We were happy to be home, but coming back brought us back to reality...in kind of a hard way.
While we were gone, our freezer had warmed up--I can't remember now if I had turned up the temperature for the fridge. I remember thinking about it because we didn't have much food in there and it wasn't going to be opened in 2.5 months. But I may have accidentally turned up the freezer as well. Or it may have just happened. But our good friends were even better friends when they came the second week to check on the apartment. The first week they thought there was a slight smell in the apartment. They thought it was just that no one was living there and slightly stagnant air. But by the second week, they knew something was wrong. And wrong it was. All the food in the freezer--all the frozen meat and the freezer meals and ice cream and such--ALL of it went bad.
And stinky.
Really, really stinky!
When they opened up the freezer, they knew they were in a bad way. So they not only checked on our apartment each week while we were gone and brought in our mail, but they had to deal with the stinky, gross, rotting food from our freezer.
So when we got home, instead of coming home to a clean, good-smelling apartment because I had left it that way, we came home to a stinky-smelling apartment. We went to bed that night and the next morning we got doing laundry and cleaning. Paul scrubbed and scrubbed the freezer again and again. We unplugged it and tried vinegar, baking soda, every kind of cleaner. And it just didn't help. We tried so hard to get the smell out, but it didn't work.
We ate out a few times and we even tried to just have a few things in the fridge. But it was so hard to eat anything because any time we opened the fridge it was stinky. We tried to eat some watermelon I had cut up a day before and it had the smell in it. So gross! I had bought milk and just a few days later it had already curdled. We also noticed that the fridge part just wasn't getting cold like it did before. I talked with maintenance about it and they tried to fix it. They couldn't get it to go cold and the maintenance guy couldn't handle the smell. He said he would just get us a new fridge. Yay!!
Before we got that though, we decided that we just couldn't handle putting food in the fridge to just go bad. Another good friend of ours mentioned a mini fridge they had that we could use. Hooray! So even though it was tiny and we could only fit so much in it, it was awesome!!!
It definitely saved us!
When we finally got our new fridge, I thought things were going to be good. The next morning, I walked into the kitchen and stepped on a puddle of water. Oh no! I checked under the fridge and even pulled it out, but there wasn't water there. I checked under the sink--no water from there either. Then I moved the oven and there was a lot of water under it. I checked with our neighbors and they too had water come from under the oven. So when maintenance installed the fridge, they must have not installed something correctly and water was leaking through the wall behind the oven. So I had to clean that up too.
Speaking of water and clean up, Texas had been getting a ton of rain for several months by the time we got home. I had noticed some discoloration on the window sill in the dining area but just dismissed it. Later when Glenn was playing at the table, he said he was getting wet. Sure enough, rain water was seeping through the wall above the window and dripping into the apartment.
I was so tired of cleaning up water. I think I had cleaned up water in another place too, but I can't remember now. But it just seemed like another thing I had to clean up.
Vacation and living in a hotel in Europe was definitely OVER!
We also had had a bug problem. Despite telling maintenance several times and having the bug guys come and spray several times, we still had lots and lots of ants come in through the windows, especially Glenn's. I took this pictures of his window sill the night we got home. If we had been gone any longer, we might have been over run with ants!
I know I had had a couple months off from deep cleaning because we had been living in a hotel in Spain, but I didn't think coming back to life would be so harsh! :D
While we were gone, our freezer had warmed up--I can't remember now if I had turned up the temperature for the fridge. I remember thinking about it because we didn't have much food in there and it wasn't going to be opened in 2.5 months. But I may have accidentally turned up the freezer as well. Or it may have just happened. But our good friends were even better friends when they came the second week to check on the apartment. The first week they thought there was a slight smell in the apartment. They thought it was just that no one was living there and slightly stagnant air. But by the second week, they knew something was wrong. And wrong it was. All the food in the freezer--all the frozen meat and the freezer meals and ice cream and such--ALL of it went bad.
And stinky.
Really, really stinky!
When they opened up the freezer, they knew they were in a bad way. So they not only checked on our apartment each week while we were gone and brought in our mail, but they had to deal with the stinky, gross, rotting food from our freezer.
So when we got home, instead of coming home to a clean, good-smelling apartment because I had left it that way, we came home to a stinky-smelling apartment. We went to bed that night and the next morning we got doing laundry and cleaning. Paul scrubbed and scrubbed the freezer again and again. We unplugged it and tried vinegar, baking soda, every kind of cleaner. And it just didn't help. We tried so hard to get the smell out, but it didn't work.
We ate out a few times and we even tried to just have a few things in the fridge. But it was so hard to eat anything because any time we opened the fridge it was stinky. We tried to eat some watermelon I had cut up a day before and it had the smell in it. So gross! I had bought milk and just a few days later it had already curdled. We also noticed that the fridge part just wasn't getting cold like it did before. I talked with maintenance about it and they tried to fix it. They couldn't get it to go cold and the maintenance guy couldn't handle the smell. He said he would just get us a new fridge. Yay!!
Before we got that though, we decided that we just couldn't handle putting food in the fridge to just go bad. Another good friend of ours mentioned a mini fridge they had that we could use. Hooray! So even though it was tiny and we could only fit so much in it, it was awesome!!!
It definitely saved us!
When we finally got our new fridge, I thought things were going to be good. The next morning, I walked into the kitchen and stepped on a puddle of water. Oh no! I checked under the fridge and even pulled it out, but there wasn't water there. I checked under the sink--no water from there either. Then I moved the oven and there was a lot of water under it. I checked with our neighbors and they too had water come from under the oven. So when maintenance installed the fridge, they must have not installed something correctly and water was leaking through the wall behind the oven. So I had to clean that up too.
Speaking of water and clean up, Texas had been getting a ton of rain for several months by the time we got home. I had noticed some discoloration on the window sill in the dining area but just dismissed it. Later when Glenn was playing at the table, he said he was getting wet. Sure enough, rain water was seeping through the wall above the window and dripping into the apartment.
I was so tired of cleaning up water. I think I had cleaned up water in another place too, but I can't remember now. But it just seemed like another thing I had to clean up.
Vacation and living in a hotel in Europe was definitely OVER!
We also had had a bug problem. Despite telling maintenance several times and having the bug guys come and spray several times, we still had lots and lots of ants come in through the windows, especially Glenn's. I took this pictures of his window sill the night we got home. If we had been gone any longer, we might have been over run with ants!
I know I had had a couple months off from deep cleaning because we had been living in a hotel in Spain, but I didn't think coming back to life would be so harsh! :D
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