Describe the Dirtiest House You've Ever Been In

[Jennshark]

What's the dirtiest house you've ever encountered? Stuff beyond the merely untidy and into the pathological realm. Mine is a friend's house in high school. 12 kids and two parents living in a three-bedroom dump with exposed wiring and one toilet . . . the kicker was the day I went over and the two undiapered toddlers had pooped in the living room and then deposited a poop on each stair leading to the basement.

My poor friend -- I couldn't even stand to eat at her house because of the filth and stench and was always making lame excuses so I could flee.

[danceswithcats]

Worst apartment cleanout was wall to wall filth/pill bottles/soiled undergarments-a sty sans piggies. Three trailerloads of trash went to the transfer station-over a ton of trash. :eek: Then I brought in the cleaning crew and started repairs. My bill to the landlord was over a grand.

Worst occupied home was someone who called me about bathroom repairs. Stink came out the front door when opened. Dogs with mangy fur sat on the furnishings licking themselves. Soggy newspaper on the floor surrounded the toilet and appeared to be about an inch thick. The tub had mildew that had mildew.

I said, OK-got it-I'll mail you an estimate. Don't you need to measure? Nah-I'm good. I wanted to get naked and put my clothes in a bag to keep my truck from getting skanky. Ewwww!

[ShadiRoxan]

This was about eight or nine years ago, so I don't exactly remember it in detail. I just know that I didn't want to touch anything.

The house belonged to my boyfriend's little sister's boyfriend and his father. They weren't exactly the highest of class and I don't think they had a clue as to what a house should look like. Not only was it filthy and strewn with trash, but it was falling apart too. The only toilet was permanently backed up. Tiles were falling off of the bathroom walls. When I had to pee I opted to drive down to the local public park after dark in not the best of neighborhoods. I don't understand how anyone could live like that.

[CalMeacham]

My crazy Uncle Carl, who's dead now. The entire house was a mess, especially the kitchem. He even managed to get white plastic conainers grimy, somehow.

What made it weird was that he apparently used to be a chef at the old Waldorf-Astoria in New York, way back when. You'd never guess it by the state of his kitche. I still have vivid memories of his shoving a very questionable dish of chicken at me and asking "Why don't you have some? Are you afraid it isn't clean?"

[zoid]

Hell, come on over to my house.

My wife's pregnant with twins and has been on bed rest for two weeks.
I thought I could handle it..........


the new maid comes Saturday.

[Alonzo John Blitz]

I was gonna say my place in Hollywood where I lived for nearly 20 years. When I moved out every horizontal surface was covered with books. Thousands of them. I gave most of them away. Dust an inch thick avalanched down when anything was moved.

But, no, nothing compared to the previous posts.

[MissGypsy]

My house. Ok, not now, but when my SO rented this place, he took it as-is and agreed to clean it and do a bunch of repairs in lieu of the first month’s rent.

There was rotting food piled all the way up to the faucet in both kitchen sinks. The kitchen floor was black, and he had to use a putty knife to chisel off the grime from the entire floor before he could even attack it with a scrub brush. The refrigerator was full of spilled, rotten food, and is still stained all over the inside from who-knows-what. The tile in the bathroom was so moldy and filthy that it simply couldn’t be cleaned, and has to be replaced.

Whoever lived here kept a dog upstairs in the storage closet, and the poor animal chewed the woodwork to bits trying to get out, and the smell of urine and poo was overwhelming. The hardwood floors are permanently ruined up there. The place used to be carpeted, but the carpet wasn’t even close to salvageable, so now we just have to deal with the stained and clawed hardwood.

He spent a month cleaning the downstairs before I moved in. His ex-wife, who runs her own housecleaning business, spent another week cleaning upstairs, including disposing of used needles and those little vials that junkies use for crack or heroin or whatever. :eek: I spent about two months scrubbing and bleaching and disinfecting everything.

I still think we should have had about three months free rent for turning this place back into a habitable abode. I have no idea who those people were, but they lived like freaking animals, and treated their poor animal like dirt. Gah, I still feel dirty just thinking about it.

[Abbie Carmichael]

The house of this guy I knew in high school. Poor guy, he was a good kid and I know he was embarassed. Why the hell his mother let it get that bad is beyond me because she seemed pretty normal. I can't even begin to describe it. All I can say is that it needed to be condemned, there's no way anyone could have ever gotten that place clean. And the smell, oy. You can't get rid of cat smell once it's in the carpet and walls.

Or maybe the house of a friend of my MIL's. I've never been there, but I've seen pictures that were enough to make me almost throw up (literally).

[panache45]

I don't know whether I can adequately describe an apartment I visited once in Manhattan.

The middle-aged guy who lived there literally never threw anything out. He had a 3-bedroom apartment (not cheap in NYC), and all the bedrooms were totally filled with things, and the living room and kitchen were about 90% filled.

When I say "filled," imagine this: You start with an empty room. You make a stack in one corner, of crates of empty bottles, old newspapers, crates of old clothing, etc. When that stack reaches the ceiling, you start another stack, right up against it. Eventually, you fill the entire room, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Then you start on the next room.

There was a path cleared from the front door to the kitchen and the bathroom. When you were on this path, you had stacks on both sides of you, floor to ceiling. You could dimly see some faint light way up ahead, from the bathroom window. The guy slept on a cot set up near the entrance to the apartment; that was the largest open space I saw. While I was there, I could hear the sound of critters scurrying around.

To this day, I have no idea how his belongings didn't start a fire, or go crashing into his downstairs neighbors.

[Anastasaeon]

A girl whose home I lived in shortly before moving back home (and a week later, unexectedly went on vacation here and havent been back). She was just.. so.. weird. The thing is, I paid board, but I was still her personal housekeeper, because she said so. I needed her for my rides to work, so I just bit my tongue and bore it. It got even worse when I quit my job - I was still paying board, since I still had an income from another source. But I became her absolute slave. "Since you're not doing anything..." and she'd hand me a list. Look. Just because I'm not working doesn't mean I'm doing nothing all day, I was seeking another job and looking into going back to school, making appointments with UI to discuss my options, etc.

Let me tell you. Every. Single. Day. She left a fresh list of chores to do - things I had just done the day before. The entire house had to be spotless, or she'd say I was no good at cleaning. Or, even better, that I had "no common sense". I'm getting to why it's the filthiest house I've ever been in.

