Yesterday as I was preparing to host the Buck Naked Boys Club (BNBC) of Edmonton monthly winter potluck, I was doing house cleaning.
Now I should mention I own my own house and rent out 3 rooms. It is a spacious house (113 square meter bungalow with finished basement nearly equivalent in size of main floor), with 2 bedrooms on each floor (main and basement).
As part of the rental agreement, everyone is responsible for keeping the shared parts of the house (living & dining room, kitchen, basement) clean. A rotating schedule was agreed upon, where everyone has an area they are responsible for keeping clean for 3 months.
So, as I was cleaning I noticed:
In the kitchen there was mold in the coffee pot (I don't drink coffee), and the dish cloth was not cleaned for at least 2 weeks (should be every week).
In the rest of the main floor the bathroom was not fully cleaned - dust on shelves, tub not clean.
The basement had the biggest issue. Not only was the toilet not clean, but the piping under sink was corroded and cracked. I generally don't use that bathroom, but I was surprised to find all the toilet paper soaking wet (kept under the sink) and none on the roll by the toilet. I will be asking why no one mentioned to me that there was a puddle / wet around the sink.
The final set of chores (mine for since November), is to put the garbage out, get mail & newspaper, and shovel the walk (yesterday was our first snow fall that will likely stay the rest of the winter).
Now I have had some issues before in encouraging my tenants to do their chores, in fact the last time I confronted them, about 6 months ago, they decided to change the rotation from every month to every three months.
If anyone reading this has suggestions, please let me know. I will be discussing this issue with the rest of the household once everyone is back from being out of town.
My current thought on strategy is to reinforce the reason for doing the chores and the agreed upon rotation schedule, as well as what I found lacking (and perhaps ask if they'd want their mother to have seen such a mess). Then to go through the house with everyone and point out / show them what is expected (i.e. that the tub needs to be cleaned and how to do it).
For at least one of them I think showing / pointing out where things weren't clean may be all he needs, as he already mentioned to me several months ago that through having to do the chores he learned how to clean. So the others might just have not known the areas they're responsible for.
You might be better off hiring a cleaning service to come once per week or once every two weeks. The cost should be borne by your tenants. I suppose that opens legal issues around modifying the terms of the lease.
ReplyDeleteI have talked to them about having a cleaning service come in, and that their rent would have to increase if that were the case. But they don't want to pay the extra amount, and have promised to do their chores.
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