End of tenancy cleaning in London is increasingly in demand, with more and more lettings and management agencies demanding professional cleaning from their tenants on vacating their properties.
While this may seem like an expense for nothing, what is hilariously ignored about the situation is not the cleaning itself, but what those tenants leave behind for one-off cleaning companies to pick up after them.
Horror stories include live pets, collections of dirty condoms and years worth of old newspapers that had obviously doubled as intimate care products.
Here are a few favourites: Rummaging amongst the dozens of empty wine and champagne bottles that fuelled the end of tenancy leaving party the night before, one cleaner actually found a living person.
A party casualty leftover from the previous evening who was woken up, to his great surprise, only to find that all his mates had left and been replaced by a team of cleaners.
The cleaners were kind enough to explain what had happened and send him off in the right direction.
A Florence and the Machine song comes to mind: one end of tenancy cleaner found a bed that had actually been set on fire.
Although the flat was otherwise very clean, the guest bed, one of the only remaining pieces of furniture in the flat, had had the sheets burnt off the bed.
This particular scenario was complete with smoke stains rising up the headboard and wall.
Luckily it had been put out and no one needed to call the fire department, though the next tenant would have been in the market for a new bed.
While one-off cleaning the house of an elderly resident who had recently moved into an assisted-care home, cleaners found a cat in the basement.
Not a big deal particularly.
Then they found several more cats, without a litter box in sight.
Aside from the cleaning itself, they reported that the smell bordered on the unbearable.
A bit of pet mess is one thing, but leaving all of your pets in the house when you move out is quite another.
The cats had to be packed off to Battersea as, sadly, the resident was unable to have pets at her new residence.
And so, a word to the wise: pay attention to the things you leave behind, as you never know who might find them and what they might have to say about it.