She lives in a trailer - nothing wrong with that. But she has this gigantic Rottweiler, who should either have a much larger home to live in, or a proper fence/dog house and chain outside. I don't like the idea of keeping a dog outside all the time, but she really shouldn't have owned that dog. She should have given her to a family with proper space. She only took the dog home because the family she got it from was going to give her away to a new home, and she wanted to keep her. Certainly you can keep a dog in a trailer - but she couldn't, because she had absolutely no room. Not for a big dog like that. And so...
Every day, I'd have to send the dog to her parents' home, next door, and I swept black dog hair off of the white floors. Though I kept my door shut, it was still in my bedroom. And in the living room, the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom, her room. It clumped up and was in plant pots, plants, it was stuck to dirty dishes, it was on the sofa. Everywhere. Everywhere. Then she would come home and bring the dog back in, and it would start all over. Like a nightmare that won't end.
On top of that, for some reason, she would track mud from outside all over the house. Because I would clean it up. Filth, dirt, mud. And I mean sloppy, wet mud. It got to the point that even after I scrubbed her floors as clean as they could be, they still looked grubby, and faint mud streaks were stained into the floors. Beautiful.
Her home was stuffed to the gills with her precious "crystal". She didn't have normal eating plates, or glasses, they were ALL crystal. When Miss Rottweiler walked into her home, one wag of the tail often took out several crystal pieces. I would clean the glass. If something broke and it was her own fault, she'd mutter "Oh, well, i can just buy more when they go on sale." If I, or my cat, broke something? "That was my good crystal! You'll have to pay for that!" Which is fine. But then she would severely overcharge me. When I brought her her Princess House catelogue to show her what the real price was, she would say "Oh! It went way up since then. It's worth twice that much at least." (I'd double check with other PH reps - the price didn't go up).
Once, when my cat (never her precious kitty) knocked over a potted plant (actually, we can't prove that... and I am very suspicious, since the cat had slept with me that night, and I keep my door closed) she actually, honest to Og - left the shattered pot and the soil on the kitchen floor, and she went out for the day. Why did she just leave it? "So you would see what your cat did, and clean it up." Hey. I understand. I'll clean up after my own damned cat... but I'm not sure I would leave that nasty mess all over my kitchen floor for several hours until I was due to wake up (I had worked until 4:30am the night before, and didn't wake up until around 11am - she was up at 6, ate her breakfast, took her shower, got dressed up, all while that mess was on the floor. I don't know how she could stand it... but let's go on....)
Speaking of cleaning up after our own animals... my cat loved to stay beside me, and hung out primarily in my bedroom. I had her litterbox in the bathroom at first, but every time she'd take a dump, I'd never hear the end of it. I cleaned that thing twice a day to shut her up, but it just didn't work. So, fed up, I finally moved the litterbox to a corner of my room, and kept a window open. Not pleasant, but it shut the psycho up. She even commented on how much more pleasant her bathroom was without it. Get this: she let her own cat in for a night once. While we were sleeping, the poor cat had to go... and since the litterbox was not accessible to her anymore... she pooped in the bathtub. I woke up the next morning, psycho had taken off, and left me this note: Clean the shit out of the tub.
when she made a "snack", honest to Og. Every pan she owned. A snack to her? Fried steak. With onions and cabbage and peppers and mayo. Og forbid if she ever made dinner. However, she often ordered me to cook. Why? Since I was the better cook. I used up as little space and as few pots or pans as possible, and she's ask me how I ever did it. Fear of the dishes, said I.
The dishes. I had one bowl, one fork, and one glass, that I used over and over, washing between uses by hand. Because it was too hard to keep up with her dirty dishes, let alone my own.
I was the only person who did laundry. Og forbid if I folded the towels "wrong".

Why do I say she had the dirtiest house I've ever seen? Let's sum up:
Every single day, I cleaned the filth she left behind. Her floors, windows, dishes, laundry, furniture, toilet, tub, sinks, mirrors, more dishes, her bedroom, the walls (which somehow got filthy) the shit she spilled in the fridge, the oven had to be cleaned often because of her snacks or "quick dinners" (~sigh), the dog had to be bathed often because it got filthy quickly, water the half a million plants she kept (that she couldn't look after on her own). This all had to be done - every. single. day. Not to mention taking care of my own personal duties, keeping my own room neat, tending to my cat and her messes and litterbox, etc.

When I moved out, I came back a week later to pick some things up I'd left behind. You couldn't see the floor. Anywhere. There was junk piled everywhere. There were dishes piled high in filthy, cold water in the sink. Everything stunk. Whatever I touched felt weird and sticky. The dog had crusty sores around her eyes. Half-eaten bowls of crap were left everywhere. There were three garbage bags that hadn't been taken out, and had those big, black houseflies buzzing around them. I got my things and I bolted, nearly puking. I haven't spoken to her since.

I apologise for rambling quite a bit - this post doubles as a mild rant that I haven't been able to get off of my chest since it happened. I haven't said too much to friends and relatives about it, so I wouldn't seem like I just complained all the time. Finally, I get some release! She was a filthy, psycho, thieving, bragging, inconsiderate, unappreciative, mean person! And she has the filthiest house I've ever seen, because she has no one to boss around to clean it for her! *puke*!

Erg.

[Tomcat]

I delivered medical supplies for awhile and a lot of those were for prescriptions to private homes...there was one house that was so bad I would inhale at the sidewalk and run to the door, ring the bell, wait until the disgusting slobs would answer, hand them the drugs, wait for them to sign and then run away.

This is where I learned to hold my breath for 2 minutes with no problems.

The police and social services had been called on them a few times the place was so bad. Cats and dogs, throwing trash on the floor, needles, the works...but the worst part was the people themselves.

They were brother and sister - early 40's, unemployed, ailments galore (even a goiter! Huge growth out of the side of her neck. Nasty!). They probably never took a bath or a shower, and they never left the house (pizza boxes everywhere). What icked us out the most was that they were always in their underwear and, and, and...the main drug I delivered just gave us the willies:

She was on the Pill.

-Tcat

[AsecretK]

I

She was on the Pill.

-Tcat

:eek:

[Trunk]

A friend in high school.

Similar to a lot of others here, always dog/cat urine/poop smell and usually a poop somewhere in the house.

Broken windows.

Holes in doors.

Always dishes in the sink.

Mildew on mildew in the tub.

AND, they had a kid who was kind of "special". You'd always find toys in the toilet. Dark water in the tub with toys and clothes in it.

They would have a naked Christmas tree up in May with needles and broken ornaments on the floor all around it.

The thing I remember most was the stairs. EVERY single stair just had stuff pushed to boths sides on it, a comb, a book, tons of pet hair, a mug, some cassette tapes, a shirt. There was just a path up the middle with that stuff on both sides of every stair.

You weren't allowed to look their dog in the eye.

[Metacom]

Dear God, Anastaseon. I think the only thing missing from your story is an obese mother in a crib with a penchant for eggs.

[AmericanMaid]

My mother agreed to house-sit for her younger sister, Marissa, for a month. My aunt's house was so disgustingly dirty, this story lives on among our family. After a couple days, my mom called in her other sisters for help cleaning up the sty.

This house had:
- Unidentifiable stains on every piece of furniture
- Uncleaned litter box in the shower
- An entire room stuffed with random items
- Every drawer or shelf was stuffed with trash
- There were maggots in the kitchen. MAGGOTS!

My aunt had a little girl and the running joke we have is that the house was so dirty, my cousin will probably never catch a disease. It took my mom two weeks to clean out the house. Just writing this up, makes me shudder.

[Anastasaeon]

Dear God, Anastaseon. I think the only thing missing from your story is an obese mother in a crib with a penchant for eggs.

I'll admit it, I don't get the reference :o :(

Well, she's 410 lbs... does that count? :eek:
Come to think of it, she likes eggs, too. It was her most requested dish... "Make me something with lots of eggs in it." Yes'm.
And she did talk about putting rails on her bed to keep from falling out....

But she's not a mother. She wants to be.... :eek:

[lieu]

A couple of years ago some friends were telling me about someone they knew from high school. He lived there with just his Mom and they never, ever took their trash out. They started off just leaving the bags in a spare room but when it filled they began to use every room in the house. Trails were left where they could walk through but the bags had accumulated to a depth of about waist to shoulder high, depending. Apparently the garage was completely full up to the rafters. They kept at least one dog in the house and it's shit and puke was barely smellable over that of the rotting garbage. Several of my friends had been there and they all confirmed that it was every bit as bad as it sounded.

