Black Mold!! Long

[Strikesfirmly]

I don't want to kill the culture in the septic tank (that we haven't found yet).

Rid-X, can be done monthly or after bleach etc. Only runs about $6 a box roughly.

You may have septic/drain trouble also with that much iron - I sure do. A small amount of muriatic acid every few days can help keep your pipes open but then again it doesn't do your septic much good.


Since they no longer teach etiquette & manners in school, maybe they should teach actual home economics (and, apparently, basic cleaning...) instead of just baking cakes?

[BusyBee]

22 years old and she can't clean a bathroom? She should have hired someone to clean it before mommy got there, if she was that lazy (though I'd feel sorry for whoever she might have hired).

Maybe I'm being overly cynical but it seems to me that, if she's 22 and can't/won't clean the bathroom, she won't hire someone to clean it because *GASP* she wouldn't be able to afford those fabulous shoes she saw!
I'm betting Mummy came along and saw it, and either cleaned it for her or commanded her to clean it.

[MadMike]

They had monthly inspections of the dorms where I went to school. We were always notified way in advance of when it would be, and if we failed inspection the first time, we had one more chance to bring everything up to code. After the second time, they'd hire an outside company to do it, and charge us for it. I don't know how often it ever actually came to that, but it was in the handbook.

I moved in with this one guy who was slightly on the "clean freak" side, but a really cool guy. He told me some horror stories of some of the pigs he had as previous roommates, and I'm willing to bet even those were nowhere near as bad as the girl in the original post.

[roadside]

I had this little college apartment about a year ago. I thought it was a great deal. $350/month all bills paid. One-bedroom, full bath, kitchen, huge huge living room, walk-in closet, several other closets. It was a re-modeled basement of a guy that owned a local bar that did karaoke, so I always had a ride home. He told me that the basement sometimes flooded. I thought nothing of it because it was super cheap and actually a pretty cool place. Everything looked like it was from the 70s, light blue fixtures, paneling, crazy-ass carpet, and we were going through a drought so I wasn't worried about the water.

Then came the rain. It was only a little bit at first, and very rarely came into my apartment. Then it rained almost 3 days straight. I had about 2 inches in my kitchen and everything got wet. I got mildew everywhere and eventually wasn't able to stay much longer. He did knock the rent down for me because I would spend a couple hours each week pumping out the water, but I couldn't do it anymore and had to move out. I miss those free rides home from the bar.

[karma_gypsy]

O.k, so there were three girls living in this dorm? It NEVER occured to either one of them to simply *clean* the bathroom? Granted, mold/mildew does grow easily in some bathrooms, but when it gets to a point, it should be cleaned. It's not hard to clean a bathroom, considering they're one of the smallest rooms in the home . . . Hell, you could just fling bleach water every where and still make a difference . . . especially in a mildew ridden bathroom like that . . .

Honestly, how could you even take a shower in a tub with that much mildew on it? That's gross . . . I can handle the black mildew along the caulking line (considering that's the hardest place to get rid of it, aside from removing the entire caulking and putting in new). But in the bathtub? No thanks . . .

[Strikesfirmly]

At least in the US, a really sad fact is many places that have the filth we've been discussing are often HUD provided housing for low income families.

So basically, if you pay taxes you are subsidizing rent payments to the property owners so someone can be provided a home at very low monthly cost that they never clean, punch holes in, or occasionally, burn to the ground.

Then they move on to the next HUD provided home.

Vicious circle.

[LabCat]

My college room mate was a really nasty b**ch and her section of our living quarters was exactly like what the OP described. It always smelled like one of the following: weed, puke, beer, or used tampons (or a combination of the all of the above)

[JustaCashier]

It always smelled like........used tampons.....

Mike

[InsanityInc]

My god that chick's gotta be related to the idiot tenant that rented my place before me. She lived here for about 10 months, and never cleaned a da**ed thing. She tells me she left the place clean enough for me to move right in, knowing I’m moving in with a 2 month old baby.

