Ask a Clean Person: The Pre-Vacation Clean-Up

@wharrgarbl checklists are the best

((By "I recommend a checklist" I mean: Actually physically print out or write down the list and only cross things off once you've actually completed them. No mental checklists! You are packing up and going on a trip and have a lot to remember.))

@wharrgarbl I forgot to do this before my last vacation. I came home to discover that a million fruit flies had taken up residence in my kitchen. NEVER AGAIN.

@wharrgarbl PREACH. Ant infestation. Always take out the trash right before you leave.

@Yahtzii Yes indeed, I insist on paying my pet sitters, even if they're my friends. I want them to feel a very strong obligation come love up my kitty cat while I'm gone. Even though on my last trip someone came over every day and when I got back after a 5 hour flight delay, she was at the neighbors house across the street and they thought she was lost because she was showing up every night asking to be let in and my number didn't work because I was out of the country. Effing diva cat. She has a pet door, so it's not like she was hungry or thirsty…just starved for attention I guess.

@Yahtzii Last time I went on vacation, my neighbor (who is as crazy as I am about cats) took care of my kitty. I had taken kitty in as a stray, and she wasn't fixed yet. When I got home, she was very, very in heat. My neighbor and I sat down together and watched kitty go crazy rubbing her body all over the floor and yowl to high heaven. My sweet little weirdo.

I like to get presents for the people who cat sit for me just because it feels personal. I gave my neighbor this funny little cross stitch I found in a thrift store of a lady taking a bath (my neighbor has a lot of interesting cross stitch things in her apt) and some girl scout cookies.

@leon.saintjean If you come home when it's dark out, don't you bump into the furniture trying to find the light switch and remember where you put the furniture?

@leon.saintjean I just rearranged the furniture in my living room. Rearranging furniture is legit one of my favourite thigns to do. Aaaand now I sound like even more of a crazy person.

@leon.saintjean Growing up I would rearrange the furniture in my room every couple of months, and it is totally fun. Not crazy.

@leon.saintjean This is such a good idea. It's like coming home to a new home!

@leon.saintjean I also rearranged every few months growing up, and still do it now. I LOVE it. I always thought it was because I moved like every 6 months as a child, so I was used to change…but I also just love organization. I have a to-scale drawing of several rooms in my house and all of my stuff, with door clearance and outlets marked, so I can try out arrangements before moving stuff!

@phlox OH MY GOD DO THIS. Story time: One time I was home for a week visiting my parents, and my mom put some flowers in my bedroom, which was lovely of her. Then when I left, I stripped my bed and closed up the room, and a couple days after that my parents left on vacation for two weeks. Do you see where this is going? They got home and there was this weird rotting smell coming from my room and OH GOD THREE-WEEK OLD ROTTEN FLOWERS IT WAS HORRID, HORRID, HORRID.

@The Lady of Shalott On a slightly related note, don't forget to water all your plants right before you leave.

@phlox I did this too! Except it was 4 weeks and it was one of the worst smells I've ever smelled in my LIFE!

@phlox I had bought one of those mutant bodega bouquets (you know how usually they die in three days, except when they last for three weeks for no discernable reason–this was a lasting one) and I had a feeling it was going to die while I was gone, so I moved it out of my bedroom and into the living room, assuming that my roommate could enjoy them for several days and then either they'd die and she'd toss them, or I'd get back and do it myself. INSTEAD. My trip got extended for two weeks, and I came home to find my roommate sitting on the couch watching tv in an apartment full of rotted flower stink, totally baffled at my look of disgust and confusion. This was the last straw in a series of dirty-girl incidents and I moved out shortly thereafter. As far as I know, she is still a nice person with no sense of smell whatsoever.

@The Lady of Shalott Oh yes, "the draft" and all its potential kill-a-personness. Are you of Eastern European descent?

@The Lady of Shalott This is very interesting to me sociologically, because I am from a Southern family and everyone I knew growing up/in my fam is OBSESSIVE about cross-breezes. In the positive sense. As in there should always be one or you might die. I mean, hot humid climes and no AC back in the day = cross breezes good j'imagine.