[KRC]

My Grandfather's. Stuff piled in the kitchen sink for months on end. Whiskey bottles and trash all over the kitchen counters. Same on the dining room table. My brother freaking out because there was moldy furniture in the bedroom he was supposed to stay in. One room devoured by termites so that there wasn't even a floor. My grandmother died in '69 and my grandfather died in '85 and I don't think the house was cleaned at all during those years. I have pictures where it literally looks like a tornado hit the house.

When he died my mother and my aunt cleared up the mail off the floor and commented that it was probably the first time anyone had seen the floor in 16 years. The termite room had to be bulldozed.

.

[ralph124c]

LIU's post reminded me of a tragic incident a few years back, in my uncle's town. An old woman and her retarded daughter were found dead in their house. The mailman noticed the mail piling up, and called the police, who had to break down the door (it was triple-locked). Inside, the police found the bodies of the old woman, who had died before the daughter. The daughter had died of starvation! Inside, the house was filled with bags of trash, junk and garbage. In the driveway was a pickup truck (4 flat tires), filled with bags of trash and garbage.
Sadly, nobody in the neighborhood knew these people..if neighbors had checked in on them, the tragedy need not have happened.
Sadly, there are such houses in many neighborhoods..so please, check up on your elderly neighbors!

[racer72]

I did maintainance for a guy that owned a bunch of rental houses. One morning I was given a work order for a rental and it had to be ready in 3 days. When I arrived at the house, all the windows were broken and the front door was nailed shut. I entered through the back doors and almost lost my breakfast. The woman that had lived there had allowed her horse and 2 goats free run of the house. I counted at least 20 piles of horse crap and at least 100 piles from the goats. The animals had chewed on virtally every piece of woodwork in the house. The toilet had apparently quit working so the renter started using the bathtub. When it got half full she nailed the door shut and was using 5 gallon buckets that she would put in the other bathroom when the buckets got full. The weird part was the toilet in the 2nd bath worked just fine. The renter that was suppose to be out of the house hadn't moved yet and the master bedroom was floor to ceiling with clothes, most brand name stuff and it all looked new.

The renter could not be located to so the humane society took the horse and goats. Goodwill would not take the clothes after seeing the house so they all went to the dump. And the house was knocked down and the owner built a duplex on the property.

[alice_in_wonderland]

My mom's former boss bought an acerage at a hugely reduced rate because the former owners had kept BIG GAME in their basement - yes, that's correct - Lions, and Tigers and Bears - OH MY!

Trust me - if you thought the litter box from a cat was stinky, you can't even imagine what drywall, permiated with lion and tiger pee smells like.

I'm pretty sure she made up the discount by having to have everything down there hauled out and disinfected and replaced.

Ew.

[Master Wang-Ka]

My roommates and I deliberately trashed our apartment, once... (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=2794129&highlight=bubbles#post2794129)

...and clicking will tell you the whole sordid story...

[Jennshark]

Reading everyone's responses reminded me of another frightening house of an elementary school friend. This family of ten lived on a very large property that had once been a chicken farm, so there were lots of outbuildings and leftover equipment, which they never cleaned up (and, as people with a lot of property in semi-rural areas tend to do, they had their own private junk and garbage piles going.) Additionally, the father was into buying old, beat-up hearses that he would park in the field in front of the house .

The original house was not much more than a shack to begin with and as children were born dad would add on to the house in a weekend-warrior manner: a few 2 x 4s and plywood sheets.

This was bad enough, but the clincher came when half of the house burned down. The family bought a bunch of used (and I mean very, very used) campers, pulled the campers up flush to the charred holes of the shack and -- voila -- each of the kids had their own "bedroom." It was kinda cool when I was a kid (especially as my friend's camper had a little sink and potty) but in retrospect it is rather disturbing. Now I wonder why they didn't just clean out the old chicken-housing buildings (which were solid brick with windows and electricity) and live there.

[papergirl]

I had some good friends in high school. Good people, some of the most loving parents I've ever met, incredibly intelligent. Messiest house I have ever seen in my life--not filthy, really, because it wasn't dirt so much as junk.
The kitchen surfaces were piled three or four feet high with...stuff. Not rotted food, but just...stuff. I had to change my baby's diaper, and had to lay him on my lap to do it, beause there was literally nowhere in the house to put him.
There was a path about 18 inches wide through the living room, from one chair to another.
They were all clean, good folk. Just a little odd, and not worried about things like cleaning house.

My dad once bought a house from a woman who was a packrat--she had stuff (papers, grocery bags, junk) piled so high that we couldn't open the doors to some of the rooms and had to climb in the windows to clean it out.

The third messiest house I've ever been in was my own. After my New Start in Life, though, it's better. Now I'm not even close to the top of the list! (What a great feeling!)

[Broomstick]

I was once part of the cleaning crew of a house owned by a woman who had become old and senile and died. The last years of her life she had been "looked after" by a "boyfriend" half her age. Who I never met. Actually, I'm sort of shakey on a lot of details.

Anyhow, the boyfriend had, at one point, locked her three rather large dogs in a front room because he, I suppose, couldn't deal with the anymore. He did continue to feed them, but never let them out. For anything.

Those dogs had been there a long time.

Dog food and water when in... nothing ever came out. Of the room, that is - things do come out of dogs, of course.

A loooooooong time.

We started with shovels.

Yes, the floor had to be replaced. After it was uncovered.

[MaxTheVool]

I actually kind of think it would be cool to have some kind of super-industrial spacesuit-like cleaning apparatus, where you'd have a fresh air rebreather and every square inch of you would be protected, and you'd be hosed off before you took your outfit off, so you'd be perfectly clean, smelling nice clean air, while attacking huge piles of anything with total gusto. It would be very satisfying, in a way.



I don't have any stories that even come close to all of this, fortunately. Although reading these always make me feel MUCH better about my own apartment. :)

[Alice The Goon]

I've been in a couple of those houses with the things stacked up with paths cleared for walking through. It's hard to imagine unless you've seen it. There HAS to be something pathological about this behavior.
I once visited a house so filthy, with weeks' worth of trash on every surface. There was a toddlers potty in the bathroom, and it was full to the brim with jelled urine. The urine had sat there for so long it jelled! I will never forget that.

[Beware of Doug]

There HAS to be something pathological about this behavior.
You bet. I imagine it all comes down to "me against the world," a lot of the time. Almost inevitably it is a sign of deep denial, of someone who has problems with some aspect of real life.

If you hoard objects, you may be saving them from an uncaring world that will throw them out or waste them, or alternatively, protecting yourself from the dangers outside (poverty/starvation/strangers). If you hoard trash, you may be anal or just paranoid (ie: people will go through your trash to find out all about you).

If you and/or your surroundings are compulsively dirty, you may just be OC about other matters (a surprising number of artists/musicians/rare book collectors are this way). Or you may just be rebelling against having cleanliness literally beaten into you as a child by misguided parents.

If you hoard pets, you believe YOU are the only person anywhere who cares about them. You continue to believe this even when they are filthy and starving...because it's OK as long as it's YOU. Perhaps the saddest case, because of the suffering it brings, and the callousness to that suffering – all ironically in the name of caring.

