Moving horror stories

When we were first married I had to clean the most disgusting bathroom in the universe. We were house sitting for my aunt’s ex, and Mom helped me clean. She had to coat the shower with toilet bowl cleaner and leave it for a bit to soften the sludge. Worked great, but the urine stench was horrible around the toilet; the fools had tiled it. I had to clean, put down baking soda, clean, etc. for days to remove the stench.

The worst was the master bedroom toilet. It wasn’t hooked to water, but they were using it anyway. It looked like someone had barfed and it was molding. I tossed a five gallon bucket of water on it to flush and the smell was so horrible, I nearly puked. I ran out of there like my tail was on fire. Grandpa had helped haul my stuff over, and Mom said he was jerking the winter plastic sheeting off the windows, muttering, “She doesn't have to live here.”

The kitchen took an entire day to clean. The formerly white curtains were brown and stiff with dirt. The floor was yellow and took hours to scrub (thank God, Mom helped). The fridge looked like a bloody bomb had gone off, there were bugs in the pantry, and the dishes in sink had been there so long some of the pans had been eaten through. There were several truckloads of garbage, and when a bag broke in the truck, maggots spilled out.

The only clean thing was the oven, because they only used it to reheat pizza.

I unzipped and washed the couch cushions, cringing at the brown stuff in the washing machine.

Mom drew the line at cleaning the boy’s room, bringing the boys from my aunt’s house. She made them collect a wheelbarrow worth of dog crap from from the small yard, too.

Mind you, John was in basic training. He came home to a sparkling trailer. Hmph. It did help us save up enough to buy our first place, so it was worth it.