brace of pheasants home from a bit of pouching no doubt. Now as some of you may know game tends to favour a bit of hanging before consumption. The house had a conservatory type thing, this is where Aaron choose to hang these pheasants. FOR THREE MONTHS! In direct sunlight no less. The sticky puddles beneath them, would have been enough to make Bear Gills bauck! I’m fairly sure he made one of them into some kind of sweet and sour putrid flesh dish.

B. Fortunately Aaron had the ground floor bedroom and therefore had his own separate bathroom. The first thing you would notice about this bathroom (well after the stench of sweat and urine) was the lack of toilet paper. I asked him one day what he wiped with, he replied “Jus av a shower instead”. Never used that shower again! But that’s not the point; his bathroom was linked via a small lobby to the kitchen. We gave up on having tea towels after we found pubes in them. He was using them in lieu of his own towels!

iii. Aaron didn’t have his own telly. So I found him one day laying on my bed, watching TV after coming straight in from playing rugby, went a bit mental at him for that one!

D. I once went into his room trying to muster the whereabouts of some of the pots and cutlery and all of the pans. I don’t know if you have ever seen a pair of skid marked riddled pants in a pan of mouldy supernoodles, but it is quite a life affirming. Its makes you realise, you could die tomorrow!

iv. And finally the blood on his curtains. To this day nobody other than Aaron knows how this got there. Your ideas on a postcard please.

I would have told him to sort it out but he was quite a big fucker and kept a shotgun underneath his bed! He’s in the TA’s now

*Also known as gamekeeping.
(burkyman, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 23:06, 3 replies)

Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially nasty
and I'm getting up later than my girlfriend I don't make the bed (ie always). Or, if she's made it, I just fold an edge over and wait for her reaction. It hurts her to know the bed is unmade. When she travels I take a picture of the unmade bed and send it to her.

Once, she came back from uni because I told her I'd taken off all the bedding and left the bed with no covers. She was actually crying, so I decided not to repeat that one!

edit: apart from that she'S usually alright as far as cleanliness is concerned and I wouldn't change her for the world!
( morrybyte made a subtle namechange at, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 22:53, 3 replies)

I had a friend...
He and a couple other guy friends decided to rent a house together. It was ok at first but eventually there was a point when you'd avoid going round because of the state it got to.

The top things which were not only gross, but socially unacceptable were that they constantly missed bin collections so instead of going to the local tip would pile it in the indoor walkway between their kitchen and the garage, we're talking months worth of rubbish. Due to the rubbish it was infested, no exaggeration, with flies. Flies of all kinds. Fruit, blue bottle, those huge bastards you see in the summer which look like bumblebees. Their bathtub had a ring of grease around the sides, quite close to the top, I could never understand it because they only ever showered. How could it be possible?

Those were the worst ones. Being one of their few female friends I would go round and at some time or other need a wee but hold it until my bladder could not hold any longer for fear of what would be lurking beneath the closed lid of the toilet.

They once cleaned their house top to bottom to try to get rid of the rancid smell that lingered throughout, it didn't occur to them that it may be the waist high row of bin bags outside their kitchen door.

Surprisingly they had and kept girlfriends and I even once made a deal with them that if they cleaned top to bottom I'd make them a huge sunday roast. They did and I obliged, but there was no chance in hell I was going to eat any of it from that salmonella pit of a kitchen no matter how "clean" it looked.
(kellysprinkles dying for a pee since, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 21:10, Reply)

Ceilings
Meister Junior was at uni in Southampton ( the institute one, not the proper one) which was also the residence of my oldest, best friend. Rather than stay in "student accommodation", we used to arrange to stay with said best friend when visiting No 1 son. One saturday night, we'd all gone out for a pizza, when Meister Jr gets a phone call. Lots of "Hmm, yeah, whatever" conversations occur, he clicks off his phone and says. " the ceiling's fallen in!" heigh ho, we think, and finish the pizza, dropping him off and off to bed.

Sunday morning, being both parents and old, we're round there at the ungodly hour of noon. As we walk into the "Lounge" (for thus was it named) we see a large piece of ceiling in the middle of the floor, with dinner plates, covered in plaster dust, carefully left around it, half eaten meals evident for all to witness.

Meister Jr was completely nonplussed. Mrs Meister produced several kittens!

(Oh, and if the arsehole that writes to me saying "this didn't happen", every time I post does it this time, you're wrong, pal!)