[kung fu lola]

I actually kind of think it would be cool to have some kind of super-industrial spacesuit-like cleaning apparatus, where you'd have a fresh air rebreather and every square inch of you would be protected, and you'd be hosed off before you took your outfit off, so you'd be perfectly clean, smelling nice clean air, while attacking huge piles of anything with total gusto. It would be very satisfying, in a way.

IRRC, people who clean up after murders and suicides actually have those suits.

The grimiest house I've ever been in was one of my friends' in high school. Her mom was mentally ill and they had a handful of pets.

For a combination of clutter and grime, probably a distant family members' where I spent Christmas one year. I lost my appetite just looking around me.

I'm not the best housekeeper in the world, though. I regularly scrub my bathroom, but I'm one of those people who does dishes twice a week, leaves their clothes in the laundry hamper, and never dusts.

[Obsidian]

If you hoard pets, you believe YOU are the only person anywhere who cares about them. You continue to believe this even when they are filthy and starving...because it's OK as long as it's YOU. Perhaps the saddest case, because of the suffering it brings, and the callousness to that suffering – all ironically in the name of caring.

For sheer grossness, it's hard to beat a cat collector. Two of our kitties came to us as fosters from a house that had contained over 100 cats. Every surface was covered with offal, with the highlight being the actual "litter boxes", so long neglected that they had become moldy.

Also, the people that the health department/humane societies send in to collectors houses often do wear haz-mat suits. It's dangerous to breath that much mold & bacteria.

[Earthworm Jim]

You bet. I imagine it all comes down to "me against the world," a lot of the time. Almost inevitably it is a sign of deep denial, of someone who has problems with some aspect of real life.

If you hoard objects, you may be saving them from an uncaring world that will throw them out or waste them, or alternatively, protecting yourself from the dangers outside (poverty/starvation/strangers). If you hoard trash, you may be anal or just paranoid (ie: people will go through your trash to find out all about you).

If you and/or your surroundings are compulsively dirty, you may just be OC about other matters (a surprising number of artists/musicians/rare book collectors are this way). Or you may just be rebelling against having cleanliness literally beaten into you as a child by misguided parents.

If you hoard pets, you believe YOU are the only person anywhere who cares about them. You continue to believe this even when they are filthy and starving...because it's OK as long as it's YOU. Perhaps the saddest case, because of the suffering it brings, and the callousness to that suffering – all ironically in the name of caring.
You left out people like me - just plain lazy, with a bunch of kids :)

My own house is the worst I've ever been in. Laundry & toys & yesterdays mail - oh my. (It's sparkling clean & clutter-free compared to these stories, though!)

[asterion]

IRRC, people who clean up after murders and suicides actually have those suits.

Last night's CSI rerun had a guy with exactly that job. And one of those suits.

[Metacom]

Last night's CSI rerun had a guy with exactly that job. And one of those suits.
Additionally, the classic Mythbusters episode where they put two (dead) pigs in a corvette and lock it in a storage container for a month has footage of using environmental suits to cleanup a mess. IIRC, even with the full-face industrial respirators (filtered, no air tank) they were wearing they still gagged. A lot.

[ShadiRoxan]

I have another one to add. It's not as bad as some of these, but what really gets me is how clueless this woman is when it comes to cleanliness.

I have a neighbor who has two 15 month old sons. They are eating adult food now, but still haven't really figured out utensils. At mealtime she sits them in their highchairs and gives them the sauciest food possible it seems. These kids live off of things like hamburger helper. Being that they're only 15 months old, they think it's fun to squish their food in their hands and throw things all over the place. Food gets all over the kitchen floor, in their hair, all over the highchairs. After they're done she just kinda wipes their hands a little and lets them roam free. Oh, forgot to mention that they don't wear bibs, so the food is all over their clothes too.

The boys then run all over the living room getting this food all over the cloth furniture. They're still on bottles and have figured out how to play with them to get the juice or milk all over the place. The couch smells like rotting milk. There're juice stains all over the place.

The dishes are never done. The sink always seems to be piled high and overflowing. The bottles are just thrown into the pile when she thinks they're dirty (often after a day or two's worth of use). She doesn't bother rinsing them out so the little bit of liquid left tends to ferment. The milk becomes solid chunks. The bibs that she once used for them sit at the bottom of her kitchen sink. They're the vinyl kind that you just wipe off. The have turned from green to brown and have a gooey film growing on them. She had fruit flies coming out of her sink and couldn't figure out the cause.

The trash doesn't get taken out nearly as often as it should. There's often garbage sticking out of the top and piled over the lid. It also contains diapers. Now, I know toddler diapers don't smell that great in the first place, but her children's somehow smell ten times worse. Her entire apartment reeks of trash.

The boys' room has more dirty diapers stacked on top of the diaper genie. The pad on the changing table is streaked with feces. Often times you can find old bottles in their cribs with remnants of juice or milk.

On several occasions I've helped the babysitter bathe them. The tub has chunks of things all along the bottom of it. It needs to be scrubbed. Both the babysitter and I have caught them eating three day old food off of the kitchen floor. Their babysitter refuses to even put them in their highchairs because of the crusted on food.

That's just the filth. There's clutter and mess on top of all that. I don't know how anyone can stand it.

[Gatopescado]

Years ago I was hangin' out with a gal and she told me about her disgusting neighbors. She was prone to exagerate and I found it hard to believe all the nasty stuff she told me about these folks. The folks seemed pretty normal, the guy had a "good" job, the wife was a nurse (!) and the three little girls were "normal".

They went on vacation and my friend had to feed thier dogs. She took me over to the house. I still find it hard to deal with what I saw.

Not a single horizontal surface without trash, dirty and clean laundry, dog crap and general disarray spread over it. The kitchen had crusty dishes piled in the sink and overflowing. Filth everywhere. Open jars of mustard, mayo, peanut-butter and everything else you can imagine just sitting on the counter, all with at least 2 or 3 forks, knives or spoons sticking out of them. Dogs roaming free to graze and crap as they saw fit. Discarded food everywhere.

The toilet was broken. That didn't stop them from crapping in it. It just piled up to the rim, then they started to crap and piss in the bathtub!

Then they just went on vacation. Leaving the place like that. Food out, crap piled high in the toilet and tub, dogs roaming free. Oh, the humanity!

I heard a short time later that the county threatened to remove the children if they didn't clean the place up.

This post can't even begin to discribe how nasty the place really was.

[lisacurl]

... I have a neighbor who has two 15 month old sons. ...
That's just the filth. There's clutter and mess on top of all that. I don't know how anyone can stand it.
I'm not one to scream for people to be reported to child protective services at the drop of a hat, but those children are in danger.

[Mr. Goob]

My across the road and down aways neighbor is a piece of work. he occasionally does construction work. The rest of the time he sits home drinking and playing video games. The wife works a lot of doubles at a resturant to just barely pay the bills.

A four car garage with an added on lean-to is packed solid with odds and ends of construction debris that he just might need a piece of someday. There are three non running vehicles in the driveway and yard. Semi rural area, so not all that weird yet.