I need all the windows open all over the house and there must be wind blowing on me or I can't sleep. I wish I had a sleeping porch in my apartment!

@MrsLlama Why yes I am of Eastern European descent! How could you guess! The draft WILL KILL YOU. I'm not sure how, exactly. Having a window open is lovely and airs the room! Dinner outdoors or on the terrace is wonderful! Multiple windows on multiple walls, open at once? YOU WILL ALL DIE HORRIBLY. It's science.

@The Lady of Shalott Nobody can explain the killingness.

@The Lady of Shalott, my family too! Have totally brought that tradition out from my "Old Country" too, although not Eastern Europe, but Ireland. Hmm, I guess it's cold there and my folks are obsessed with keeping doors closed as well. NO DRAFTS ALLOWED!

@Wanderer Whenever my grandmother would babysit me when I was a baby, my mom would leave me dressed normally like a baby, and she would get me and I would be wearing a baby-sized hat and scarf. Even in like, May.

@The Lady of Shalott But then when you get home, instead of collapsing into bed, you have to make your bed first!

@thebestjasmine And I, for one, am not a bit too good to just sleep on the mattress pad with the bedspread pulled over me if I'm too tired/lazy to make the bed when I get home, i.e. every time.

@Mame16th Well, me neither, but I was scared to admit that in a Clean Person post. But that's why I try to never take the sheets off my bed unless I'm prepared to immediately put new sheets on.

@thebestjasmine Me, too, and also, I have no shame.

@The Lady of Shalott I think it comes from the old fashioned idea that cold air causes things like colds, flu's, and pneumonia. My grandmother, who lived until she was 89 could not be convinced that colds, flu's, and pneumonia were caused by viruses and infections (or whatever causes them???) But it wasn't cold air. My grandmother was Irish and she blamed everything she contracted on a specific time she was cold. Her husband (my grandfather) died very young of pneumonia and he worked outdoors. All my life, I was told he caught pneumonia from working outside in the winter. She died of the exact same thing years later.

@The Lady of Shalott I think it comes from the old fashioned idea that cold air causes things like colds, flu's, and pneumonia. My grandmother, who lived until she was 89 could not be convinced that colds, flu's, and pneumonia were caused by viruses and infections (or whatever causes them???) But it wasn't cold air. My grandmother was Irish and she blamed everything she contracted on a specific time she was cold. Her husband (my grandfather) died very young of pneumonia and he worked outdoors. All my life, I was told he caught pneumonia from working outside in the winter. She died of the exact same thing years later.

@gfrancie Almond milk also keeps pretty much forever if it hasn't been opened.

@gfrancie I hear butter is supposed to freeze well, too.

@meganmaria Oh yeah. *points to the five pounds of butter in the freezer* (I like to bake. A lot)

@gfrancie Provided the breaker to your fridge doesn't switch off while you are away. Otherwise…..

@Xaxa Blown fuses, flipped breakers, and power outages are why you never, ever put anything that can melt and is not ice in your ice/water dispenser, if you have one. Ever. It's just…it's not pretty. And you will never get it all out. And then when people see what you've done, they will judge you.

@wharrgarbl What on earth did you have in there? Were you making ice cream? I have never had a fridge with an ice/water dispenser…

@Xaxa I wasn't the responsible party. They weren't even "a friend"! We think it was fudgesicles, but at some point there's just no telling, except that it was disgusting and no matter how much you cleaned there was always some gunk hiding somewhere, waiting to leak out, and pretty much everyone who saw it afterward just looked at us and shook their heads and never came back over again. I think the company who hauled it off when we could finally get a new one may have taken it and hurled it into the ocean. It ruined dispensers for me forever. It was like John Wayne Gacey and clowns, only with appliances and (presumably) less serial murder.

@wharrgarbl There is no excuse for putting "fudgesicles" in the ice dispenser.

