In the Words of Rosanne Rosannadanna, It's Always Somethin'

In my post last week ... just last week ... I told you how on May 1st we signed the lease to rent a little house 20 minutes north of here.  Within a few days we rented a van, emptied our two storage units which were crammed & piled to the hilt, & took all that stuff up to the house along with about 90% of what was in my craft room & maybe 20% of other things.  No furniture yet though ... the movers would be moving that.  On Monday of this week I decided that I had better clean the kitchen so I could start moving my kitchen things up there. John planned to take up one load of things in the car, drop them off along with me, then head back & forth another time or two while I stayed behind to work in the kitchen.

As I stated in my last posting, the outside of the house was power washed, the walls were all repainted, Stanley Steamer cleaned the carpets, the homeowner took down all the light fixtures & cleaned them along with the ceiling fans, & cleaners came to give the kitchen & bathrooms "a good cleaning."  When we did the last walk though the house before signing the lease, everything appeared to be lovely.  I only opened one or two of the bottom kitchen cabinets & saw that the cleaners hadn't removed the random contact paper as I had requested.  The homeowner simply told me I could go ahead & remove it myself.    

So on Monday I gathered together a few rolls of paper towels, some Lysol disinfectant cleaner, & some Dawn antibacterial dish liquid.  Even though the kitchen had been cleaned, I still wanted to give the cabinets & drawers a wipe with disinfectant after I pulled off the random contact paper.  As I moved from cabinet to cabinet, I couldn't believe it.  When I finished wiping just one cabinet with the Lysol spray & a handful of paper towels, this is what the paper towels looked like.  Every cabinet & drawer I wiped out resulted in the paper towels looking like this.

In one of the cabinets, at the top front corner, there was a large cocoon or spider egg nest or some such thing which I had to remove.

The tops of the cabinet doors were greasy.  There were crumbs inside several of the cabinets & drawers.  When I got up on the counter to check the tops of the cabinets, they were full of grease, dust & debris.  

I spent four hours cleaning those cabinets & drawers ... just the insides & the doors ... with Lysol spray & paper towels.  I knew I would have to go over them one more time with soapy water to get them totally clean.  I had not expected to have to do all that work.  I was crying.  John was upset.  

That night I contacted the homeowner to let her know that the cleaners had not cleaned the cabinets & drawers.  I began my email very nicely, telling her how much John & I appreciated all the work she, her husband, & others had done to prepare the home for our arrival.  I then told her that I was, however, quite dismayed with the condition of the kitchen cabinets & drawers.  I described the condition & included half a dozen photos, telling her that I had spent four hours cleaning them & would need to spend a couple more hours to finish.  I told her that I hadn't looked inside the bathroom cabinets & drawers but I was guessing that if the cleaners hadn't cleaned the kitchen cabinets & drawers, they probably hadn't cleaned the bathroom ones either.  

Honestly ... if you hired cleaners to clean for you & they totally ignored the cabinets & drawers in the kitchen ... most likely in the bathrooms as well ... wouldn't you want to be made aware of it so that you could bring this to their attention?  I would!  And if I were renting a home to someone & they told me that they had found the kitchen cabinets & drawers looking this way ... & even sent me photographs as proof ... I would be so embarrassed!  I would apologize profusely to that person ... even offering them some money off their next month's rent as a way to make it up to them for having to spend all that time cleaning!  And I would thank them for letting me know this so that I could take it up with the cleaners!  But that is not how the homeowners responded to my email. Here is the email I received ... word for word.

_____________________

Shirlee and John,

Howard and I have discussed your lengthy, in depth e-mail regarding the sub-standard condition of our rental home.  We realize that what we have done in the past nor what we will do in the future will satisfy your strict standards.  It is obvious this tenant/landlord relationship will not work out, so please send your Lexington mailing address and we will return your deposit, first month's rent along with a voided lease agreement.

Please move your items out as soon as possible and leave the keys and garage door opener on the counter.

_____________________

To say that I was in shock is an understatement! Talk about overreacting!  Talk about exaggeration! I reread the email I had sent to her, which, by the way, was far from lengthy.  I had not been nasty or accusatory or anything of the sort.  John agreed.  He suggested I respond to say that we were merely letting her know that the cleaners had not done the job she paid them to do so that she would be aware of this before hiring them again, to tell her again how much we appreciated all the work that had been done, & to ask if they were sure they wanted to void the lease.  Her response was a description of the "couple thousand dollars" they had spent getting the house cleaned & in good repair, listing everything the money was spent on including "cabinets cleaned!"  I was told that what they consider to be "rental ready," we consider "not good enough" ... therefore, they were voiding the lease & wanted our things out of the home as soon as possible.

Hello???  Did they not look at the photos I sent??? They might have paid for the cabinets to be cleaned, but they weren't cleaned. 

So this coming Sunday, John & I will be renting another truck & killing ourselves making three or four trips back & forth in one day to bring 3 rooms full of boxes & an entire garage packed full of things back here to pile in our garage, dining area, & living room since we no longer have the storage units.  I have spent today & will spend tomorrow shuffling things about to make room for this mass of stuff.  

I have also once again started searching the online rental sites looking for rental homes. Pickings are slim at this late date.  I have no idea where we will end up living or what we will end up living in. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of

"Shirlee's Life!"