Talk Dirty To Me
Recently, I was reminded of an incident in college (story below) that I’m not proud of. But, it inspired me to hold a contest for our readers. Share your grossest cleaning/dirtying story with me! Writer of the most revolting story wins a $100 GoVacuum Gift Certificate. Stories will be judged solely on the icky-ness factor (so don’t worry if your writing isn’t perfect) and will be chosen by all us folks here at GoVacuum. We might have a little poll on our site, if the competition is particularly fierce. You can leave your stories here in the comments for all to read, or email them to me directly at ShaliniGoVacuum@gmail.com. All entries must be received by December 1st, 2006. We’ll announce the winner shortly thereafter.
My story:
When I was in college, my housemates and I had a long drawn-out prank war with our neighbors, that involved (among many other things) a house lockdown via rope, re-wiring of routers, and some switching of salt and sugar containers. They stopped responding after we erected a wall of snow in front of their only exit, and we took that to be their admission of defeat. It should have been a warning sign that they seemed to be losing gracefully.
Less than a month later, we were having our own household problems. Simply put, our house stank. This wasn’t entirely unexpected; we weren’t the cleanest bunch. But this reeked. This was beyond anything we’d ever experienced and we couldn’t handle it anymore. We finally tackled the house with force one beer-fueled Saturday. The house was from the turn of the century, and probably hadn’t been cleaned like that in its entire life. But alas, the kitchen still had that unholy funk. We were baffled; there wasn’t anything left to clean.
Fast forward several smelly months later: it was time to deal with our landlord and the security deposit situation. Knowing that we were apprehensive, our oh-so-clever neighbors came forward with their confession. There was a slight gap between the tops of our kitchen cabinets and the ceiling. They had stuffed some three pounds of raw meat in there after we snowed them in months ago. That’s right: raw rotting meat, hanging over our heads, festering in our kitchen for months. Would it even be possible to describe the maggots, the blood, the weird rotting meaty juices, the ghastly stench? We didn’t think any amount of bleach, vinegar or baking soda would be able to destroy the bacterial wonderland they had created. We eventually had to replace the entire cabinet top.
Lynn Stephenson said,
November 8, 2006 @ 11:29 am
Not sure this tops rotting meat……..but here’s my gross story. Basically it was my Old English sheep dog, Paisley. At around 8 months of age or so, unbeknownst to us, Paisley ended up with a partial bowel obstruction. We had taught our dog to sleep in the kitchen since we got her and were worried about “puppy mishaps” at night. Linoleum was easier to clean that carpet. This particular morning I got up and went to the kitchen to let her out & smelled the problem before I reached the closed door. Not only had she had “an accident”, but due to the partial obstruction, nothing bulky could pass, which resulted in explosive diarrhea on a massive scale. Not just my floor, but the cabinets and walls, and low windows. It looked like Bobo the Chimp had had a dung throwing contest in my kitchen! It tooks buckets and buckets of soap & water and then bleach and various cleaners to get all of it out of every crevice it had seeped into & get rid of the smell. That smell is nothing like regular dog poo………it is toxic and unforgettable. She went on a vet-directed 24 hour fast & then started back in with just rice & ground beef in tiny amounts. It worked. At first. One week later, just when I was sure she was past whatever it was, I had a repeat performance & my kitchen again was assaulted. Paisley ended up at the vets for several days afterwards before they could remedy the problem. Months went by uneventfully. About a year later we moved into a new house. One morning I started down the stairs and caught an unmistakable wiff of an unforgettable smell. This time Paisley wasn’t confined to the kitchen. I found my family room and sun room in the same condition I had previously found my kitchen. Only my family room had beautiful wall-to-wall Karastan Oriental carpeting. To see a new carpet, and a new slate floor in the sun room, not to mention the white painted woodwork, and new furniture, spattered and blasted with mucussy, dripping, reeking diarrhea………….AGAIN, was almost too much to bear. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know HOW to start. There was barely any spaces to even step through the room on. So I started by crying. Then little by little, spot by spot, I cleaned up the mess the best I could with cleaning products and buckets of soapy water. Then I rented a carpet & upholstry cleaning machine.
Then I decided Paisley would like to sleep in the basement.
Barry Beachum said,
November 8, 2006 @ 11:35 am
My dog got sick ,both ends ,and the automatic vaccum tried to clean it up,….didn’t work,.. made more of a mess,ended up throwing vaccum out.