I'm great friends with my next door neighbors. Their kids are the same age as the scummy neighbors. Pre-and early teens. The kids will play together but only outside. Neighbor kids refuse to go into scummo's house because of the smell. The cars are the same way. You know it's bad when the 15 year old neighbor kid will wait for a 30 minute school bus ride in 0° weather rather than ride in scummo's car because of the smell. Bathing is optional and so is school attendance. Laundry and dishes are done out of absolute necissity. When there is nothing left to use/wear.

The last straw is when I found out the septic system broke down. Mr. scummo takes the 5 gallon pails that catch the drips and overflow in the basement to the back of the property every few days a dumps them out.

It's a moral dilemma of mine to not blow them in for that. The kids are really good in spite of all this, and I don't know how things would shake out for them.

[Savannah]

The house I'm in now. My brother and my father have been living here since my mother died in 2001 and it is not good. Reading the posts is making me feel slightly better, but not much, 'cause I'm still stuck here until Sunday. That's an awful thing to say, but I can't wait to get out of this house and this town.

It's dirty and it's smelly and it's stuffed with junk. Unfortunately, there's 'good' stuff amid the junk, things of my mother's that I want, so I'm going to pack up what I want and take it with us. But folks, it smells. And the longer I'm here, the more depressed and apathetic I feel. I wanted to throw out things right away, but my brother won't let me. I keep opening windows, but my brother closes them. The walls are yellow/brown with old smoke. They've had a housecleaner come in weekly for the upstairs (the downstairs is your basic filthy nightmare with years of grime. clutter and garbage). But it's gross. Every breath I take in here makes me feel ill, and it's hard to stop breathing.

I went into the furnace room to sort through my teenaged possessions that I'd left here, and went through stuff that hadn't been unpacked by my mum when they moved here, and this is no joke: I found fruitcake from the 1980s.

Fruitcake does eventually go bad.

I went through the house and took pictures with my digital camera because I never, EVER want to let myself get like this. I'm a bit slobby, too, so it's not a long way to slide. (I love a nice clean house, but there's more fun things to do than clean--like read the Straight Dope Message Boards!)

Heavy indoor smoking and bachelor living do not cleanliness make.

Also, before my mum got sick, I think she was depressed, too. Her room (my parents were living kind of one up / one down separate lives) had to be cleaned out by me while she was in the hospital, and it was beyond belief. THere were no surfaces available, no floor to be seen, and she was hoarding newspapers and stuff because was 'going to read them'. Same with videotapes--she was a news junkie, and as much as she watched TV, if you're taping two shows while watching a third, you're never, ever going to get caught up. Then there was the shopping thing... I found 24 boxes of bread machine bread mix in her bedroom. Unbelievable.

I just need to stop this before it sets in in myself. Luckily, I don't think my husband would stand for it.

I wish I could set this house on fire, but I can't. I keep telling myself it's not my problem and it's not my house--but it is. I've inherited half.

The squalor is making me immobile and apathetic, but it's also distracting me from the grief over my father.

I just don't know how it will ever be cleaned up enough to sell. I'm hoping my brother will buy out my half and then it will be his problem.

[ShadiRoxan]

I'm not one to scream for people to be reported to child protective services at the drop of a hat, but those children are in danger.

I realize that it needs to be done. The babysitter and I are trying to find polite and subtle ways to show her how to do it. I really don't think she knows better. Lately we've resorted to outright telling her what needs to be done and how to do it. She's still not bright enough to figure it out.

We're trying to figure out how CPS can get involved without her children being taken away and without her realizing who called. In the meantime the babysitter and I try our best to make the living environment for the boys better.

[Savannah]

Did I mention my brother's 106-pound Rottweiler who's in the house? (No dog pee or poop yet, though he barfed on the steps.) And the chain-smoking? Dog and Marlboros. The funk, the funk, the funk. And the fact that when my brother makes something to eat, he just throws bits of food on the floor for the dog?

The upstairs bathroom is sort of okay--there is that lovely stale-pee smell, though, and there is no exhaust fan. He's been smoking in there, so the walls and ceiling have brown drip marks and spots all over from shower condensation meeting dust, grime and smoke.

When I get home, to my own house, there will be some serious housecleaning going on.

[kidchameleon]

Last night's CSI rerun had a guy with exactly that job. And one of those suits.

Bah, that was just a Tyvek bunny suit, we have those at work. They are disposable, a good barrier but boy do you sweat. He had a nice half-face filter though.

[Indygrrl]

An ex-friend lives like many of the stories described, and the saddest part is she has a son who lives with her. He's like five or six now, and I fear he's completely neglected. CPS has been called by random people at least four times, and he was removed from the home once, but he's back now.

I realize the child welfare system needs help, but when we just sit by as kids live in squalor it makes me sick. This isn't a third world country, but some people live like it is. It sickens me and I hate her for how she is. She's ruined that child with her ways, his life is over before it's even begun.

But, I digress.... :(

[yBeayf]

This is second-hand, and probably doesn't compare to some of what y'all have seen, but I know a person who knew a person in school whose family's house was the worst she had ever seen. The only details I remember were several years' worth of dirty clothes compacted into a floor-like surface on the ground -- there was at least a foot of them througout the whole house. Also, any open beverage container had to be covered, lest cockroaches drop down from the ceiling and land in one's drink with uncanny accuracy.

[Enright3]

I'm definately going to read this thread, but when I saw it, I immediately wanted to post this link.

http://www.network54.com/Realm/Squalor_Survivors/

My apologies if it's already been posted.

E3

[Obsidian]

I worry my sister will become one of these people when she's out on her own. She is an unbelievable pack-rat/slob. And that's saying something, because I come from a long line of messy people with too much stuff. However, my parents have a dog that will eat anything (from crayons to christmas ornaments, and anything that was once or might aspire to someday be food), which keeps most of the slobery at bay.

The dog, however, does not go in my sisters room, which is like the household black hole. Things just migrate there, in this giant pile that grows mutantly on one wall, until you can't even walk in there. The pile is waist-level and you have to climb over it to get to the bed. It's full of stuffed animals, toys, dirty clothes & trash. And every fall, she and my mom have a HUGE screaming fight when we have to wade in an muck out so they can turn the heat on without causing a fire.

She has this hoard of stuffed animals and toys, and she won't let us throw anything away. My mom puts them in plastic tubs in the basement, and they migrate back up. Thankfully, she actually listens to my parents when they tell her no food in her room, or they'd have bugs. But so much trash. And used maxi-pads! This summer, her air conditioner began to leak. The pile got damp, then mildewed. My parents discovered the water when it began to drip out the dining room ceiling below. Warped the floor, wrecked the wall.

To say my father had a fit would be putting mildly. The next monday while she was at school, he bagged up just about everything in her room, and took it directly to the dump. Apparently, she then moved into my old room and began stashing stuff in there.

She came out to visit me last summer. Within a few days, the pile began near her suitcase. Nothing I said or did kept it away for long, and by the end of the summer it was taking over my den. As soon as I left for work, she would close up all the windows & drapes (no AC) and my the time I got home it was so stuffy and stinky I could barely breathe.

My sister is 19, somewhat developmentally disabled. I'm terrified of what she'll be like when she's on her own (or has my parents house to herself, or my parents are to old/sick to force her to clean). She has the potential to be one of those scary people.

