61 Cody

Well this was a house for the books. We have a weird 3 bedromm 2 bath house in which the first floor sits 3 feet below the ground and the on the inside 3 feet up on the houtside walls they had covered it with rock like what you would use on a fireplace or exterior of the house. This house had to have been sitting empty for a while becuase there was combwebs in every corner and on every rock in the house. These people never cleaned this house, the oven had an inch of burnt stuff in the bottom of it, I swept out the oven before I could even start to clean it. There was so much animal hair around where the bed sat that it made its own outline on the carpet. They had spilled dirty kitty litter in the closet so there was dried up poop stuck to the carpet in the closet and it looked like the cat must have missed the kitty liter while peeing becuase there was tons of stains on the carpet and when I vacuumed it, it smelled horrible. Now the family room addition was nice and clean, which was weird. But the upstairs had stains all over the hard wood floors from who knows what, and also down the nice hardwood staircase. There was so much animal hair in this house that I had to dust almost every single wall off becuase the hair just stuck to the walls. In one cupboard the mice had collected a bunch of animal hair to make nests out of. All of the curtians were coated in dust, which is why I think that no one had been living there for a while, and for the amount of spider webs. They must have also had a problem with mice as well, becuase every drawer in the kitchen was filled with mouse droppings. We had to remove the carpet in the living room becuase they did not install it, they just laid it over the other carpet which also had never been installed. When we removed both layers of carpet, there were 2 corners in which the animals must have peed in repeatedly, becuase the subflooring was literally starting to disintegrate. This house took 3 people 2 days to clean. It was crazy. And that did not include picking up anything outside or in the garage or outbuildings. There are 2 outbuidlings and a garage that all have stuff in it, as well as a 3 cubic yards of wood spread out thoughout the yard. We will be doing that another day. Adios!

47 Lander

Ok, this is a nice big house. It is 3,800 square feet, and it has 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. But it has the huge great room with a big fireplace, and that half the house is real log and it has a whole wall of windows and sliding glass doors that open to the back deck. The other half of the house is where the bedrooms and kitchen are. The house is kind of weird in that there is a door between the great room office area and the kitchen and bedrooms. And there is no real living room. Just the great room, which has a bar in it so it does not feel so family friendly. And there is no eat in kitchen. it is just a huge kitchen with like 100 cabinets in it. But the bedrooms are really nice. There are 2 bedrooms and a bath right off the kitchen and then down a hallway there is the master bedroom and bath with jacuzzi tub and walk in closet.

This house is frozen, which means that there is still water at the house, but it is frozen in the pipes. There is water in the backs of the toilets but it is frozen in there. So in the back half of the house where there is electric heat, we have the heat on 70º so hopefully by tomorrow the toilets will start to melt. They were getting there today, but it takes a while to thaw something that is frozen solid and the porcelain seems to keep it cold quite well. So hopefully tomorrow it will be thawed, if not we have to rent big heaters to put throughout the house to thaw the house out. 

The logs on the inside suck to clean because every log has been accumulating dust the last 2 years it has sat empty and you have to go through and dust every log off. The house itself is not too dirty, but there are a ton of bugs that have been caught in the house over the last 2 or so years. The Upper windows in the great room are completely covered in wasps and flies. It is disgusting. And all the other windows, it looks like someone opened the slide by windows without cleaning them out first, so now there are bug guts intrenched in the window sills and I have to scrub to get them clean. I am not quite done cleaning the house yet, today I spent 6 hours there, with one other person ( a guy who is not a fan of cleaning) and we got most of the house clean, now it is just the mopping and cleaning the kitchen (and all its appliances) Mopping we normally do last so that we are not walking over our clean floors. But we might have to do it earlier tomorrow, because this house only has electric heat in one half of the house. And there is no propane tank there for the gas heat. We don't dare start a fire in the fireplace because you never know what might be living up there after it sitting empty for so long. So we have to mop the floors while the sun is still on that side of the house. And then we have to clean out the moldy fridge and the oven. Tonight before leaving I sprayed oven cleaner in it so hopefully it will be decent to clean tomorrow. Ovens are horrible because you kind of have to spray and let it sit, wipe it out, and the spray it again especially if there is a decent amount of black stuff in the bottom. I even have to use the extra strength stuff because most of these ovens have not been cleaned very well and the spills have been layered in the oven.

1030 Lander

Well I cleaned a hole house by myself in 7 hours. This house is actually pretty small there were 4 bedrooms and 2 baths. But total square footage was probably only 1200. And the house was not hardly dirty. There was some garbage to be removed but that only took maybe an hour.
This house was a fun clean because there were no appliance to scrub out and most of the basement was concrete, with only the 2 bedrooms with carpet in them. Also all the windows downstairs were just plexiglass so I did not have to clean those either. The house was cute. It had a nice size kitchen with a separate eating area, a nice size living room with 2 bedrooms and a bath upstairs, and then downstairs there was a laundry room and another living area and 2 bedrooms and a bath. And another undetermined room, maybe an office? It was too small to be a bedroom but then again the other two bedrooms downstairs didn't even have closets or egress windows in them. So technically they are not really bedrooms either. But I don't think anyone around here follows the rules too closely either. It seems like most basements don't have egress windows in and people still let their kids live down there. In fact one house I cleaned a while back had the master bedroom in the basement with a little bitty window in it. Well this house was a good one. Nothing too scary to clean this time.