Andy said,
November 8, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
Had an indoor outdoor cat (Sylvester) a while back with no litter box in the house (hence the outdoor part). He would do his business outside. A friend of mine needed a place to stay so then I got a tenant. One day Sylvester got locked in the house and had to go - no doubt the fault of the tenant. There was no litter box, so the cat decided to leave his #2 business right next to the rubber tree plant. To his credit he scratched some dirt out of the pot to bury it.
The tenant came home, saw the mess and decided to clean it up - with the vacuum cleaner. I cleaned the brush but each time the vacuum cleaner ran it stunk - for months after that.
Kat said,
November 8, 2006 @ 1:21 pm
We live in a basement apartment in Brooklyn. A few years ago, on New Years Eve, both our house and our upstairs neighbors had rather large New Years parties. We had had some problems with toilets clogging in the past, and there had been a big snow that night.
New years day, we opened the front door to go to brunch to find our entryway a 4″ deep lake of raw sewage. We started using the empty keg from the party as a stepping stone to get from our front door to the stairs. The following day, a plumber came, identified the problem - an obstruction of the sewer line - and we realized when we were able to use the back bathroom without explosion that we were fortunate enough to have our two bathrooms on separate sewer lines, or so we thought.
A few months later, after heavy rains, our back shower started gurgling. We tried some draino, it seemed to help, and the rains kept coming. It was my birthday, and I was doing some work from home before my friends came over to celebrate. I was working in my room, down the hall from the bathroom, and I noticed something didn’t smell right. I looked down to make sure the walls weren’t leaking (our foundation wall has a leaking problem), and noticed a puddle of brown liquid seeping through the wall. I walked out to the bathroom to find a lake of raw sewage coming from the bathroom, seeping into our bedroom through the wall. The main sources seemed to be the shower and toilet, which had completely filled with chunky brown liquid and was overflowing on to the floor.
We spent my birthday vacuuming up roughly 120 gallons of sewage from our bedroom and bathroom. The walls are still stained from it.
Christina Catron said,
November 8, 2006 @ 2:06 pm
This is not quite as gross as all the stinky stories but just as horrifying! I had just returned from the garden nursery store and had purchased a small ice cream size container of ladybugs. Beside being known for good luck they are also a nautural pesticide for the garden. The directions said not to release the ladybugs until evening so they won’t fly away from your garden. I left my house for about two hours with the lady bugs in the container sitting on the counter. I returned home to find the ladybugs had hung on to the mesh net at the top of the container and all two or three hunfred of them had escaped! I was mortified! How was I ever going to get them out of my house. So I did the only thing a concerned environmentalist could do I vaccumed them up! I was finding ladybugs around for almost a week! So much for my “good luck”!
Anitra King said,
November 8, 2006 @ 2:31 pm
When I was 15 I wanted to earn some extra cash so I cleaned homes. Well I was asked to clean a house where the owners had been away for three months and they has shut off the water. I had not been told that an infestation of rats had crawled up through the toilets and had made their way into the house. Into the closets, into the pantry th rats had burrowed into the sofas. When I started to clean the house had a pungent air of rangy putrid rat carcass but I didn’t know what it was. I was vaacuming up rat turds all over the place. I got over to this couch and I noticed a hole in it with stuffing coming out so I started to put some of the stuffing back in it when I felt something furry and squishy in my hand. Needless to say it was a dead rat . I went into an hysterical fit screaming and screaming and ran out of the house. I couldn’t finish the job and I didn’t get paid.
Linda Belaski said,
November 8, 2006 @ 2:46 pm
I repair vacuums for a living and I think the grosses thing I have ever ran into was….. A lady brought me her vacuum on day and said it was stuffed up and wouldn’t suck….and since she had it in her garage for a month it had started to really stink. Well, when I got it… it didn’t stink, but knew that she had sucked up something that plugged it up. Well I check the belt cos that is usually what stinks, belt was fine. So on to the hose, I use a brromstick to clean out this, well to make a long story short the hose was stuffed up, but the thing that stuffed it up was a very big mouse with a toothpick through it. Boy did I dump the trash quick that day. LOL
Jean Mansen said,
November 8, 2006 @ 2:48 pm
My husband and I bought our first home — a Green & Green craftsman bungalow — in Pasadena, CA. It was our dream home and we were very happy. Until one day when we came home from work and there was a strong skunk odor. We assumed that a skunk had sprayed outside the house, maybe at a dog or other neighboring animal. We opened windows, turned on fans, and forgot about it. A week later, the odor was back — much stronger than before. The next day, same thing. We cleared out plants around the house, made certain that crawl spaces were covered, tried to air out the house, and called animal control. An officer came out and said that it was likely that a pregnant skunk had moved in under our house. We unsealed the crawl spaces and placed bananas, peanut butter and catfood outside, hoping to lure the critter out. We set humane traps. Nothing seemed to help — the stentch grew progressively worse, gaining strength each day. We caught neighborhood cats in the trap, took them home and apologized to their owners. Every night, I’d rush home from work, cook bacon, place it with peanut butter, bananas and marshmellows (favorite pregnant skunk foods, I was told) in dishes outside the crawl space in super large humane trap.