(cue...........)
( The Lone Groover has mal des nuts., Sun 28 Mar 2010, 20:53, 1 reply)

The Secret Subletter


Sorry for length. Here goes: cue me, a college student in upstate New York, returning from 5 months in Japan, heavy with okonomiyaki and daifuku, remembering that I had left some boxes in the now vacated apartment that 3 friends and I had been renting at school. In order to get our security deposit back, I would have to reclaim my boxes and tidy up the room I had lived in. However, even the piss soaked fishy streets that I had occasionally wandered in outer Osaka had not prepared me for what I would see.

When I got back, the door was unlocked. This was troubling as our neighborhood was not an extremely safe one. I was prepared for the worst: a wild eyed squatter with heroin needles and swinging a sack of stolen car radios.

What I found: My room, and the rest of the 4 bedroom house, filled with ancient dirty dishes, $500 of ski jackets and shirts, oil paintings, the floor littered with dozens of nitrous oxide canisters and packets of green leafy stuff, and finally, a dark brown thick sticky film covering every flat surface in the kitchen, which I later discovered to be evaporated beer.

One of my housemates had agreed to let a mutual friend "sublet" (read: squat) over the summer, and let's just say he could have made a different and better decision.

I spent 2 entire days cleaning, but because the fire alarms had been disabled and the toilet essentially destroyed, we never got our money back (the "friend" reclaimed his jackets and paintings). I have forgotten the sum, but I will never forget the feeling of that beer film.
( the prick of misery pierced my foot on a spiiiike on, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 20:51, Reply)

How clean is my house?
Not too bad really, but I do have a maid.

My city is another matter. I live in Jakarta, and it's a big city. It's hard to get a figure for the population; low estimates put it at around 8.5 million; high estimates at around 22, although, I doubt the true figure is anywhere near as high as that.

The problem is there are no sewers. They are just starting to build them. The plan is to have 25% of the population of the city served by a sewerage system by 2030. Nice.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 19:41, 2 replies)

No. 14 Benin street -Hither Green - london
And so the story begins - I was only resident in the property for 2 months - sleeping on the sofa in the kitchen and storing my tools in the living room.
sleeping in my sleepng bag.
with the draw string done up REALLY tight.
Listening to the mice partying on the lino.

It was my brothers uni digs for 3 years, shared with a fair assortment of good friends. There are too many stories to tell, but the tuna that was put out for a stray kitten in the garden and then brought back in to the kitchen (why I will never know) and left to rot, breed, take over the world beneath a landslide of unwashed pots, clutter and effluvium nearly had me boaking onto my shoes.

Still - a good time was had by all!
(bangthedrum, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 18:01, 1 reply)

Another story about someone who did not clean properly (causing upset for someone with an anally retentive nature).

Apparently when you clean a bath, every inch of it is supposed to shine.
Silly me for just wiping instead of buffing.

My ex didnt speak to me for a week
(EvilMeister, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 16:40, 1 reply)

My Ex
My ex never was much for cleaning, and with four kids and a dog it just got on top of her. So she stopped doing it. I was going to work at 7 in the morning, get home about 7:30 in the evening and start the house work. When we split up she wanted to keep the house. We tried to stay friends, but it didn't happen, and basically she shat on me from a great height. cost me lots of money, and dunped the house and dog on me. after 3 months with no house work down it was a tip.

The sink

The hob

This was how she left the kitchen

The oven

there were maggots living in the lounge carpet
evety door had a hole punched in it, half the wall paper was ripped off


there were holes in the walls.


I'll let you guess what this is, I found them stuffed down the back of the airing cupboard.

The hole house stank. took me months to clean it to a state I could sell it at.
(Vinegar strokes Should know better on, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 15:49, 1 reply)

Not me but a mate...
...who bought a house some years to let out. He did all the work himself brining it up to standard, and he wasn't afraid of hard work, but his tenants broke him.

He didn't mind having to toss out the mattress each time a let was up, or getting through 2 three piece suites a year, or unblocking the toilets on a weekly basis. What did it was a phone call at 2 am from Plod. A tenant was having a major eppy, the flatmates had called the law and he had the spare keys to the room. Turned out she was a crack and smack head. The bed was covered in shit. The carpet was drenched with piss. There was blood squirted up the walls where she'd flushed the syringes. Used tampons everywhere, of course.

The whole room had to be stripped back to the brick and joists, refloored, replastered and new ceiling. That he could cope with; it cost him just the materials and a week's work, fitted in around his night shift. Because the junkie had Hep C, all the waste was biohazard, and it cost over a grand to have it disposed of. Of course, that meant he had to work in a HAZMAT suit. Not much fun in summer.

"Never again" he told me.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 15:21, 4 replies)