Uncleanliness is an Issue

Written by Susan Bailey, MS

Someone once said…”Patience is a virtue,” well so is cleanliness. Unfortunately, in the line of work this company is in, cleanliness can be a far away dream. Why? Because it seems that tenants do not understand what being clean is.

Okay, I am not saying that all our tenants are dirty. I am saying that some of our tenants live in conditions that could attract roaches or mice or other critters, and then our employees have to go into these apartments afterwards and clean other people’s filth.

There is not much in life that surprises me. There are plenty of things that disgust me though. Some of the apartments I have seen after a tenant moves or is evicted is just down right gross. You see, I was not raised to live in dirty surroundings. In fact, I was doing housework by age 8. I may not have been grateful then, when I just wanted to go play, but I am grateful now that I learned how to clean and how to keep my abode looking presentable.

Imagine that you, the reader, is a cleaning specialist who is called to make a cost estimate for cleaning an apartment after a tenant moved out. You walk into the hallway leading to the apartment and instantly are assaulted by a fowl smell of urine. The floors are supposed to be a tan color, but look more like a gray color because of the dirt and grime that has been tracked over the floor.

You put the key in the lock, open the door into the kitchen, and the smell seems to burn the hairs inside your nostrils. Yep that urine smell is coming from the apartment. You cover your nose and make an OMG face, say a few explicit words, say a few more explicit words and then try to walk through the garbage lying on the floor.

The floor is filthy, garbage can overflowing onto the floor, with paper, banana peels, dirty diapers, and food scraps. There are any number of bacteria enticing dirty plates, pots and pans full of oil, and a sink full of gooey water. The counter tops are cluttered with empty cereal boxes, bread wrappers, sticky, sugary piles of something that you think may be kool-aid, or melted ice cream bars. You try not to gag at the smell.

The cupboard doors are all hanging open with left over food the tenant did not take. One shelf was covered in rice that spewed downward and landed on something that looked like honey. As you investigate, you can smell another different smell, and inside another cupboard is a bag of potatoes going rotten. There are still dishes in the cupboards, dirty and clean ones thrown together. There are pans in the oven, burnt from someone not paying attention while cooking. On top of the stove, which is white covered with caked on grease, are several pots. One has water and two hot dogs floating in it, and the other you are not sure what it is.

In one corner you discover the source of the urine smell. It is a litter box, overflowing with excrement and litter strewn over urine soaked newspapers piled on top of one another. There is no cat in sight. You cover your nose and force yourself to not throw up. The refrigerator is beside the urine box about two feet away. The electric had already been turned off. The doors to the refrigerator were shut. You take a deep breath and open the door, not sure what you will find inside.

This smell sends you looking for fresh air, so you head outside and venture behind the house where the apartment is located. What you see is unbelievable! Bags of garbage busted open, the garbage container full of garbage that was not put into bags, old broken down bikes, brooms, mops covered in mud, dirty diapers laying open with poop inside, old busted furniture, a rusted swing set, a pile of all kinds of metal, a glass topped outdoor table with the glass broken. You had seen enough and go back inside to see what the rest of the apartment had in store for you.

You decide to check the freezer, since the refrigerator sent you outside searching for clean air. Inside are two empty ice cream containers, an open bag of chicken that has maggots on it, a moldy loaf of bread. You wonder how long the apartment has sat empty without electricity.

The apartment itself is probably really nice once cleaned for it has hard wood floors throughout with the original woodwork–never painted. It has a few interesting built in shelves from when the house was first constructed which were covered in newspapers. The bathroom had been remodeled, but the mirror was broken on the medicine cabinet with the door hanging by one hinge. The white toilet inside was black, the white tub inside was brown and was filled with clothes and toys. The floor was dusted with powder, the little garbage can had excrement inside appearing as if someone used it as a toilet. All the light bulbs were either missing or busted. The register vent in the floor was caked with cat hair because something sticky had been spilled on it.

Further investigation into the apartment revealed closets with clothes not taken, mostly on the floor. Kids toys were thrown on the bedroom floors; there was a television with a busted screen and beside it was something that looked like dried vomit. There was some curtains still hanging, put up with push pins and a rope. The walls were scribbled with illegible writing and stick figures drawn in crayon and markers. There was also stuff that looked like dried food on the floor right below a big hole in the wall.

You think to yourself, “what kind of people live like this?” It was clear that they had no respect for the property owner or themselves and trying to come up with an estimate for the disaster inside and outside the house was going to take some time. At that moment you decide, it is not a job you wish to pursue, no matter how much it pays.

Is this an exaggeration? It is not. I have not always worked in the office and I have witnessed first-hand some of the disgusting ways apartments are left behind by tenants.

So, uncleanliness is an issue when it comes to property management and there is really no way of knowing how a tenant will treat the property before he/she moves in. One of our owners suggested that property owners should be allowed to have the tenants arrested for destruction of property. Bravo, absolutely! To live like the above scenario I described is ridiculous that much is true, but why people live that way comes from their upbringing. Chances are, many unclean persons had parents that lived the same way.

Since this is not a blog about psychological issues, and is a blog about property management, one can only speculate truly why property owners are left with picking up the pieces of their property and getting it ready for the next tenant who may or may not be an uncleanliness issue.