Fastforward three months — the skunk had babies under our house and we were still cooking bacon and other treats for her and her family, hoping to trap them. After three months of her constant spraying, we could barely stand coming home. We decided to seal up the crawl spaces. If she and the babies weren’t out by then, we’d deal with their remains.
When the spraying finally ceased, we had an exterminator come and remove the remains (exterminators won’t come for live skunks). We ripped up the carpet ripped and had the underlying wood floors replaced, then new carpet put down. We took all of our clothes to the dry cleaner to be cleaned and freshened. Needless to say, we were fighting with our insurance carrier about whether our policy covered this very extensive, expensive and disgusting clean up. My husband picked up all of our clothes from teh dry cleansers, placed them in the back of his convertible car (with the top up), locked the car and ran into a store for a few minutes. When he came out, the car’s top was ripped and all of our clothes were gone. Everything, save for what we were wearing that day, had been stolen.
Lisa said,
November 8, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
We moved from the city to the country about two years ago. Quite a culture shock. Not only was were the people nicer, the traffic nonexistent, but everything was nice and new and easy to get to. The only thing we did not count on was the amount of critters. Everywhere. Deer walking down the driveway and eating all my roses. Gophers so ballsy that they would peek out of a hole and stare defiantly at you even if the shovel was inches from their face. Baby bunnies in the pool filter; their siblings leaving droppings all over the place. Tarantulas the size of a man’s palm. Jerusalem crickets (aka potato bugs) so huge my children wanted to adopt them as pets. Cats getting swooped upon and flown away by owls. And then there were the snakes. I had already killed three rattlers in as many weeks when my husband called to me upstairs as I lay in bed sick with the baby: “Honey! A rattler got in the shed.” Me: “Well, for crying out loud, call the fire department. I’m too sick.” (Husband will not kill living creatures. We must cure him of this ailment some day.) Ten minutes later a fire truck and the captain’s truck show up. I could not resist. I went downstairs in my PJs, baby in my arms, and watched as they took everything out of the shed, got the snake, killed it, then put everything back into the shed. But I wasn’t really watching the process so much as those gorgeous fire fighters. Ahhhh, lovely. Every single one of them! Then a few weeks later I opened the garage again and this SMELL assaulted my nose. “Gas! A GAS LEAK!” The odor was strong, sweet, and overwhelmingly powerful and icky. I wa sure the house was going to blow. I ushered everyone out of the house and called the gas company. “We can be there between now and 8 pm tonight.” Well, thanks, but my house is gonna blow and it’s 7:30 in the morning! There’s this sick, strong smell, it’s making us nauseated, we need help.” Of course, the gas company was useless. Then I remembered the fire fighters. Oh so helpful. I called 911. Within ten minutes the fire fighters were out to check the gas leak. I look up from the porch and there are two gorgeous, identical twin fire fighters, brothers!, standing at my door. I must have done something good sometime, because look what the universe had brought me! I tried hard not to swoon (from the firefighters, not the smell, though it seemed to be getting stronger). When they went into the garage they nearly perished from the stink and proceeded to fan out all over the house and yard to find the source of the leak. But there was no gas leak. Then what was that smell? About a half hour later, after partly dismantling the water heater, one of the twins discovered a present that Mother Nature had left me in the water heater: an entire family of mice had gotten into the insulation. When the heat had turned on, they had gotten incinerated on the spot and the maggots were just starting to dive into their decaying flesh. I wanted to vomit when I saw the remnants of their little carcasses. Gross! Repulsive! I tell ya, the country has its definite drawbacks. And there are way too many critters per capita. But then, think of the pluses: the fire fighters always arrive within 10 minutes of a call. And if you are lucky, you might even get the twins!
Kristin said,
November 8, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
My younger sister (now 22) has a penchant for bringing home unwanted animals for my mother to adopt. My mom has taken in 2 cats like this and also a dog, Sydney, who is half pit bull and half black lab. The problem with Sydney was that she would get carsick going to and from the vet, who was located about 5 minutes from my mom’s house. Usually, my mom could get her out of the car fast enough before Sydney got sick.