@Xaxa The theory was that whatever the hell it was got put there not because someone was trying to turn the ice dispenser into a chocolate ice cream dispenser (though it is a grim possibility), but because it was A Space in a very small freezer. Which would have been fine, if ill-advised, had the power not gone off and allowed everything to melt.

@Xaxa that's when you take your fridge out back and shoot it because there is no saving it. (plus it would be too scary to clean)

@wharrgarbl I'm sensing a lot of roommates in a small space. Perhaps a commune?

@Xaxa Left over from a previous occupant. We didn't realize the problem with the dispenser until after moving in, because I wasn't a big fan of dispensers in general (I can now write a master's dissertation on why not to get one), and someone had cleaned it to the point of nothing being obviously wrong to a casual observer. To a scrupulous observer, the internal machinery and ice chute were coated in brown sludge and smelled of chocolate. I spent several days just hugging the new fridge when we finally got it.

My "lots of roommates in a small space" stories are actually worse! Which is why I will never have lots of roommates in a small space ever again unless they're actually hostages!

@wharrgarbl I think the only practical reason to have an ice cube dispenser involves ice cube fights.

@Xaxa For which a simple ice maker works equally well and is far less likely to make you want to burn down your entire block, just to be sure. (I <3 my ice maker, partially because it's not an ice dispenser.)

@wharrgarbl But with an automatic ice cube dispenser you don't have to open the freezer, speeding up the attack.

@Xaxa But then you run a serious risk of the dispenser version of a misfire, where you know it has this big bin of ice, but it won't give you any more because it's somehow frozen itself up. (Seriously, dispensers are the worst.) If your opponents have already snagged their ice, it would be like the egg pelting scene in Baseketball.

@wharrgarbl Clearly my gramma's ice dispenser was more reliable than yours. Though the noise was an issue for sneak attacks.

@Cavendish Can you get someone to take it out for you if there's anything organic in it? I pet-sat for someone who forgot to take out the trash and it was pretty ripe by the second day, which was how I discovered that she had not learned from my mistake.

@Ophelia WHY does anybody think this (paper towel left on top) = cleaning something up??? My husband does the same thing, including for things like cat vomit on the floor…

@churlishgreen Aargh, I do not know!! The mess is still there! And I'm not even a particularly clean person (see: will clean fridge this weekend, whereas I know Jolie would have already done it).

@Ophelia We had a terrible milk leak incident recently that went unnoticed until the smell came. That dreaded milk smell. I had to throw out many things and spent about a half an hour cleaning the fridge. The smell still didn't go away. Now I've kept a plate of baking soda and two lemon halves filled with salt in there for a few days, and the smell is gone. Success.

@parallel-lines Only the females bite, and they use your precious, precious blood to produce their awful, awful offspring. For which they need water. I would suggest looking into something that you can put out in a bowl of water that will drown them by fucking up the surface tension they use to keep their horrid little feet from just going straight on through or poison them. If you opt to let bats loose in your apartment instead, make sure they're bats that eat mosquitoes and not some asshole bats who'll just eat all your fruit and annoy your dog with their constant attempts to not crash into things.

@parallel-lines Bugs? Make a funnel out of paper, put it in the top of an empty wine bottle (of course you have empty wine bottles strewn about, you adorable lushes) and oh wait, you forgot to put some vinegar in the bottom. Take the funnel out, pour some water, some sugar and some yeast into the bottom, shake it up, then put your funnel in. the yeast eating the sugar generates CO2, and the mosquitos are like "oh snap, i smell some co2 over there, i'ma go see if it's a delicious person inside that bottle" (they are dumb, and have yet to realize that people can't fit in bottles) and they will get trapped inside and die.

Don't do this if you're a jain. I have no idea how to deal w/ mosquitos if you're a jain.

@wharrgarbl That is a good idea. Then, you can get an Owl to get rid of the bats. Once the owl has done it's work, a bobcat would be an effective tool to remove the owl. And um..well then you will have a bobcat in your house, but I mean, people like cats, right?

