I had two events scheduled for May 1st: begin cleaning out our townhouse, and a work lunch at Marigold, the restaurant attached to Keswick Country Club. The two didn't really seem like they would work well together-- I certainly didn't want to show up all grubby from cleaning all morning but I also didn't want to waste time showering before lunch. So it wasn't the worst thing in the world when our tenants texted me saying they'd had some issues with their move and needed one more day to get all moved out. We informed them of the late fees they'd need to pay and hoped they'd get out in just one more day. (And I enjoyed my work lunch very much.)
On a whim, Camille and I drove over to the place Friday afternoon to see what it looked like and there were still toys all over the backyard (also, there was no longer any grass in the backyard to speak of), so I was very concerned. I thought about using my key to see what the inside looked like, but on the off-chance that their dog was still there and might escape, I decided that was probably a bad idea and we just went home.
But when they texted again late that evening saying they needed just one more day, I wasn't surprised.
We texted them back explaining that we HAD to begin getting it ready to show (they were well aware of our time frame and the fact that I had lined up a dozen showings for Monday-- I'd been fielding inquiries and setting up showings for 6 weeks now!!!), so we would just have to overlap a bit. He texted back saying maybe I hadn't seen his text that he needed another day. Ugh. I reiterated that we would just be there working, too.
Saturday, we arrived around 9am, and this time we did let ourselves inside to look around. That was probably a mistake. There was SO MUCH STUFF all over the place. One bedroom had a pile of clothes in the corner that was taller than Camille! I'm not sure that our entire family combined owns that much clothing! The walk-in closet in the master bedroom was so full of junk you literally could not get a foot into it. It was horrifying. I wanted to cry just looking around at the mess of it all.
But there wasn't anything we could actually do about that, so we got to work on the outside. Craig trimmed back all the bushes growing over the driveway. I pulled ivy off the side of the house (which was very satisfying, actually) and weeded around the house. We chopped the large branches into smaller pieces and loaded it all into the truck to haul to the dump. We'd already been working for an hour before David, our tenant, even showed up. He had a U-Haul van that was smaller than ours and began very slowly bagging stuff up and putting it in his van. At some point I left to pick up Ryder from a track thing and Craig took all the yard waste to the dump. Craig actually offered to help Dave out, but he assured Craig he was fine.
Once we were both back (and Dave had left with one van full of stuff), we began digging up the hard-packed dirt in the back yard so that we could plant grass seed. I went to Lowe's to get a new toilet to replace the one that was leaking (Craig had already made a trip to Lowe's and by this point we'd determined that we couldn't get parts to fix the inside of the tank).
Dave had said he'd be back shortly. I'll give him credit-- he worked slowly, but he did get that entire pile of clothing out, along with a huge bass guitar. I'm sure he got a lot of other stuff, too, that I wasn't noticing. But STILL. Even after all that, the master bedroom looked like this:
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With the toilet fixed and the grass seed planted and watered (I found watering the grass with a hose to be strangely meditative), there wasn't a whole lot else we could do. Craig and I looked at each other and discussed our options. I decided I could clean the half bath on the main floor. It was mostly empty but stunk of kitty litter and had snot smeared all over the walls. That was SO gross and took a lot of elbow grease.
Once the bathroom was presentable, I took a look at the upstairs bedrooms again. Dave had managed to clear out a lot of the stuff up there... After staring at it all for a few minutes, I finally just grabbed a garbage bag and began stuffing in everything that was left into the room. It was mostly garbage: a bunch of those tooth flossers and Q-tips, a few random building blocks, clothes hangers (half of them broken), miscellaneous little bits and pieces from children's games, including a lot of cards (half of which were ripped), tags from clothing. I didn't care, it all went into the bag. I got one room cleared out pretty quickly, and then I vacuumed and Craig began spackling any holes in the walls. And then we moved on to the second bedroom, and finally the third. All the garbage bags were placed carefully in the living room along with everything else still in that room. I also brought down three (three!!!) empty TV boxes.
It was absolutely ridiculous, but I felt pretty good about the state of the upstairs half of the townhouse. By now it was after 9pm and still no sign of Dave (who had texted us at 6pm saying that he'd be back to "finish up" shortly). Mhmm.
Once the upstairs (other than the bathroom) was cleaned up, Craig and I called it quits for the night. It was late and we were exhausted.
We had taken separate cars, so I drove home fuming to myself and feeling helpless to get our stupid tenants to actually finish moving out. Tenant and squatter's rights are a real thing that don't give landlords much power, so I honestly didn't know what we could do in this situation. But then it hit me-- they HAD moved out, they'd just left a bunch of junk behind. But since they weren't actually living there now, they no longer had those rights!!! That changed everything!
I was so excited to talk to Craig once we were both home. We looked up the basic laws and then sent them a very blunt text explaining that anything still on the property by noon the next day would be considered abandoned property and would be removed at their expense. It was probably the nastiest I've ever been about anything. I didn't really appreciated how NOT confrontational I am, until I realized my hands were shaking after sending that text.
They never responded.
We had church in the morning, and then we hurried home and ate lunch, put on grubby clothes, and headed back to the condo. I was afraid of what we would find when we got there (what if they called the cops or something??? these people were crazy about the broken AC, so I honestly wasn't sure how they might react!!), but as soon as I got close, I could see bags and bags of garbage placed at the end of the driveway and I knew it had worked: they'd finally left. HUGE sigh of relief.
There was still so much to do, cleaning out all the rest of the house, but the kids worked so hard and we got it all done by the end of the day (even with a four hour break for Kendra and Ryder's final band concert/awards ceremony! Which will be the next post on this here blog!). I showed the property to about ten parties the next day, and about five of them wanted it, but the very first person who saw it managed to call dibs first and she and her family have been happily moving in.
I sure hope we don't have as much drama with our new people!!!
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