One time, when returning home, Sydney didn’t make it. She threw up all over the inside of my mom’s SUV, including in her cupholders between the driver and passenger seats. As my mom pulled into the driveway and went to reach for her keys, she realized that they were in said cupholder. So she dug through the doggy vomit to get her key. She managed to get into the house and clean out her car, not without the lingering smell of doggy puke for a few weeks. Sydney now gets into a car only when she absolutely must.
may said,
November 8, 2006 @ 6:15 pm
This year is a bad one for mice all around our area. We’ve had the first mice in our house ever in 22 years….and my husband hates them. We had chased one around, set traps, etc all the usual stuff but couldn’t catch it….or them. One night in September I was cooking supper on my electric stove when up through the back burner peeped a mouse face! I grabbed my stir fry off the stove and shrieked for my husband.
He had a plan!!! He grabbed his shop vac and sucked that mouse right up into the vacuum cleaner!!! Then he proceeded to take it out in the woods and told him to never come back or it would be worse for him…..yeah, that’s what I said.
Some different treatment than what happened to the mouse who tried to get our supper when I was about 5 or 6. He stuck his head down through a hole in the ceiling… sniffing the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. My dad grabbed a shotgun,….I kid you not….mom gathered us kids against the far wall….and my dad shot him. Yep. Good shot and good thing mom moved the pot of spaghetti sauce first ’cause ….., yep…..dripping on the stove.
I guess we are a kinder gentler nation now!
karen Messmer said,
November 8, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
My grosses story is my two animals.. One yellow mix labrador, one yellow tabby. Both adopted, not that I wanted any more animals. Daiey or frequent sweeps My Hoover Upright bagger must be emptied at least 4 times. Pure yellow hair with brown dirt. fills up my sweeper.
I even use my Hoover cleaner on the carpet frequently. I do not want to kill gods creatures but I would love to eliminate th dirt.
Conrad Aquino said,
November 9, 2006 @ 12:08 pm
Not a real gross out story, but more of a Bill Engvall “here’s you sign” moment that a co-worker of mine had.
He and his son were working on his son’s jeep… whatever the repair was that was needed, it required disconnecting the fuel line, which leaked out about a pint or so of gasoline onto the garage floor.
My co-worker, having an inspirational moment (more acurately a Senior moment), grabbed his Shop-Vac and began “cleaning up” the mess.
I’ll mercifully draw the curtain here… neither he or his son was injured, the Shop-Vac was a total loss and my co-worker still hasn’t lived his goof down with his wife, who often looks in on him now whenever she hears the vac start-up in the garage.
Gypsy said,
November 9, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
I had gone to the home of a friend of a friend who I cleaned house for. I was told that the husband had committed suicide and she needed help to prepare the home for sale. As I was vacuuming in the bed room I kept picking up small white rocks of various sizes. This I knew by the sound of the rocks rattling up the pipe of the hose. When I finished cleaning, I asked the owner if she knew that lots of rocks where in her bedroom behind furniture and under the bed. She replied, “that is the room that my husband shot himself in the head when he killed himself.” I realized that the rocks were human skull bits,and I had used my own vacuum………………………
Tracy Vallie said,
November 9, 2006 @ 3:37 pm
A few years a ago we had a old cat named Molly. Molly prerfered to hang out in our basement rather than dealling upstairs with our busy children. Molly was a good hunter. She often left us her prize kills on the bootom stair. My husband, bless his heart, went to do laundry for me. The kids had thrown their laundry down the stairs. He scooped up the laubdry and threw it in the wash. When he went to swich the laundry over to the drier he opened the lid to find a rather large very bloated very dead rat! I have never had such a clean washing machine as after that. He scubed the whole thing out with bleach. My first thought was “better you than me” . I think if I had found it, I never would have done laundry again.
Tammie said,
November 12, 2006 @ 1:59 pm
I have my own painting company, and sometimes we have to do turn-key jobs for home investors. Fo those of you who do not know what turn key is it is cleaning a empty house or an apartment and then painting it. I remember having to clean a house that was so discusting that even the exterminator was horrified. This house was so infested with roaches that they were crawling on the outside door and into the grass. When we went inside the house the kitchen walls were black and moving. Food was everywhere on the countertops floor everywhere. It was so bad we had to leave that day and allow the exterminator bomb the house for three days. When we return three days later, there were millions of dead roaches and some still crawling. I have never seen anything like it. some where still dropping off of the ceiling, the refrigerator was full of them, the stove every cabinet, light fixtures, even in between the light switches. It took us days to vacuming up these roaches because you did’nt want to sweep up these critters. We defintely threw away this vacume. To this day I wondered how did this family live in this house, and felt sorry for the new landlord who took them in. I know his property is full of roaches because this family took some of their tenants with them.
