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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to expect a new house to be clean?

84 replies

Trazzletoes · 10/07/2012 10:38

When we moved in to our new house, it was absolutely filthy - dirty toilets, dirty cupboards in the kitchen... All the furniture in the master bedroom is fitted and EVERY SINGLE drawer boasted short, curly hairs. Don't even get me started on the slug infestation in the kitchen and the fact that the dishwasher doesn't work... freezer not been defrosted in, apparently, several years. I am not a particularly clean and tidy person, but I would be so ashamed to leave my house in such a disgusting state for someone else to move in... am I alone in this? By the way, the people we bought from were a middle-aged couple with adult children who appeared to be perfectly capable of using a j-cloth and some Cif, but it looks like they just chose not to. I understand that on buying someone else's house there will always be shoddy DIY. I can cope with that because I had the opportunity to notice that before purchase but am bitter about the slugs and gross hairs. Am I alone? Anyone have worse new house stories to make me feel better? Please? :o

OP posts:

Badvoc · 10/07/2012 11:14

As another poster has said, in our first house I think the vendors stopped cleaning as soon as the offer was accepted...v v grim :(

This one wasnt too bad...did a deep clean anyway as I would even in a new build tbh.

Some people are slatterns though :)

HandMadeTail · 10/07/2012 11:15

Fortified, a thong doesn't have to cover your arse!

TroubleIsBrewing · 10/07/2012 11:15

House we moved into was a total tip, spent weeks cleaning and tidying it. However there was the most terrible smell in the garden that we couldn't identify and couldn't get rid off. A couple of weeks later we realised that the previous occupants had emptied the contents of their fridge and freezer over the garden fence into the field behind.

blueberryboybait · 10/07/2012 11:16

When we moved into our current house we had to get professional cleaners in, it took 5 of them 2 hours to clean the place so it was habitable. When we first turned the oven on the fan blew a cloud of dog hair at us.

BeautifulBlondePineapple · 10/07/2012 11:17

We moved out our old house the day before we exchanged & the removal company kept our stuff in the van overnight so that we had time to clean our old house properly before the new people got the keys. It was sparkling - defrosted fridge & freezer, polished all floors, oven looked like knew, arranged for the window cleaner to come, washed down walls, bathrooms were shiny shiny etc etc. Looked awesome.

Moved into the new house and had to do it all again coz it was bogging. :(

Thankfully no chickenshit though. Who the hell would do that!??!?

FuckerSnailInYourHedgerow · 10/07/2012 11:17

I rent and I've always defrosted the freezer before moving. The last house we lived in we had trouble with the landlord not wanting to fix anything, we witheld a months rent and moved out. I still went back and cleaned it before telling the landlord that we had left, I didn't want new tenants moving into the mess that we had to face.

gnushoes · 10/07/2012 11:17

One of the owners of our house ran a cleaning company. It was utterly filthy when we moved in -- and I mean, filthy.

5madthings · 10/07/2012 11:17

i dont think you are being unreasonable to expect them to have left it reasonably clean, we always did, we did move into one rented house once and it was RANK to make it worse it was friends of ours who had just moved out, i knew she wasnt what you would call house proud, but i did think they would clean a bit but no a plughole full of hair! filthy, nowhere hoovered etc and the cheek of it was that on the day they were moving out they had got us to help move their stuff!

sugarice · 10/07/2012 11:20

I cleaned all through the cupboards, bleached the kitchen and hoovered when we left our last house.I also left a bottle of sparkling wine and a punnet of strawberries in the very clean fridge as a welcome to the new owners.

DamselInDisgrace · 10/07/2012 11:22

The thing that is really irritating about moving into filthy rented houses is that you know the LL will almost certainly have taken money out of the previous tenant's deposit for cleaning (quite reasonably), but then hasn't bothered getting cleaners in.

When we left out last house, the letting agent doing the inspection said it was the cleanest house he'd inspected for that purpose. This clearly isn't because we are clean freaks; it's because people so often leave houses in a disgusting state that it's surprising when it's vaguely clean.

oldraver · 10/07/2012 11:27

I moved into one house ans was greeted by an incredible smell.. no fitted appliances so we were looking around for discarded milk bottle or something. We finally realised that the carpet tiles in the kitchen were soaking with dog piss and had to strip them out before we could do anything else.

