• Uncategorized ,
• 14 May

By Josh Kattenberg

In the early days of our business, we realized one of our tenants had abandoned her rental home, and as new business owners, we personally drove to the property to clean and do maintenance. We didn’t realize until we walked in the door that we were entering the abode of a hoarder. As we stepped through the door, we were shocked to see a living room filled with magazines, newspapers, beer bottles, and mounds of clothes. We did a quick walk-through to assess the entire situation.

The place was small: two bedrooms, one bathroom, a small kitchen and living room, and a basement. As we stepped from the cluttered living room into the kitchen, one of our feet accidentally hit an overflowing bag of garbage, and a cloud of fruit flies erupted into our faces. Sputtering and waving our hands in front of our eyes, we pushed our way through the kitchen, which was littered with more bags of garbage, old food, and spilled cat food. With every movement, we dislodged more and more fruit flies, until we felt as though we were pushing our way through a gauzy gray curtain.

We escaped into the hallway and inspected the bedrooms. Saggy beds, broken furniture, and mounds of old clothes greeted us. The basement was almost beyond belief–packed tight with old clothes, sleeping bags, 70s-era furniture, a beer pong table. In one corner sat the washer and dryer and, beside it, to our disbelief, leaned bags and bags filled with dryer lint. Seriously? Who saves dryer lint?

Despite the quantity of stuff, it wasn’t worth $500. What size dumpster would we need? We ordered a semi-sized dumpster initially, filled that to the brim, and had to order a standard size dumpster to finish up. About a day later, the person in the neighboring apartment called us to tell us he was being invaded by fruit flies. I guess with their food source removed from the apartment we had just cleaned, they were going in search of new food sources.