@leon.saintjean Nonsense. Once the bats are done with the mosquitoes, you set everything on fire, move away, start a new life, and don't tell anyone about any of it until you're on your deathbed.

Or you could just use juvenile bats and then put out obstacles like large-spine cacti that mess with their inexperienced little brains' echolocation abilities, leading to mass death-by-misadventure.

@leon.saintjean I've done the fruit fly one (and discovered I had approximately twenty times more fruit flies than I realized) but I didn't know there was a mosquito one too. This presents a bit of a problem as I am a boxed wine drinker but I will adapt! Thank you!

@leon.saintjean I am NOT having a bobcat shitting in a box in my house and shedding on my furniture!

@parallel-lines Me too! I caught/smacked one of them yesterday in a wild frenzy of mosquito murder, but there is still at least one left.
@leon.saintjean, I will totally try that bottle plan.

@leon.saintjean but what about dog lovers? They may want a wolf to chase the bobcat out.

@boysplz Didn't you read the previous columnn "Get Rid of Your Wolves, They Are Disgusting"?!

@wharrgarbl I worry that fire is prohibited in my lease.

@Ophelia Fire is prohibited in most leases, but it's usually just a formality. Typically, having violated that portion of the contract doesn't pose much of an issue once you've moved away, started a new life, and aren't telling anyone about any of it until you're on your deathbed, at which time one would hope that broken leases will cease to be a problem.

@wharrgarbl You would be the best lawyer ever.

@leon.saintjean I love you. Please come narrate all my cleaning/organizing for the rest of ever.

@Ophelia Before you burn your apartment with fire, leave the lease in it. Presto! Problem solved!

@wharrgarbl Also, burning the place to the ground usually renders the premises untenantable, thereby voiding most leases. Presto – problem solved, commence killing everything with fire! Except the bobcat, which is really just a big kitty (free flamethrower to anyone who gets the reference).

@whereismyrobot I am still trying to convince my husband that it would be worth the money to have our cats professionally groomed. THEY DON'T CLEAN THEMSELVES PROPERLY!!! They are dandriffy shed beasts! And they HATE baths, so I want to get someone else to do it for me. Is that so bad???

@lovelettersinhell Do it!! They do cats and those groomers have seen it all.

@parallel-lines Jell-o?

@formergr who puts jello-o in a martini glass? I will not stand for that sort of whimsical bullshit. Gimme booze.

@parallel-lines Surely one can put jello shots in martini glasses.

@wharrgarbl I prefer to put them in pint glasses.

@wharrgarbl NO! I'm taking a stance against this in theory and principal. You can see the green liquor right above the glasses, these are just prefilled ready to go for when you need to slam an appletini and run.

@parallel-lines Lindsay, is that you?

@nzle WHAT STORIES ARE YOU READING

@nzle i was once the first roommate to return from holiday vacation, and the roomies hadn't bothered washing the dishes. ick.

@melis Look look it's totally a thing!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1123&bih=723&q=fresh+underwear+in+case+you+get+run+over&oq=fresh+underwear+in+case+you+get+run+over&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=362l4457l0l4529l40l35l0l23l0l0l267l1934l1.8.3l12l0

@nzle What mother "in stories"? My mother in real life says that, and apparently her grandmother would actually change her underwear before she left the house in case of just such a contingency.

@nzle My mom always told me to wear clean underwear in case I ended up in the hospital. It's totally a thing.

@Abigail Carr@facebook My mother also said this. My problem with it is, if I get hit by a bus, my underwear is probably no longer going to be clean.

@nzle My mom would say this too, but then our doctor friend said they just cut the clothes off you. But then, I suppose, examine them and judge you.

@Helen Carpenter@facebook I suspect that it comes from times when washing undergarments was a weekly/monthly chore. I suppose the modern equivalent is 'wear new/lacy/not granny undies, in case you get hit by a bus'.

