About now my youngest sister, a senior in high school, is relishing in the freedom of being the only child at my parents home! I wonder if my parents are secretly doing little jigs around the living room counting the days till she leaves for college. The big day came last week, Nicki, her husband and one a half year son old moved into a townhouse not far from my parents house, but slightly farther than I moved the first time. Finally free of the burden of living between his parents house and ours, for their first place, it's perfect. 2 bedrooms upstairs, and an open living, dining and kitchen down. They had been saving for this moment for over a year, but walking into their place for the first time was a shock for the ages. You would assume renting from a reputable local agency, the kind of place that takes your deposit up front, before you're even allowed in the door, would make sure the place is in respectable renting condition. I guess someone slacked on this one. Nicki had asked if I could come by for the walk through, I assumed for moral, lassie dog, support, but maybe it was in case she needed a pit bull?
The place was a mess. It looked as if it hadn't seen a mop or a broom since 1992. The unit was supposed to be non smoking, but the burns in the carpets and yellowed walls spoke otherwise. The stove, and dishwasher were broken and unusable, the cutting bored was smeared with dried strawberry jam. It was disgusting. The agent showing us the unit, paid no attention to the filth, mentioning only that he hadn't seen the place in the 2 weeks it had been vacant. The threshold molding from the vinyl in the kitchen to the carpet, was bent upwards, walking across it barefoot would have been as bad as walking across broken glass. Nearly all the closet doors hung broken, a hefty shove required to get them closed. The vertical blinds covering the sliding glass door, open and shut, but wouldn't turn. I was astonished. I knew who the owners of the four-plex were and couldn't believe their property had slipped to such slum lord conditions. Nicki, she was ecstatic, never mind how much cleaning we had to do. She had a place.
Operation “Bleach it”, started in the kitchen with a narly smelling bleach and water mixture. Nicki, armed with the right hand of an industrial cleaning glove and a sponge. Began bleaching everything from the walls, to the cupboards and then the floors. Shelly, willing to do anything to help Nicki move, began in the dining room, the left glove, sponge, and bleach water her defense against the yellowed walls. I showed up about 20 minutes into operation “Bleach It”, armed with Home Depot orange buckets and an extender rod poll with a sponge on the end of it. I was all set to work on the vaulted ceilings, when Shelly decided we needed to switch jobs, she was taller than me after all and able to get all the hard to reach places. Nick's two sister in law's were armed with Windex and paper towels, their task; every piece of glass and mirrors were to be de-gunkified. I vacuumed and resolved every carpeted surface while the boys, tackled the broken window blinds, which were replaced by brand new drapes hanging from a clean rod. Four hours later, our eyes were burning, our hands were wrinkled, BUT the walls were white, and the place sanitary.
While in our cleaning frenzy, the locksmith dropped by for his visit, after changing out the locks, he told my sister that he hadn't seen anyone clean an apartment before moving in, in years. He seemed especially shocked at our bleaching of the walls. His comment made me wonder, do people not clean when moving into a new place? Do they just assume that the rental agency has taken the prior tenants deposit, hired a cleaning company, and actually cleaned the place. Or do people not care what germs and grossness could be living under there feet. I guess the only thing I can say, is Bleach it, you won't be sorry you did, but can you imagine the yuck if you don't.
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