We had to clean and paint everything. Run a rag over the wall, one swipe and it was jet black. All the walls and cabinets had to be painted because we couldn’t get all of the dirt off. We cleaned the rugs, and the first four times the water in the machine was black with dirt. The sixth time it was still light brown.

My landlord doesn’t mind if you have indoor cats, but NO dogs. The yard itself has sand fleas. This …..person moved her sister, her sister’s two kids, and not one, but four big dogs in. It took me six months to kill all of the fleas. The fleas that were upstairs I got rid of fairly easily, but the ones in the basement were a different story. The fleas had laid eggs in the concrete of the floor. I ended up buying Ortho HomeDefense bug killer, (it’s meant to go in the yard) soaking the basement, and moving into my parents for two weeks to let the fumes die down.
I haven’t run into her since, but I could quite cheerfully strangle her.

[Becks]

I must admit, my bathroom does have a slight mildew problem, no matter how often I scrub things down. I attribute it to the fact that there isn't a fan/vent in there, and it's too cold in the winter to keep the window open.

Some of the descriptive post gave me the shudders. Icky poo.

[blas]

I get SO damn angry because no matter what I do, that pink rust and that black mildew keeps coming back!

And as for yellow walls from smoking.........I take a Mr Clean Magic Eraser (is there anything that thing can't cure? lol) after the walls once a month along with my bleaching the tub and rubbing the bathroom walls down.

My walls are still as white as the day I moved in.......and I always smoke inside.

[platypus]

When I was a junior in college I shared "off site" college housing with two friends (girls) and four guys previously unknown to us. Within days we were taken over by pizza boxes, beer cans, a dead bird (with maggots) and a kitty litter box with fecal stratospheres - ie never cleaned since the day the kitten first went poop. It was so disgusting we had to get the board of college housing involved to evict three of them. It took us FOUR days to clean the place after they left, and it honestly wasn't that big. Still didn't get back most of our deposit because they said the holes in their bedrooms were there when they moved in. Oh well, I got an amazing cat though, after hiding her and telling them she ran away, at least I know animals have to eat every day. Ahh why are people so insanely nasty and brutish?

[Andara Bledin]

If you've got a bug problem and don't live near a water fowl (duck, goose, etc) nesting site, you might want to check into Ortho Sevin Dust. It's one of the most harmless bug killers on the market and it's really effective. My dad used to use it back when we had a ranch.

^-.-^

[TwoScoopsSciath]

Before I moved to Hell's Navel VA (read: Richmond), my mother and I lived in a "friend's" basement. For the first three months, we were fine. Nice neighborhood, a couple of sweet and friendly dogs, walking distance from all my happy little luxuries and (best of all) a refuge from my dirtbag stepdad.

Then we got back from a trip to Disney World with said friend, and there was about a week of heavy rain. I get up to take care of business late at night, flush, and the basement floods.

This wasn't the first time either. Apparently, it had to do with the hundred-year-old oak out back and it's roots growing into the pipes.

After the 6th time, we got kicked out anyway.

[MadMike]

I just remembered this story from my one friend.

She bought her house as a foreclosure, really cheap. From what she heard, the previous owner's parents had bought it for him, so he owned it free and clear. Must be nice...

Unfortunately, he re-mortgaged it, didn't bother to make any payments, and consequently, the place was foreclosed.

When my friend bought it, it was a horrible mess. The whole place smelled like pee, and she spent weeks cleaning it before she could move in. There were a couple spots that were so badly soaked, the floor had rotted and had to be repaired.

The worst part of all was the basement. She said she was going down there and throwing bleach water all over the place to get rid of the smell, which didn't completely go away for about two years.

She moved in when there was a lot of snow on the ground, so she couldn't really tell the state of the back yard. When it finally melted, she found a dog skeleton back there.

I just can't believe how gross some people can be.