STRANGER THAN FICTION: HOUSEHOLD FALL CLEANING INCLUDES DOCTORING THE RUGS

As usual, the world's worst procrastinators put off their spring cleaning until fall.

Living in rental property is somewhat akin to living in hell.

Of course, some places are better than others. I lived in a funeral-home-turned-apartment-building in Sikeston that was absolutely wonderful. It cost $300 a month and was located conveniently near the Piggly Wiggly.

Then there was La Casa de la Cucaracha, the setting for the Hollywood flop "Joe's Apartment."

A drug dealer lived beneath me. There were also two people across the hall with a very unconventional relationship. She would lock the door, he would scream to be let in, she would scream that she wasn't letting him in, he would kick in the door and then they both would collapse into gales of laughter.

Whoooeeee! What a couple of comedians!

Our current home is somewhere between the funeral home building and La Casa. We moved in over a year ago due to the reasonable cost -- yes, Virginia, there IS a reasonably priced apartment in Cape Girardeau -- and the nice neighborhood. With the last tenant's furniture in the apartment, it looked pretty nice when the manager showed us around.

"Will you clean the carpets?" I asked.

"Sure," the manager said. "We always clean the carpets."

Perhaps we had a different definition of "cleaning the carpets." I think that means using soap, water and brushes until the carpet returns to its original color. The manager thinks it means running a vacuum just long enough to make indentations.

Over the last year, The Other Half and I had several discussions about cleaning the carpet correctly.

ME: Would you look at this carpet? It's filthy.

HIM: Yeah.

ME: We ought to rent a Rug Doctor brand carpet-cleaning system.

HIM: Yeah.

ME: Yeah.

Nobody actually made any move to rent the Rug Doctor until a couple weekends ago, when we started thinking about moving and getting back our deposit. Not only should we clean the circa 1970 carpets, we said, but we should wash the water-stained curtains that came with the place. Heck, we said, why not just do an overall spring cleaning?!?!

Bright and early Saturday morning, we moved our furniture onto our sizable deck. A local weatherman who shall remain nameless promised partly cloudy skies and no precipitation.

Mr. Half and I broke into our Larry, Moe and Curly imitations while trying to figure out the Rug Doctor. Ends up there's a lot more water changing than we expected. The activity was also a bit more dirt-intensive than we expected.

Have you ever noticed how people who clean their carpets like to compare filth with each other? "When we cleaned our carpets, the water was just filthy!," they say. "It was black as soot."

Why not just say, "We are slobs who waited for YEARS to clean our carpets! We obviously didn't mind letting our kids crawl on 10 years worth of dirt and bacteria!"

After a hard day's cleaning, Mr. Half and I rewarded ourselves by eating out. Our carpets drying, our curtains washed, our lives in order, we contentedly munched on salad fixings.

Then it started to snow.

I've come a long way in my fight against using profanity, but the snow caused a major relapse. And it wasn't that light, dry snow that just blows away. It was that big, wet snow that melts as soon as it hits anything. Anything like a couch, entertainment center, kitchen table, area rug, etc., etc., etc.

The carpets weren't quite dry when we started dragging our soaked stuff back inside, but there wasn't much choice. On top of that, the wood-looking facade on the entertainment center started bubbling up. Now it sits there staring at us every day, a grim reminder of what can happen when you rely too much on the apartment manager or the local weatherman.

Or when you wait until late fall to do your spring cleaning.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.