Lisa Kennedy said,
November 15, 2006 @ 10:32 am
It was New Years Eve 2002 and our designated driver (Tom) drove us all around town all night to party hop. Because he wasn’t drinking he was filling up on the good eats at each party, things like imitation crab dip and garlic-onion cheese balls. As midnight drew closer, we decided to go back to our house to end the night and really start celebrating the new year. As soon as we arrived at our house it was over for the designated driver, Tom decided to “catch up” with the rest his passengers that night by chugging an entire bottle of wine as well as a few other drinks throughout the next few hours.
As the night became late, we would find ourselves asking where Tom went? Turns out, we would randomly find him in strange places; curled up in the bath tub, laying face down on the kitchen floor, but little did we know this was a precursor to the grossest New Years Eve ever…
Tom began wandering the house, like he was looking for something, and before we knew it he stopped to admire our brand new artificial tree purchased especially for our first house. He stood there gazing at the lights and brilliant silver ornaments, and then all of the sudden our friends scream out in horror! My husband and I ran in from the kitchen just in time to see a volcanic rainbow of vomit spew from his mouth! Tom tried his hardest to block this event with his hand, however that just increased the trajectory of the wine soaked crab dip and cheese projectiles.
Vomit was all over the light beige carpeting, on every ornament, and in all over the brand new tree. That night my husband and I had the great idea of vacuuming up the vomit with our Hoover stick vacuum which did more to rub the mess deeper into the carpet and fan the odor throughout the living area. Needless to say, this was the end of the party…Happy New Year!
When I woke the next morning, I found Tom’s mess in places that couldn’t be seen at night. I had to hand wash each ornament and piece of garland to free them from vomit chunks (remember the imitation crab dip). Everytime I tried to used the Hoover from that night forward, no matter now much we cleaned it or changed the filter, the air would be thick with a smell of regurgitated crab dip and wine…
Needless to say, we no longer have that vacuum, but every year, when we decorate our tree with those brilliant silver ornaments, its become a tradition to find little reminders of that evening and think back to the grossest New Years ever…
P.S. Our friend Tom is now known as “the guy that threw up all over Christmas”.
Regina G. said,
November 16, 2006 @ 11:32 am
I have two memories to share. Guess I am desperate for a good vacume huh?
I doubt anyone would admit either of these.
First one, goes back years ago. My oldest daughter was in 6th Grade.
I was the “super mom”. Working part time, volunteering everywhere,
with my favorite good deed being being the ” Plant Lady”, or “Nature Lady”,
or “Animal Lady”, in PS 193 Queens. Queens is just outside of Manhattan,
yes there is grass, but few kids have gardens, many no pets, so I share my love of nature by having class trips to our yard or teaching in almost every classroom, for six years. That’s the part I am proud of. The part no one knew, our house paid the price for my doing that, plus soccer coach, but mom of 3 in 9 sports, plus religion classes etc. As years went by the house got messier as I volunteered more & more. OK, some even called me the crazy lady, I had a rescued pet rat on my shoulders every where I went (they make great pets I would say), a small snake in my pocket,
“Here’s some fennel seeds from my garden ” out of the other pocket, they will take care of your nausea, and so on. Well, the weirdest, thing I did…
I found a dead baby bird, barely had it’s pin feathers on. The same day, earlier my oldest was saying how “some kids” were starting to smoke.
I was supposed to have a 6th class arrive the next day for composting lessons… there was this poor tiny bird, who choked on what his parents must have thought was nice nest building material. Hey hon, look at this shiny ribbon! It was not a ribbon, it was the little plastic bit that opens up a pack of cigarettes, and there it was hanging from the tiny beak of the baby bird. Cigarettes kill in more then one way, I figured, pardon the pun… Let’s gross the kids out, Kill two birds with one stone so speak…
The horrors of littering (which I spouted often about), and let’s not smoke ever! Well, I put the baby bird in a baggie, left it on my bedroom armoire,
thinking no one would see it there. The next morning arrived, and darn if it wasn’t gone. Well, guess the cat found it after all. Guess it wasn’t a great hiding spot. Well, about three years later, long after that strange smell had come & gone… I found it. Across my bedroom, stashed under a chair, where fabric came out from the cat hiding in it. I will spare you the morbid details, other then to say… The bag was ripped open, all that was left, loose feathers & tiny bones scattered every where, behind the radiator, where the hand held old ‘buster” couldn’t get to, on the bed, and yuck on me, as I jumped and screamed I scatter more all over.
