A Note on a Rental

Ok. I will begin this by saying I readily own up to not being the most stellar housekeeper in the world. There always seems to be something more interesting to do than dust, vacuum, or mop, especially in the remote corners. The great outdoors and the garden call my name more loudly than the vacuum cleaner does. We live in the country so, yes, we fight mice, spiders and random bugs and dirt and whatnot that gets tracked in.. It happens. I have little room to criticize other people regarding their housekeeping skills. However this story takes housekeeping, or lack thereof, into realms I cannot stomach. 

March 15th our long time tenant passed away. He’d lived in our little rental house for about 9 years. He was a very nice guy and always paid on time, always had a joke. We rented it strictly to him. But his daughter would bounce from living with her mother, his ex girlfriend, to living with him… at least for the first couple of years he was there. Then the last 5 or 6 years, or longer, that he was there she’d lived there with him. She didn’t work, she didn’t even drive. Ben had just retired when he moved in, and the daughter was a junior or senior in high school. So she must be in her mid 20s by now. She just stayed in the house, rarely went anywhere, had little to no social life other than the internet, or social media, or whatever it was that she did online. For that matter, Ben (not his real name) did nothing outside. People would ask us if anyone lived in the house. He worked nights part time as a security guard in Springfield and stayed holed up in the house most of the time. He always paid rent on time and rarely had any complaints. Gary did a few repairs on the place but only what you’d expect on an old house. We knew they’d order a great deal of stuff online. Ben had done some sort of online business on Amazon, selling stuff, his first year or two there. But it hadn’t panned out the way he’d hoped so he went to doing security guard work.

Ben passed away on March 15; it is now April 25 and the house has not been cleaned out. The ex, who is the executor of his estate, such as it is, keeps telling us that she is waiting for a neighbor to be able to help her move things.  I think she and the daughter have taken pretty much what they want, aside from the car, a couple of air purifiers and maybe random kitchen appliances.  There are no plates or flatware, and just bits of boxed food like rice and crackers.  A loaf of bread is still there in a pot with a glass lid. There are still a few items they could sell for money. The car, lawnmower, a nice keyboard and random tools and equipment as well as a bunch of bedding. There had been no sign of them even attempting to pack up any of this, or to clean anything.

There is very little furniture aside from sofa, love seat, recliner and a random end table or two. There’s one room with old mattresses leaned against the wall and random collections of both full and empty boxes. They saved every box they got and when the pile in the house got too large, they took them out to the shed, or to the little garage.  More on that later. 

In the bedrooms there are piles of bedding and random clothes all over. They do have new mattresses in each bedroom. This is at the end of the daughter’s bed:

Apparently the daughter had a thing for what looks like Monster energy drinks. They are all empty. 

Here’s another angle of her room:

You can’t see them but there are various sized pentagrams drawn on a poster, or on notepaper. There are empty candy containers and wrappers and ziplock baggies of crackers.

Ben had bought a new lawnmower a few years back and kept things mowed and trimmed up outside. 

But inside, especially the kitchen? Hoo boy!

We don’t think they, neither he nor his daughter, ever cleaned, or if they did it was less than once a year. They had lots of cleaning supplies; full bottles of all sorts of cleaners, mop and fancy mop bucket, brooms and vacuum cleaner.  But something somewhere was lacking…

Here in SW MO we have very hard water. We are constantly fighting lime buildup. Neither Ben nor his daughter apparently found it worthwhile to even start the fight with the lime.  You can’t really tell but behind the kitchen faucet was a buildup of black gunk at least a quarter of an inch thick.  It smelled. 

The pictures don’t even show how bad the lime build up was.  Fortunately we have a jug of food grade commercial acid we used to clean the milk tank and lines. We used it liberally in the kitchen and it cut right through the buildup. Gary let the tub fixtures soak in vinegar overnight and that cleaned them up spiffy. 

Below is a corner of the kitchen cabinet. Yes. The tiny black dots are mice feces.  They were all over the counters as well. You can’t really see it in the picture but there are cobwebs in every corner, along with multiple spider egg sacks.  

Behold below the irony of almost full containers of cleaners on a counter absolutely coated with a thick film of greasy dust and sprinkled with mouse feces. I had already moved a crockpot and a couple other items before taking this pic.

Now.  If you are the type to get queasy please scroll rapidly on by the next picture. If not, let me prep you for it. In the kitchen there were 3 glue traps; one on the counter, two in different drawers.  Here was what was in one drawer:

Yes. It’s a petrified mouse, partially skeletal.  There was one on the counter as well.  Yes, indeed.  It, too, had bones visible. The one in a different drawer was a fully exposed mouse skeleton.  I’m gagging right now just thinking about it. 

I. Can’t. Even.

Weirdly enough on a shelf in the kitchen was this box:

Gary said, “Oh, that must be poison.” 

No. It had two sleeves of crackers in it.  There were two ziplock baggies of the crackers in the daughter’s bedroom. 

And bizarrely enough on the floor just outside of each bedroom was a small saucer with chunks of soap. The soap had tiny gnaw marks around the edges.

The first couple of years Ben was there he kept cats in the house. After the daughter moved in permanently no cats were allowed in the house, they all lived outside and were allowed to breed indiscriminately and roam at will. 

There was bug spray on the counter, no sign of roaches or crickets or anything like that.

Lots and lots of mouse sign. But no evidence of mouse poison.  

Any ideas or conjectures on this?

Other issues:

The water heater was allowed to leak for over a year before he told us about it. Gary will replace it.  And apparently they didn’t use the bathroom fan or even open a window because the ceiling was covered in mold or mildew.  We had to repaint with Killz. 

I could go on. But I won’t. Ha!

One evening a couple of days ago Gary got the tractor, an 18 ft trailer and had Ellen and I come help. We loaded the trailer with empty boxes, from house, garage and shed. And there are still boxes in the shed. They were crawling with brown recluse spiders. It was freaky. 

Anyway.  We took them to a dozer pile and burned them. 

And that is where it stands so far. We do have someone who is coming to look at it tomorrow…to rent it once it’s presentable. I’m not sure what will happen with the “stuff.”  Eventually, if they fail to keep up the payments the car will get repossessed. If not, Gary might have to drag it out of the way. We keep hoping that THIS will be the weekend that it gets cleaned out and taken care of, however we have been hoping that every weekend for a month now. 

It’s becoming very frustrating. We realize that it wasn’t either the daughter nor the ex who initially rented the place, but when the ex agreed to become executor of the estate didn’t she take on the responsibility to take care of things after he passed? 

I hope they do come this weekend.