The sellers were the 'oh we are moving on to something sooo much better now, than this little old place' and did have an element of snobbishness to them. They had been really obstructive to us going round to the house to measure up after we had agreed the sale. I really wanted to phone them and tell them what scutters they were

fortifiedwithtea · 10/07/2012 11:27

HandMadeTail The thong was size 10 I looked at the label boak. It would have given me the biggest wedgey known to mankind. Regretfully typping sitting on my size 18 bum .

FireOverBabylon · 10/07/2012 11:32

OP were theree any extenuating circumstances? The house we're in now was filthy when we moved in, and still had food in the fridge! It turned out that the lady owner had sustained a head injury moving stuff out of the shed so she and her teenage / adult children had spent the time they should have been cleaning at A&E. She phoned later to apologise and said to just check any food we found.

The previous house we moved into was just grotty because of laziness by the sinlg male owner. He had stopped caring when we went to view it - pants dring over a washing basket when we went to view the house etc. It would have been nice had he decided not to wee over the seat rather than lift it when he used the loo, but nothing that couldn't be tackled with mask, heavy duty gloves and caustic soda as a temporary measure until we had a new bathroom fitted. Oh, and we never did use the old bath. I was happy to try and clean it but DH took one look at the hairs in the plug hole and told me to leave it and we'd get a new bath!

Sassybeast · 10/07/2012 11:34

When we moved into the house that we had been renting out, I was stunned at the state that it was left in. Complete with used tampons behind radiators, and mould growing in the oven.

Original poster

Trazzletoes · 10/07/2012 11:35

Fire not that I'm aware of... As I said, I'm currently sat amongst piles of clutter. I'm not born organised, clean or tidy. But I would have been ashamed to leave someone else to clean up pubes out of my drawers. Not really that certain as to how they got there in the first place... trying not to think about it...

OP posts:

sheeplikessleep · 10/07/2012 11:37

Ugh, the house we moved into had shit marks in the toilet bowl, stank of dogs and smoke, hadn't vacuumed and bits all over carpet etc (kitchen floor was carpet).

BUT, we knew / expected when we looked around that it would be a state. She didn't make any effort for viewing, so I wasn't expecting a clean house when she moved out.

My mum was fairly disgusted though, as she offered to help us clean it up. She talked about it for months!!

Haggisfish · 10/07/2012 11:44

My friends found a double ended dildo in a drawer in their new rented flat. And the previous owners of my house had liberally sprayed the oven with oven cleaner, but not bothered to clean it off, nor to leave us a note to tell us - the kitchen filled with toxic fumes as we heated the oven for our first dinner. Sigh.

cantspel · 10/07/2012 11:46

Not the house we ended up buying but we viewed a lovely house in our ideal location but it was like the adams family mansion with cobwebs floating across every ceiling and photo frame and when we got to the bedrooms their was a teen boy in one watching porn on a laptop and in the other a used sanitary towel in the sink.
God only knows what sort of state they would have left it in had we bought it.

Summerblaze · 10/07/2012 11:54

The house we moved into was so disgusting that you had to wash your hands when you touched a light switch. I don't actually know how you can create that much Dirt on a light switch. Took several deep cleans and replaced some stuff. It was rank.

Moominsarescary · 10/07/2012 11:58

My mums just had the same problem, the place was filthy. Also the garage was full and they left wardrobes in the house with underwear still in them

MrsKwazii · 10/07/2012 12:03

When we moved out of our last house we left it super clean - I'd be too embarrassed not to. We also left wine, a card and a list of names of all the neighbours so they knew who was who.

The house we moved into had liberal sprinklings of dog hair throughout, dog turds in the garden and they very kindly left their toilet brushes behind

cinnamonnut · 10/07/2012 12:07

I have never moved house. Hope this doesn't happen in future... boak

Original poster

Trazzletoes · 10/07/2012 12:11

Kwazii yes, we have the toilet brushes as well. Yum.

OP posts:

Noqontrol · 10/07/2012 12:12

I'd expect it to be clean. I'd always clean up first. I remember going to view my last house and it was absolutely immaculate. When i finally moved in the place was filthy and absolutely stank. I think once the contracts were signed they knew they were safe, they just stopped cleaning the house altogether. Gross.

SalopianTubes · 10/07/2012 12:13

When we bought our first flat the vendors didn't mention their cat had just pissed all over the bedroom floor. DH didn't notice at first and carefully placed bedding and cardboard boxes of CDs on top

Then when we moved to a house, the vendor's dog had clearly been locked in the 3rd bedroom with the bad case of the runs

I'm not sure I could ever make an offer on a house where there's pets after those incidents!

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