When vacating their flat to be rented out by an agency, the would-be landlord has a few choices to make:
1. How to best clean the flat
2. Where to store valuables and items that you don’t want the Antipodean tenants to destroy
My advice in these matters, after some serious considerations in the lager filled days before my departure from my own flat, is as follows:
Professional cleaning companies, while good, will not turn up after your leaving party at short notice and remove all of the vomit and twiglets from everywhere without a hefty financial incentive. Estimates between 100 – 200 GBP were mentioned for my residence. I saved a fortune by shovelling a load of cheap and nasty amphetamines up the hooters of a friend and myself. There ensued much running around with vacuum cleaners and bits of cloth covered in cleaning fluid attached to our extremities. The wobbly picture that we got from our spangled eyes as we staggered from the front door at the end of a five hour cleaning frenzy was quite passable. The flat looked clean.
Instead of paying a monthly king’s ransome for a storage company to keep your possessions and valuables, try these two ideas: first, invite as many people as possible to your flat in your last weekend. Urge them to take things away, and prepare goodie boxes / bags of ‘gifts’ for each attendee for difficult to shift belongings. I found that African face masks, and firearms were easy to shift, but coffee tables and broken televisions slightly harder. People will think you’re generous, and you never know when you’ll need to sleep on their sofas. Second, go to the shops and buy three times as many binliners as you think you could possibly fill. Return home and stuff all of those things that you don’t really want into the liners and leave them outside your door. I got rid of about 50 sacks full of cack in the month leading up to my departure. Heaven knows what it all was and where it came from.
Don’t make the mistake that I made with some of the larger items, such as lamps, tables, chairs and duvets. I gave them to charity shops, and had some of them disposed of. In retrospect, I could have made a nice living space in the street for our friendly neighbourhood wino. He could have had a really nice hamster’s nest of duvets and he could have sat at a table watching a broken television. That way everyone would feel that he fitted into society better, and wouldn’t find him threatening.
My last tip is to get a good letting agent, or if not possible, as in my case, get one with a good name. Insist on calling them titles like ‘Special Agent’, even if they are having no joy shifting your flat. It keeps them motivated. Special Agent Austin has persevered and managed to find an assortment of Australians and Kiwis to squat in my flat, starting on Saturday. Being as he now thinks he’s a ‘special’ agent, he will hopefully feel empowered to get them evicted when they start burning the carpet for heat in winter, and refusing to pay any rent.