[Beware of Doug]

http://www.network54.com/Realm/Squalor_Survivors/

Wow. I see myself in some of those stories and pix, although I like to think I would offed myself long before I got to live like that. Then again, humans have an incredible ability to adapt...I'm scared as hell to get a kitty cat, in case next thing I know there's 4, then 10, then 20 and a permanent potpourri of pee, accompanied by a karpet of kitty krap that is Somebody Else's Problem.

[Zjestika]

I had a roommate who was mostly pretty neat, except for the dishes and her 2 cats. We would argue about doing dishes, and I tried to compromise by buying dish towels and suggesting we do them together (these were her dishes, mind you, not mine), but she rejected that, saying that towel-drying dishes was "unsanitary." You know what else is unsanitary? A sink full of maggots, which I discovered upon coming home one day.
She also had a closet that was the litter box. The litter box was in the closet, but since she couldn't be bothered to clean it, the closet was full of cat piss and shit. Her cats would throw up on the floor, and she wouldn't clean it up. The grossest thing: her cat had kittens on the carpet behind her bed and she never cleaned it up. Bleah.

My dad had a couple of rental properties and for some reason the people he rented to were always filthy slobs. He'd hire me and my brother to help clean them when they moved out. The time I remember most was pretty typical: filthy kitchens with caked sinks and range tops, broken furniture, trash, and clothes all left behind. The thing that stood out to me was that the back bedroom had a bunch of used douches everywhere, all over the floor. That woman must have had some kind of problem.

I know that my dad has a bunch of good filthy house stories, but he's still just a lurker. I'm calling you out, dad!

ZJ

[Jennshark]

[QUOTE=Enright3]I'm definately going to read this thread, but when I saw it, I immediately wanted to post this link.

http://www.network54.com/Realm/Squalor_Survivors/

Great if stomach-churning site. Is this a "sickness" that only affects people who have the means to procure and store lots of stuff in a private area? I wonder if this kind of accumulation has a correlative in non-Western and/or less materialistic societies?

Is there a DSM diagnosis for hoarding and crazed accumulation?

[FriarTed]

I was gonna say my place in Hollywood where I lived for nearly 20 years. When I moved out every horizontal surface was covered with books. Thousands of them. I gave most of them away. Dust an inch thick avalanched down when anything was moved.

But, no, nothing compared to the previous posts.


Books and dust!?!?! Sheeesh! Welcome to my room!


YOU GAVE THEM AWAY?!?!?!!?!? :D

[FriarTed]

I'll admit it, I don't get the reference :o :(

Well, she's 410 lbs... does that count? :eek:
Come to think of it, she likes eggs, too. It was her most requested dish... "Make me something with lots of eggs in it." Yes'm.
And she did talk about putting rails on her bed to keep from falling out....

But she's not a mother. She wants to be.... :eek:


Go to the video store immediately and rent PINK FLAMINGOS, directed by John Waters & starring Divine.

And start a thread about it in Cafe Society telling us your reaction. :D

[Sampiro]

I grew up on what was essentially a family compound in very rural Alabama. Two of the houses on the place belonged to my grandmother and my great-aunts respectively.

Grandmother's house: When my grandmother was a science teacher in 30s, 40s, 50s and early 60s people actually called her batshit crazy because she said one day men would walk on the moon. This was a wrong thing for them to do for two reasons: one is that men really did walk on the moon and the other is that it turned a blind eye to many perfectly valid reasons to call her batshit crazy, which she really was. She was also one of the most evil human beings I've ever known (manipulative, two-faced, abusive, completely selfish, malicious, etc.) and her house totally reflected the evil.
For starters she was a total pack rat of the Collyer Brothers (http://earthdude1.tripod.com/collyer/collyer.html) variety who to my knowledge never threw away anything- magazines, newspapers, egg cartons, milk cartons, broken furniture- anything. Add to this that I don't believe she even owned a mop or a broom- everything in the place was covered in dirt and grime and slime. Even as a little boy I didn't have to be told not to eat anything that came from her kitchen- I'd pretty much pegged that one- though if I had I'm pretty sure my mother would have swept down and yanked it from my mouth like it was a cyanide slurpy. As somebody above described, there were rooms in her house that had to have passageways through them and rooms that were totally unusable because even the door wouldn't open. She evidently had a phobia of some sort of starving because one bedroom literally (we learned after she had to be sent to a nursing home) was stacked from floor to ceiling with bags of rice, flour, cans of soup, gallon cans of chocolate syrup and an increasingly eccentric collection of non-perishables; while she had lived through the Depression she had never missed a meal so I don't know where the fear came from.)
In any case, it was just filth and crap through and through. Add to this a very gross sidepoint-
while she had perfectly good running water, she grew so lazy and lax in her habits that she slept with an empty Crisco can next to her bed in case she had to relieve herself during the night [I suppose it's really no more gross than the chamber pots she would have grown up with, but to my late 20th century sensibilities it seemed it] and had an old rug on her back porch that she sometimes used as a depository. Her sister, a 40 year veteran of the state mental hospital, moved in with her during the 1970s and was very prone to pulling up her dress and peeing in front of anybody who cared to witness.
Grandmother literally culled our garbage as well and most of her clothes were our hand-me-downs (old jackets, jeans, etc.). This was not a poor woman- she had two very good retirement pensions that actually gave her more income than most heads of families in AL at the time- but she was almost incapable of spending money. So she would usually be found dressed like a scarecrow, never showered, woke a little filthier each day than the night before and the house decaying just a bit more.
When she finally had to be put into a nursing home the house was in such a condition that "where do you start?" There were eggs in her refrigerator that exploded when they were touched. There were the remains of two enormous upright pianos and a room filled with nasty old sofas piled one on top of another. We finally ended up renting the house on a "First three months free to anybody who will clean it out" basis. God alone knows how much money was literally burned in the bonfire- Grandmother had a habit of hiding money in old books and newspapers (of which there was a ton) and other household objects- but had you seen the house you'd know why it wasn't worth looking.

My great-aunts house: Their place wasn't as disgusting as my grandmothers, but it was definitely not a place you'd hold a wedding. While they weren't as insane as my grandmother, they were eccentric- they were twins who into their 90s not only lived in the house where they were born and slept in the room where they were born but still shared the same bed where they were born. This was a rambling old dog-trot homeplace (for those not familiar- a dog trot is a fairly common type of folk-home in the south distinguished by a wide open hallway through the middle to allow breeze) and true to its name the aunts had several dogs and cats. They never much enjoyed housework and when their mother died when they were in their 70s they basically rebelled and stopped altogether. They'd sometimes sweep the floor with straw brooms they made themselves, but mopping and scrubbing- just wasn't gonna happen.
And like all good Southern maiden aunts they had an army of inbred cats who had full access to everything, so there was that smell. One night one of their cats had kittens between the two of them in their bed and they still didn't change the sheets.
They had no running water and it was by choice; my father did everything but hijack them and force them to have it installed, but they didn't want it and, when they finally relented in their early 90s and got it, wouldn't use it. They thought it was indescribably nasty that people would defecate inside the house. They used to love to tell the story of their father who in the 1910s went to visit their brother, who had married and built a house closer to town. When their father needed to relieve himself he asked where the outhouse was and was shown the toilet and given instructions on how to use it (which almost constipated him). When he asked where he was going to sleep that night (the house only had about three rooms and there were several kids) his son proudly took him onto the screened in "sleeping porch" where a bed was set up- this was actually evidently something of an honor in the 1910s as the screened in porch was the coolest place in the house at night. Their father came home and told them "I ain't never goin' to see your brother Harley again long as I live... he's got the craziest damn house you ever saw. You shit inside it and you sleep outside it." They shared his sentiments.
One of my favorite memories from their house of horrors: in the 1970s (their 80s) their old gas stove died (they would use gas and electricity, though the latter mainly because they liked The Tonight Show) and my brother and I were given the task of moving it out so the new one could be installed. As we budged it we felt it bump on something and there beneath was a long-dead and almost perfectly mummified gray and black cat staring up at us with a shrivelled expression. I screamed. Kitty (the sassier of the two) just calmly looked at it and said "Well I'll be... that's where Smokey Blue ever got to!" while Carrie, also non-disturbed, just agreed "Yep... we'd always wondered. I'm glad to learn he didn't just run away cause he didn't like us." Kitty and Carrie made great old fashioned biscuits and sausages and sweet potato pies but I never ate another bite from their kitchen.