@Helen Carpenter@facebook My dad is a doctor, and he always says they judge. I'm like "But can't lots of trauma cause the underpants to become…. suddenly unclean?"

@nzle Yesss my mother was adamant about the house being spotless before going out of town. It was only later I realized this was so that our families wouldn't judge the messiness of our household postmortem, lest they decide to engrave our headstones with something like "SLOBS" I guess.

@questingbeast This! Not harshing on Jolie's clean-fridge buzz, but I was raised to never ever waste food. Of course, that just leads to things molding in the fridge while I pledge quietly to myself that I will, someday, eat them, but I have a hard time letting go.

(The same disclaimer may apply to me.)

@questingbeast In Jolie's defense, she did say to do the gigantic food-chuck for trips of two weeks or longer, which probably covers the shelf-life of most fruits/veggies, and definitely meat. That said, my family always has a few really weird dinners before we go on vacation in a perhaps misguided attempt to not waste food.

@Ophelia: I'm weird and cheap and have been known to walk a bag of perfectly good produce, etc., over to a friend's house before a trip. <3 u, foodie.

@questingbeast The ideal thing is to plan ahead and not buy a bunch of perishables when you know you're going to be away for awhile; then you won't have to throw things away. Also, what @laurel said re: giving perishables to a friend.

@questingbeast Once before going on vacation I cleaned out my refrigerator like a good girl, because I hadn't in about the previous 6 months, like a bad girl. I found a bowl of what had been plain white rice with the most fascinating collection of molds and God-knows-what-all in it. There was the usual green and gray penicillin molds, natch, but also a fuzzy yellow one, a bright pink sort of coral-branched one, a paler and fuzzier pink one (but different from the yellow one), and best of all, a DARK purple one that looked like someone had mixed purple paint in with the rice. And this is BEFORE I had left, let me reiterate. If we hadn't been leaving the next day, I would have had my boyfriend take it to work and analyze it, since he worked in the lab of a large hospital, but I didn't want to let it grow for another week.

@figwiggin I do this thing where something (usually cooked leftovers)is not as fresh as I would like but is PROBABLY fine. But the last heatwave I got foodpoisoning from chicken that I had bought the DAY before, and since then I'm thingy about food that is about to 'turn'. So instead of dealing with it, I just leave it in the fridge until it is DEFINITELY off, so I can feel ok about throwing it.

@Craftastrophies I do that too. It feels less wasteful in my mind even though it's really the same as throwing it out right away.

My last boyfriend used to eat food that was way past its prime. For instance, he would let fresh meat sit in the fridge for up to four days before cooking it, or he would eat leftover cooked meat that had been in the fridge for a week (sometimes the same meat that was cooked later than it should have been). I gave him an earful every time he did it, but he was convinced it was safe because he'd never gotten sick from it. It only takes once, dude!

@Mame16th You should have taken a picture! It sounds like you had a little bit of everything, which is pretty amazing since it was plain white rice!

When I was in middle school, my science teacher asked us all to check our fridges for moldy food and bring it in for analysis. I brought in a bowl of corn that had spots of bright red and green mold with white fuzz. I was pretty excited that there were two different ones in there, so I brought it in. Unfortunately, when I got to class I dropped it on the floor and the bowl broke. My teacher wouldn't let me do it because of the glass, and I felt bad that the maintenance guy had to clean it up until I remembered that he cleans up puke regularly, so moldy corn isn't so terrible.

@rayray I want her to come back to two columns' worth of comments like these!

IT IS THE LEAST WE CAN ALL DO.

@karion Because of this column, my diva cup is stain-free (adding baking soda to the boiling-to-disinfect stage of cup-maintenance totally fucking worked) and my laundry is much better (lemon juice to take care of hard-water deposits and baking soda to take care of lingering front-loader smells) and I am rethinking my much earlier decision to basically just never clean anything again because ignoring it was instantly-gratifying while cleaning it would be delayedly-gratifying. Like, today I actually cleaned my sink for real instead of just wiping it down to the point where it wasn't obviously gross.