Maintenance Men

Being a homeowner has certain advantages, such as being able to do with your home as you please. Being a renter also has its advantages, namely, the maintenance men are on call 24/7 to fix things that break. However, a minus in the rental category is the fact they come around every so often to do required checks. Thankfully, they leave a note on the door the day before the intended check for folks to secure their animals and clean and perhaps hide things that shouldn't be displayed out in the open. I somehow missed the memo (and by missed, I mean I didn't actually leave my apartment yesterday except to get coffee in the morning, so they likely left it in on the door in the afternoon and I just never saw it because I'm a hermit) and didn't see it until I was running (RUNNING!) out the door to get to work this morning. I woke up late and didn't have time to make coffee and I had to scrape the ice off my windows so I was very grouchy and didn't care about the maintenance guys coming in.

I didn't care about the maintenance men coming in until I got home and turned on some lights and realized what they had seen. Now, this may come as a shock to one of you, but I am not the cleanest person around. In fact, I'm probably in the 22nd percentile of cleanliness. Only hoarders and college-aged boys are below me on that scale. The poor maintenance men had to step over a bag of trash that I had yet to take to the dumpster in order to get to the laundry room and change the air filter. In said laundry room, they found dirty clothes piled on top of a sack of potatoes. Then, they had to step over a sweatshirt and dirty socks in the middle of my living room floor in order to get upstairs, but not before they ever so kindly replaced my smoke alarm that had been dangling precariously by a few wires for months. Once upstairs, they probably threw up in their mouths a little bit when they saw my bedroom, which is in the middle of a huge feng-shui project. In the midst of said feng-shui project, I decided to change my sheets but I hadn't put clean ones on yet (which is not a tragedy, I've been falling asleep on my couch downstairs where it's very comfy and not so hot). So, sheetless bed, furniture all out of sorts, laundry baskets overflowing with ambiguous clothing (is it clean or not? I don't know, what's it matter?) and then they apparently felt compelled to check my bathroom.

Let me say that I have never been prouder of a random urge to clean than I am right now. Last weekend, I was in a very dark, grouchy place and sought refuge with a toothbrush and scrubbing bubbles in the shower. I used my fingernails and toothbrush and scrubbed the grout in between every tile in my shower - something I haven't done since moving in way too many months ago. So, on the upside, I was pretty freaking proud of myself for having a clean bathroom. Except that I had a huge pile of dirty clothes on the floor that hadn't made it to the laundry room yet, so the maintenance men had to step over said pile of dirty clothes to fix the leak and re-grout my tub, something I am very thankful for. And, if the maintenance men had been curious, that discovered that, yes, indeed I do wear Christmas underwear in February. What of it?

I felt no small amount of embarrassment when I came home last night and saw the note they left on my kitchen table informing me of the routine work they had completed in my apartment. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to apologize to the poor men who had to bear witness to my messy place. If I were them, I would have called the police and reported me missing. It seriously looks like I have been robbed and kidnapped. So, you must be wondering, Mal, did you clean your apartment today so something like this doesn't happen again? And, yes, while I considered the possibility that this could, someday, happen again, I realized it won't happen for three more months when they come to change the filter again, so I think I'm good until May.