My friend Tim can't compete with my grandmother and aunts but it's not for lack of trying. I've known his places to be absolutely disgusting by modern urban standards. One of his grosser moments was when he moved into an efficiency and ordered a pizza on his first day, placing the leftovers in his refrigerator. He didn't renew his lease and when he moved out almost a year later, the pizza box was still in there. He also keeps jars of olives on his toilet as a snack, which I find gross for reasons I can't even begin to catalog.

[Kyla]

We're trying to figure out how CPS can get involved without her children being taken away and without her realizing who called. In the meantime the babysitter and I try our best to make the living environment for the boys better.

I'm pretty sure you can report to CPS anonymously.

A friend of mine had CPS called on her for her house being unsafe for her kids. A number of factors had contributed to it getting to that point, and it was a wakeup call she needed and was actually grateful for.

[DeVena]

My cousin's best friend lives in a trailer, in Texas. She lived here with her 5 year old daughter and 3 year old son. I was there in February, 1990 and the once-live Christmas tree was still up... from 1988. Still decorated and everything. Clothes in piles all over the floors, no telling clean from dirty. Food and trash were everywhere. They had a tame rat that lived with them, not exactly a pet. It just decided to stop running away from them. The rat was cleaner than the children.

[ivylass]

Well, reading these stories makes my blood run cold. My story isn't as bad as all that, but it was still bad to me.

When we moved from SC to Florida, instead of selling the house we rented it out. Our last tenant was there for about four years. She paid the rent on time each month, and the Property Manager would send us bills now and then, for AC repair and such.

Well, last summer, the house had appreciated enough that we decided to sell it. We asked the tenant to move out, and she did. Then Ivylad and I drove up to clean it up and sell it, thinking we could spend a couple of days sight-seeing.

Ha.

First off, the neighbors filled us in. She owned neither a vacuum cleaner or a lawn mower. The place was covered in roaches. We set off twelve bug bombs on two separate occassions and still had to get the exterminator in three times. The PM apparently knew none of this, and had no idea the house was in such bad shape. I don't think the carpet had been vacuumed in four years. The bathtub was black. The dryer vent had busted out and was haphazardly duct-taped back together. Closet doors were removed for whatever reason, and she had painted over the wall-paper.

It took us longer than expected, and we eventually had to hire a handyman to finish up. But, we got our asking price for the house, and learned an important lesson: Never try to own a rental property more than a short drive away. The PM does not care, as long as the rent is paid on time.

[Zabali_Clawbane]

Is there a DSM diagnosis for hoarding and crazed accumulation?


You might find this page (http://www.ocfoundation.org/1005/m400a_001.htm), from this (http://www.ocfoundation.org/1005/index.html) site interesting.

[Savannah]

Bad property manager, Ivylass . Our department does once-yearly inspections inside the rental unit, every unit, from apartment suites to houses. The property managers also try to do regular drive-bys of the houses/duplexes in their portfolios. I've sent lots of letters regarding junk outside the houses and lawn maintenance, and then scheduled follow-up inspections and drive-bys for the property managers to see that tenants are keeping the premises in the condition that they assured us they would. Your property manager was definitely lax.

[vivalostwages]

I've described this several times, but that was in other threads.

For the "enjoyment" of those here, I'll have another go:

My friend "Lula" (fake name) has hoarding and cluttering disorders and an OCD personality to match. She still lives in her folks' house, which she has systematically clogged up with crap over the past six or seven years. When her dad was still alive and her mom wasn't in assisted living, I used to go over there now and then.
Anyway, the kitchen drawers and cabinets are loaded with plastic containers, lids and utensils, corks, plastic bags, rubber bands and twist ties. There is so much crap around the counters that it took me 2 hours just to make a simple breakfast when I was elder-sitting Lula's mom while daughter went on vacation. The fridge and freezer were crammed full of stuff and it was hard to find anything in there. Hundreds of packets of ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise fall out of the fridge doors when you open it. The back patio has boxes of stuff piled up on it and I'm sure the garage is similar.
The front living room cannot be walked through because there is crap everywhere, including boxes of cereal, crackers and cookies that should be in the kitchen. Gift baskets sit and get dusty in front of the fireplace. Cobwebs gather on the statues and little bench in the entryway.
The spare room is full of clothing, shoes and hotel toiletries which Lula is so attached to that she can't bear the thought of donating them even though she never uses them.
Lula's bedroom is a place she has not entered in at least three years. She cannot walk to the bed, which is loaded with stuff anyway, and she can't get to her closet, so she hangs her clothes on hangers on top of the doorways and on cupboard handles. She has been sleeping in her mom's bed. Her mom's room is also hopelessly cluttered with clothing, shoes and jewelry, as well as furniture.
The den features stacks of magazines and newspapers, plus all kinds of trinkets and souvenirs which Lula cannot live without because she wants a sentimental reminder of any place she's ever been to.
It is not possible to vacuum the house due to the lack of space to push a vacuum.
I refuse to go in there until it is cleaned out, but she takes every opportunity to be out of the house so she won't have to deal with it.

[vivalostwages]

I should also note that Lula's colleagues have no idea what her house looks like because she always looks good at work: hair fixed, makeup on, nice clothes.
I wouldn't even bother to tell them what a pigsty she comes out of because they'd never believe it in a million years.

I'm just glad her mom isn't there anymore, because it was quite obviously unsafe for a frail, elderly lady.

[vivalostwages]

You might find this page (http://www.ocfoundation.org/1005/m400a_001.htm), from this (http://www.ocfoundation.org/1005/index.html) site interesting.

I think I read those when looking up info on Lula's condition.
Also see this:


http://ocd.stanford.edu/about/symptoms.html

[Blown & Injected]

I have only witnessed it once about 25 years ago, but a friend that does service work in homes regularly reports what he refers to as a TRAIL HOUSE

Guess it saves on the trash removal bill. Just a path wide enough to walk from one room to the next.

[sturmhauke]

I knew a guy in high school whose house had junk piled about waist high all over the place, with trails between rooms. It wasn't rotting garbage or anything nasty smelling, just random crap. I hung out there because he had a better computer than me, but it always weirded me out. The really strange part was that his dad was a firefighter.

