Cleaning horror story, eh?
Over spring break, I stayed at a house that 5 people officially live at. Unofficially, however, that count is much higher. Because I felt guilty staying there a week without contributing anything, I decided that I'd "pay rent" by cleaning!
Good Lord God Almighty.
I started on the bathroom because I wanted to be able to take a shower. I have no clue when it had been cleaned last. There was a pile of clothes on the floor. Not just any pile, but a PILE. People just dropped them there when they took a shower and never bothered to pick them up. The pile completely filled 4 garbage bags, and mixed in the pile were various toiletries, shoes, cosmetics, etc.
So now that I had the floor cleared, I decide I'm going to spray the shower, toilet, and sink with cleaner so that some of the gunk can start dissolving. The toilet reeks of urine, the shower has soap scum and lord-knows-what stains over every inch of it, there's mold growing on the shower curtain and in every crevice that gets wet, the sink is halfway out of the wall, and the floor is peeling up in several places.
The toilet is fairly easy: scrub brush, then disinfecting wipe the outside. Why wipe the outside? People miss quite often, apparently. How freaking hard is it to aim? Seriously, it was disgusting how often people couldn't hit the target. But it was done.
The shower, though less disgusting, was far more difficult to do. Remember how there's +5 people there? Each has their own shampoo and conditioner, razor, soap, etc. Most of the bottles are empty too. I make the executive decision to toss the empties. I figure if they're mad about losing a bottle with 5 cents of body wash in it, they can just clean it themselves next time. Anyways, after removing the giant wad of hair from the drain, I start wiping the walls down. I have a sponge, and I'm having to rinse it off every 10 seconds to get soap scum etc off of it. Fortunately, the mysterious stains come up, but there's nothing I can really do about the mold or the shower curtain.
The sink went fine, aside from me fearing it would fall out at any moment
Finally the floor. "Do we have floor cleaner?" Stupid question. Of course not. I think I sprayed Fantastic or something all over it, and then proceeded to use an ancient mop (that probably had ~things~ growing in it) to spread it around a little. Hopefully it killed whatever critters lived on the floor :/
The bathroom "look[ed] better than when [they] moved in." Hey, if I'm going to clean it, even if it takes a few hours, I'm gonna clean it thoroughly.
Over the next week, I cleaned the TV room, part of the dining room, the foyer, and part of the kitchen.
As with the bathroom, people's crap was EVERYWHERE. Not so much detail here, as it was just floors and shifting people's crap from place to place. I actually did a pretty good job of tidying it up, all things considered.
It was really difficult cleaning the carpet because there was no functional vacuum cleaner
Huzzah for beating rugs with brooms, just like in the old days.
But overall, it was ok. I didn't feel guilty about taking their space/ food/ utilities/ free rides/ etc.
They're trying to bribe me back there with cookies, cakes, and other such goodies. By then, I'll probably have forgotten the horror, and will do it again
Sorry 'bout the long post
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I will be the first to admit my personal room is a tiny bit cluttered and untidy, but I am not nearly as concerned as it affects no one but myself. But when it comes to common areas where everyone lives and has to deal with, its simply common courtesy to clean it up, especially when it starts to attract flies. The kicker is that one of the biggest contributors of the mess doesn't even live here.
), all they have to do is put their glass and plastic in a separate container that I even went through the trouble of purchasing and marking. Laziness will be the end of these people...