I still wonder, if my little shock lesson, would have worked. I betcha, the kids, would have remembered it, before tossing any litter for years!
Story #2 is shorter…
The front unheated room, was used mainly for storage. We just moved Oct. 30th, and needed to leave the house ” broom swept”.
Wellllll….. one closet, that had years of junk thrown in it. Can’t remember the last time we saw the bottom of it, lol. Must have been the home to many many mice. This part of the house belonged to my grandma, and she had not been in there for years. When I finally got the bottom, you couldn’t tell what color the floor was. Mouse poop, and “fluff & stuff”,
what must have been a luxury condo of sorts was all over it.
Truth be told, I didn’t have a working vacuum, guess you see why I have the guts to admit this all now huh? So I swept it up, or shoveled it up, then swept what was left. The next day, I was sick as a dog, one week later, I was rushed to NSH Hospital, my lungs could not get enough air in.
It was like overnight pnemonia, I ended up being treated with IV steroids, inhaling treatments, IV antibiotics for 24 hours. A vacuum would have been cheaper then the hospital bills, and ambulance bill.
Kim Fenner said,
November 17, 2006 @ 10:45 am
My 90 year old grandmother lives across the street from me. Last month she called and said “I have a mess and I don’t know what to do with it.” So off I go to see what she had done.
She was trying to pour old grease from her Frydaddy into a jar. The handle broke and a half gallon of old oil was spread across her kitchen floor. Thankfully it was linoleum, not carpet! To keep it from spreading more she had poured corn meal into the spill.
So I took the dust pan and scooped up what I could of the oil soaked corn meal. Then I used paper towels to get up more oil. After three mopings (didn’t want grandma slipping down) the floor was finally back to normal.
Jim A. said,
November 18, 2006 @ 11:20 am
As a custodian in an elementary for 18 years, I have seen many messes. But this one topped them all. We have a 73 y.o. woman that comes to our building, to volunteer as a story reader. About two weeks ago, I got a call from the main office about a mess in the female faculty bathroom. Only described as a “accident”, and assuming someone missed, I went up armed with a mop. Opened to door to be hit with a stench that nearly caused me to lose my lunch, I witnessed what looked like someone’s bowels had erupted. I locked the door, returned to the office and asked what happened. Informed that our storyteller had left because she had an accident in the bathroom, I asked if it was by ambulance, because she must have exploded! On the floor in front of the toilet, on the seat, under the seat, all over the walls behind the toilet, and the wall to the left. Went to my supply closet and got a two gallon sprayer, latex gloves, rags, and a plastic face shield. Filled the dispenser with disinfectant, and deodorizer, I walked in, held my breath and sprayed everything. Left, came back ten minutes later to clean up. Cleaned it three times, to make sure everything was out of the grout and all. Never in all my years, had I seen anything like that.
When the storyteller came back the next week, she apologized, seems she had a bad reaction to some medicine. Told her I was glad to see she was feeling better. During the holidays, she usually gets me a six pack of my favorite beer to take home(made a sign two years ago and gave her a private parking place). She lean in close and said, ” This year, I think I owe you a case.”
carol neiport said,
November 19, 2006 @ 9:18 pm
when we were first married twenty something years ago my husband who is a sportsman stored his magots in our refrigerator. Much to my surprise I got up one morning and opened the fridge and there were maggots everywhere. I was not a happy camper and threw everything out in the fridge (although we had no money at the time). My husband kept trying to retrieve things telling me that the food wasn’t bad and I had to keep sneaking the stuff in the garbage and replace it.
Needless to say he started putting the maggots in the fridge in screw top containers.
Rachel Slick said,
November 21, 2006 @ 10:49 pm
about a year ago, I had to run down to the basement to put some laundry in the wash and left my 1 1/2 year old son alone in the kitchen for less than 3 minutes.
When i came back up, he had tipped over the trash can. garbage was spilling out all over his legs and he was EATING the wriggling maggots that were in a box of cous cous I had discovered and thrown away.
He looked up at me, smiled, then barfed all over himself the floor. so then he was COVERED in couys cous, maggots, and vomit, all sticking to his body.