There was another guy who lived in apartment across from mine with stacks of newspaper piled pretty high. Everyone in the complex tended to leave their doors open on summer evenings since there was no AC, so I could see straight into the archives. All he ever seemed to do was play solitaire on his computer, which had a magenta tinted monitor image.

[sidle]

Hell, come on over to my house.

My wife's pregnant with twins and has been on bed rest for two weeks.
I thought I could handle it..........


the new maid comes Saturday.

You know what? Consider that your good deed PSA of the day.
I may have to go on bed rest within the next couple of months...I think I'll start today teaching my husband how to do the portion of housework that I normally take care of. (He's mean with a vacuum, but doesn't know his way around a kitchen).
Maybe I can make the transition easier on him.
:)

[ivylass]

Bad property manager, Ivylass . Our department does once-yearly inspections inside the rental unit, every unit, from apartment suites to houses. The property managers also try to do regular drive-bys of the houses/duplexes in their portfolios. I've sent lots of letters regarding junk outside the houses and lawn maintenance, and then scheduled follow-up inspections and drive-bys for the property managers to see that tenants are keeping the premises in the condition that they assured us they would. Your property manager was definitely lax.

I'm not painting all PM's with the same brush, but when we relayed the info to the PM about the lack of a vacuum or a lawnmower, she said, "I didn't know that." There may have been external drive-bys, but I guarantee no one from the PM's office went into the house.

The fact is, no one is going to care about your property as much as you are. So, we're buying a new investment property close by, and we'll manage it ourselves.

[bunny of doom]

When DSL first came out I had a job as an installer. We wnet to peoples houses and did the install for them. I saw lots of dirty houses but the worst one ever was unbelievable.

When I walked up to the house it looked like any other house in the neighborhood (your average middle class neighborhood). The front door was open with just a glass storm door. It was too dark inside to see much especially through the streaks of what I thought was mud but turned out to be dog shit on the glass door. When I was let in th first thing I saw was the living room. The carpet had been pulled up about halfway across the room and down the halway so it was bare concrete with piles of dog crap everywhere. The half of the living room that still had carpet was leterally piled to the ceiling with garbage. Pizza boxes beer cans fast food wrappers you name it. The smell was overwhelming. It normally took 20 to 30 minutes to install and test the DSL I finished this install in less than 5 minutes and only took one breath that entire time. The room the computer was in was empty except for a table with the computer and a phone on it and a chair. It was still filthy. When I picked up the phone to move it out of my way 3 roaches ran from under it.

Up until this install we didn't have an option to refuse to do the install unless there was no adult present. After describing the conditions to my boss we then had the option to refuse a job because of smell or filth do to the health hazard.

I understand that humans are able to adapt to almost any conditions that over time things get worse and you just get used to it. So I can understand how they live like that but they have to know that its bad and to expose a stranger to it I can't understand.

[meenie7]

I've heard stories from others about all sorts of cluttered/dirty/nasty houses, but the worst I ever was in myself was a house up the street from where I grew up.

When I was a kid (until I was maybe 10 or 11) I was friends with a girl named "Sally" who lived about four houses up from me, on the other side of our fairly average, middle class residential street. We mostly played outside, and her yard was a lot of fun -- much bigger than mine, with a little pond where frogs lived, all these weird trees and high grass, and lots of strange vehicles in the driveway (maybe these should have been signs of something, but I was only a kid, remember...)

One day, though, it was hot out, and we were thirsty, so Sally let me come inside to get a drink, and I witnessed the grossest house I've ever seen. The whole place smelled musty and gross, and everything was dark. They had a couple of really expensive pure bred dogs that they treated like junk and locked in cages in the living room most of the time (in addition to the scary-ass Great Dane/pit bull mix who lived in a pen in the backyard, baying and leaping like it wanted to eat your face all day long), but, apparently, they let them out sometimes, because these animals had crapped on *everything* in the house -- all over the floors, on the rugs, all over my friend's bed, everywhere. The sight of this little girl's room, all stark and sad to begin with (no toys, nothing on the wall, etc.) and every flat surface in it covered in piles of shit jarred and scared me even then, and now that I'm an adult, it just makes me ill.

I never went in her house again, and I still wish to this day that I'd told my parents and had them call DCF on her mom.

[coffeecat]

Time to clean up. (1st degree squalor) (http://www.squalorsurvivors.com/squalor/measuring.shtml)

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

This is a good thread for those of us who could end up treading that path. Not the dirt - ewww. But it's far too easy to accumulate and not toss. I live in a place that's too small with a lot of stuff I'm unwilling to give up because I don't plan to live here forever and I think it's stupid to toss something out only to buy one later. This is exacerbated by my dad's estate taking far too long to wind up (due to a conflict with step-family) and my being unwilling to get rid of things until it was over. Finally, I suffer from 'environmental guilt' - I feel bad if I don't recycle or reuse things.

I have a large stack of slide trays (you know, the round ones for slide projectors) that I can't stand the idea of tossing, but I've tried various things (including posting here asking for ideas) to figure out what to do with them to no avail. I keep thinking some good idea will surely come up.

My building will be having a yard sale in a month or so - a lot of things will go then, including some reusables that will go in the free pile, and after that I'll have more space to shoehorn the things I want to keep into but in the meantime, I'm almost at the point where I'm walking a trail among my things :(

An ex of mine was a major slob - he had a tub that had probably never been washed, trash around the house, and general grot. I gave him hell for it - he'd let his four kids stay in those conditions when they visited him!

Some years ago when I did a lot of Scottish country dancing, we'd go to events in different towns and get billetted to folks' houses. In Vermont once we stayed at the home of two professors. You'd think they would be neat and organized, but this was a house that had general stuff (not really trash, but papers and books and clothes) piled about two feet high throughout the house. This was a place that had a walking path about a foot wide through the piles. The bathroom wasn't actually too bad. The kitchen had some dirty dishes but nothing like the other places described here. The fridge, however, was another story - we didn't dare eat anything there we hadn't brought; there were some scary looking science projects in that thing.

[GingerOfTheNorth]

Quiddity (your name makes me smile :)) Glomfuster: Have you looked into Freecycle? Just today I've rid myself of a vacuum and two dining chairs which we didn't need, but were too good to throw away; also, with Freecycle people come to you, so you don't need to take the stuff off to the Goodwill.

Victoria Area Freecycle (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/victoriafreecycle/")

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Quiddity (your name makes me smile :))

:)

Glomfuster: Have you looked into Freecycle? Just today I've rid myself of a vacuum and two dining chairs which we didn't need, but were too good to throw away; also, with Freecycle people come to you, so you don't need to take the stuff off to the Goodwill.

Victoria Area Freecycle (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/victoriafreecycle/")[/QUOTE]
It's awkward because I'm in a condo. I'm counting on the yard sale where I'll put out 'free' stuff, and I'll include that in the ad. In fact, what I might do is mention the yard sale on Freecycle, where I'll list the free takeables. I can hold them for whoever says they'll take them. Thanks for the idea!

[AuntiePam]

Until I read this thread, I thought my sister-in-law's place was bad. We helped her move once, and had to tear up carpeting (in a rental) because of the cat poop. She was so embarrassed, she cried.

But I've never seen anything as bad as the places described here.

Does it run in families? The people I knew who grew up in dirt and disorder don't live that way now.

[alice_in_wonderland]

I was in this Zombie house once that was really bad...

[Czarcasm]

One time, at zombie band camp...