ONETIME- Frat tales: What is that smell?

Laura Farley of Merry Maids
PHOTO BY RYAN HOOVER

One time, there was a guy with a brown bathroom, and once we cleaned it, it was white. We had to use the strongest chemical that we had on the walls and toilet. I just went in there with my shirt over my face, spraying the whole bathroom with it. And people showered in that! You can't get clean in a dirty shower!

You must understand that we clean a lot of homes that are like museums, and if there's a speck of dust, you'll notice it. (We sometimes think that it's imaginary dust because we can't even find it.) But every so often, there are cases where people just don't clean up a simple mess and let it sit for us when they could have easily wiped it up themselves, thereby making the mess worse. 

Sometimes, people's cats (for whatever reason) have emotional problems and they relieve themselves on the coffee table and the baseboards and the vents with the central air registers in the floor. That gets really gross. But much worse still are those rare people who know that their dogs have bathroom problems somewhere in the house and have obviously left it specifically for you the next time you come two or three weeks later. And it will be in an obvious spot where they could have just wiped it up when it was fresh, but... "Leave it for the maids! They'll get it!" We have chisels for such jobs. 

I guess that was no worse than the hair clogs that we encounter sometimes in people's sinks and their shower drains. That's a pretty nasty smell: a hair clog that has been there for a while rotting. 

Fraternity houses can be awful, too– dried up condoms stuck to the floor and worse, or dried-up vomit under the bed from a one-night stand that they didn't know had vomited. They probably wondered all semester, 'What is that smell?' 

Keep in mind that these cases are the exceptions. But a few people out there need to take a little more responsibility about keeping their surroundings cleaner. I mean, we aren't hazmat specialists. 

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