A good vacuum (wet/dry?) would have been nice about then.
Rachel Slick said,
November 21, 2006 @ 10:58 pm
I don’t know if it’s allowed, but I’ve got another one!
morning….groggy, walking barefoot through the house, I go into my office and
SQUELCH something slimy and wet and cold and sticky squirts up through my toes. I look down and …oooops, forgot as usual, this is the place the cats like to leave me presents. This morning it’s a doozy…..a pregnant mouse has been eviscerated and her long stringy uterus with 5 baby mouse embryos just got squashed by my bare foot.
GROSSSSS
Susan White said,
November 23, 2006 @ 12:00 am
I went to visit family in upstate New York. The area is fairly remote and there was only one hotel to stay at. It was old and grossly unclean and I stayed there for a few days. I discovered that I had lost my rings, and was not sure where. I searched every corner of the hotel room, under beds etc. Then I remembered that the room had been vaccumed the day before. I was sure that the rings had been picked up in the vaccum. I asked the maid if I could check through the bag inside the vaccum. She brought the vaccum to my room. I opened the bag and I was so desparate to find my rings I just dumped it out on the floor and on my knees I dug through the powdery dirt and dust and it contained pieces of food, toe nails, hair balls, beads, alot of unidentifiable stuff and it was so nasty. The dust flew all over me and went up my nose. I still did not find my rings.
Tabitha said,
November 24, 2006 @ 7:26 pm
The most disgusting cleaning ever was when I helped my current landlord clean up another house he owned. He had just evicted the family of four that was living there.
I thought it would be standard cleaning, but I realized when I stepped into the front door I was wrong. There were literally piles of rotting garbage, pizza, beer cans, dirty diapers, bloody tampons, the most disgusting things ever all mixed in with dirty clothes, newspapers and bills stuck to the wood floors. We spent the first 3 days shoveling out the rooms, just getting the “debris” out. Then it was time to start cleaning, the bathroom had become some sort of otherworldly outhouse from hell. There was human feces smeared all over the floors, the walls, and the bathtub. The kitchen was home to maggots and flies like I’ve never seen. The bedrooms all had their fair share of nastiness, more human feces, a dried puddle and a yellow stained wall that I’m sure was used as another “toilet” for someone.
Two weeks later, and a lot of bleach, power washing, and sanding, and we finally had most of the filth out. There were still walls that needed to be replaced, and the appliances were all replaced, but we did eventually clean it until it was worth living in.
That is without a doubt the grossest thing I’ve ever done.
Shauna said,
November 26, 2006 @ 10:53 pm
Well, this is truly unlike any of the other stories on this blog thus far. My fiance and I were walking up the path to his apartment on Long Island one afternoon several years ago. We were carrying large bags of groceries, but even behind all those groceries, we couldn’t help but notice something distinctly unusual in the grass. On first glance, it appeared to be a softball sized, purply-brownish Milk Dud with…a tail. We leaned in closer to the lawn, then closer, then closer, and seriously could not figure out what this thing was in the grass. We were entirely too close when the shocking reality hit us…it was a partially digested possum, most likely eaten (and later regurgitated) by the apartment owner’s large dog, Kizzy. Basically, the front of the possum had been digested, while the back still maintained possum like qualities. After it sat there all day with no hope of the apartment owners cleaning it up, we took it upon ourselves to get rid of the thing. Like a sick game of croquet, Matt used a broom to whack the possum ball into a garbage can turned on its side. Honestly, I didn’t really clean the thing up at all…I was too busy retching in the corner!
carol ric said,
November 28, 2006 @ 10:09 pm
hi there after reading your story which was quite gross but I think mine one ups you. Mine has to do with fresh salmon, about 4 or 5 lbs plus some steaks.
My husband and I decided to go on vacation to visit my parents. We decided to make it a long one we each took appx. three weeks off. My smart husband decided since we were going to be gone so long (he is a very cheap guy) to turn off the electricity (how stupid is he) of course he did not bother to tell me he did this and to this day would deny it. Anyway while back on the farm my father decides to give me one of his antique cars which we decide to drive back. This is in the month of August. This car is 1950 something with no air but it did have a hardtrop that was convertible. Again because of my very extremely cheap husband we zoomed from S.D. back to L.A. through Las Vegas Nevada in appx. 3 days. Which was killer we both ended up with heat exhaustion for appx 2 days after we returned. Speaking of the return. I open the door and it hits me like a ton of bricks. The smell was astounding. Rotting fish, and meat. We lugged the refrigerator outside and as my husband was throwing up I proceeded to empty the contents of a fairly large refrigerator of all of it’s contents by myself. This was extremely disgusting. Remember we were already sick from the sun exposure drivng across the dessert for the last 8 hours. I dont know how i did this by myself but I managed somehow. When you talk about maggots I can understand completely as my hands were digging through the freezer from the salmon and steaks I had bought the day before we left for our trip. It still turns my stomach thinking about it.