6 Riverton

So this is the last house that we cleaned. I put the number 6 first because that is the house number and then the town. So I can remember what house I am talking about. This house is a pretty small house. It was apparently moved here from somewhere else. It is kind of a funny house because there are 3 front doors. One is nailed shut one does not close and the other one is a normal front door, but the steps out front don't line up with the door. They are off by about a foot. But this house was a 3 bedroom 1 bath single story house with a nice size kitchen, dining room and living room. We changed the locks and winterized the house back in February and we are now getting to clean it out. The only debris left in the house as a nice heavy entertainment center and blinds. We remove all blinds and curtain unless they look nice in the house and then we get a letter from the realtor that they want them left in house. But normally they are broken and dirty. It took me about 7 hours to clean the house by myself and it wasn't very dirty, just a lot of little things to clean out. There were 4 broken windows in the house and lots of blinds to remove. The kitchen ( which normally takes the longest) was actually very clean. It looked like these people had cleaned their house quite well before leaving. Which is nice. So I pretty much just had to dust (we have a very fine dust here in Wyoming that gets in every nook and cranny you can think of), clean windows and floors. And most of the house had hardwood floors which is nice because then I can just sweep everything up and then mop and house looks super clean. It was weird because they had carpeted the bathroom. I have never liked carpet bathrooms they just seem to never come clean. I did find a scorpion in one of the kitchen cupboards though. Thankfully it was dead/hibernating and then we cooked it on our huge space heater that we have. Most houses we clean during the winter have no heat or water. So it gets a little chilly trying to clean with no heat. This house I had to move the space heater from room to room to defrost the windows so I could clean them or else the window cleaner was freezing before I could wipe it back off. The garage was pretty clean. But there was a lot of wood and hay along side the garage. Which all of that stuff has to be removed so we load it all up in the trailer and either give it to people whom we think can use it or to the dump. There is also and old well drilling truck and a mini van at this house. We are going to try to see if we can get them running and possibly sell them. If there is anything that we want to keep from these houses we can. Just as long as we remove them from the property.

This house was a pretty boring house but we have a couple more to do this weekend. Hopefully we can find some goodies...

The last 6 Months

Over the last 6 months I have been working with my brother in law cleaning out and maintaining repossessed houses. We can do multiple services to a house depending on which stage of the foreclosure process the house is in. If the house has recently been foreclosed on then we go and determine occupancy. If the house is vacant then we change the locks in the house and do a winterize or grass cut depending on the season. During the summer months we do a grass cut up to 1 acre and prune brushes/trees if needed. During the winter months we winterize the houses so that no more damage can be done if there is still water in the pipes throughout the house.Some bank will actually pay people to leave their house early to help minimize the damage that might occur during the foreclosure process. Normally a house will sit for 6 months to 1 year to allow the previous owners a "Redemption" period. Which allows the homeowner to buy back their house if they can/want to. During this time we cut the grass/bushes to keep the yard maintained, however no personal belongings are removed from the property. That way if the homeowner decides to buy their house back then their belongings are still there. After the Redemption period is over we go back to the house to do an initial service on a house which includes cleaning the entire interior of the house and removing all debris left behind as well as all debris left outside around the property. So over the last 6 months we have been all over the state of Wyoming cleaning these houses.

Some of our houses are very clean and you can tell the previous homeowners left their house well maintained and took care of there house. Other houses not so much. We have been to houses where they have spray painted swear words on the walls and windows and have had rules for playing games like beer pong written on the walls. One house was even so bad that it looked like they had peed/vomited all over the walls and floors and left "presents" in the toilet. It always amazes me how these people can have this type of reaction towards loosing their home. I do feel bad for these people that loose their home. It must be very upsetting but why destroy the house?

We have cleaned out hoarder houses and houses with animals left behind. One house still had 4 horses left on the property when we went there to clean. The previous owner actually showed up and asked us to take her horses because she did not know what else to do with them. Wouldn't you try to sell them to keep your house?  Most of the homes we clean are in decent condition. With a little scrubbing and vacuuming with arm and hammer carpet powder I can typically get the house look and smelling good again. The hoarder house had feral cats living under the second trailer (which they used for all their garbage) which was hard to clean because the cats kept trying to get into the trailer while we were clearing out the garbage. And they kind of scare you a little when you are not looking.

But for the most part it is fun seeing all these houses and how people lived and how not well thought out most peoples planned renovations are. Some of these houses people add onto their house and put no thought into it until it is done and then it is like oh well it will have to do. Like putting your hot tub in your living room. How awesome is that... Right??!! Not... now there is mold in the ceiling because of all the moisture. Really? Come on people lets think a little here. Or Lets add on to our living room until it is the size of a small house. Now we have a HUGE room that is so big you need a projection system to see the tv.

But that is the fun part of this job. Cleaning might not be the highlight of the job but going in and seeing what people leave behind and how people live is just truly fascinating.

Introduction

Well I have decided to start a blog about my adventures cleaning repossessed houses. I will update as we clean new houses. Many people ask what it is like to clean houses like this. So I have decided to share my woes and gross moments of my job. I will add pictures for added effect so you all can see how clean or dirty some of our houses are. I will not disclose address as I do not know who will be reading this and since I don't know the former homeowners I do not want people to take my comments as truth. I have been doing this for a couple of months now, and I feel that my experiences should be told. Some of these houses are beautiful well kept houses and others are trashy and poorly maintained and even defaced when the homeowners were upset about their situation.