Carol
Kim Fenner said,
November 30, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
I just remembered another one.
Many, many years ago I lived in south Texas in an apartment complex. The couple who ran the apartment did all the maintenance. One apartment was vacated and needed to be cleaned. The lady had just had a baby, so I offered to clean it for her. She said the apartment wasn’t too bad, but the refridgerator was awful. So I cleaned the apartment first, then tackled the fridge.
When I opened the door I discovered that the previous occupants had not emptied the fridge at all. It was full of food. Two week old food in a fridge that did not have electricity… in south Texas… for two weeks….
Needless to say, there were maggots in the meat, solid milk, and a horrible stench rolling out of the fridge. I had to tie a bandana across my nose and put Vicks under my nostrils to mask the smell.
After clearing it out, throwing away pots, pans, dishes and all, I had my husband help me move it outside and we used the water hose to wash it out. After 24 hours outside, I started scrubbing… and scrubbing … and scrubbing. I gave it my best shot, but the apartment managers finally ended up buying a new fridge.
And I never offered to clean another apartment….
Sarah D'Hondt said,
December 2, 2006 @ 7:58 pm
I had had very bad luck with vacuums over the last few years. I have had to buy a new vaccuum every year, and I’m about ready to buy another one real soon. (So, the $100 prize would help me so much!!!)
A few weeks ago, my 3 year old daughter came down with a very bad stomach flu. One night, she started to vomit uncontrollably—and this was while she was standing in the middle of our family room, and it was projectile, to boot.
After a few minutes of this, she was covered head to toe in her own puke, as was my entire family room, and husband! lol I easily spent 4 hours that night cleaning…..first, I bathed my daughter, and then had to bleach and scrub the tub because it had pink chunks of puke stuck all over it. I didn’t even know where to start in my family room—my tables, couch, the toybox and toys, carpet, and even the remote control all got puked on! And, of course my husband was pretty grossed out too!
The next morning, I got out the carpet cleaner again, as well as carpet deoderizer and stain remover to get rid of the absolutely, disgusting smell that still lingered in the family room. It took about 4 treatments, and a week worth of spraying FeBreeze all over the area, for the smell to finally dissapear. Before all the smell went away, I had vacuumed several times and now every time I use the vacuum, it puts the nasty smell of puke back into the air, and my carpet! I took it all apart, cleaned out the filters and hoses and containers—but the smell must be trapped into the bristles or something, because the smell will not leave!!!
With tax returns, I plan to buy ANOTHER vacuum……my last one broke because my husband tried to vacuum up wet aquarium rocks with it (Hello!!! Its not a wet/dry shop vac!!), and the one before that broke when we moved and the cord was severed somehow. If anyone needs a new vacuum badly, its me—-I just hope I can get more of a year out of my next one!!
GoVacuum said,
December 2, 2006 @ 8:10 pm
Thanks for all the amazing and horrifying stories everyone! The contest is now closed to new submissions (anything received after this comment can not be counted). Judging is now in full swing and the competition is intense. I honestly did not think there would be this many gross entries. We hope to announce the winner of the $100 gift certificate by this coming Friday at the very latest. All entrants will be notified by email and results will be announced here on the blog. Thanks again to everyone who participated!
The GoVacuum Blog » We have a winner! said,
December 11, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
[…] Well, that was just nasty. We really didn’t expect to read so many horrifying tales of mess-making and cleaning gone awry. Judging all the stories entered into our “Talk Dirty To Me” Story Contest was very difficult, so we had to devise an elaborate scoring system in order to be fair. We judged based on sheer disgustingness, difficulty in cleaning, and uniqueness of situation. And we finally came up with one winner. The winning story had it all: feces, blood, garbage, rotting food, vermin and more. Congratulations Tabitha, for not only writing the winning story (and winning the $100 GoVacuum Gift Certificate) but for surviving that disaster. Tabitha’s story is below, for your reading horror. We appreciate everyone else’s stories, which were all really quite horrid. Thanks to everyone for sending them in! […]