Spring Cleaning

Last week we had a tenancy inspection from our real estate agent. This has been looming over our heads for over a month, as for various reasons it had been postponed twice. This meant that we had to have the house clean three times in the last two weeks.


And when I say clean I do mean clean. One of the differences between Sydney and Canberra is that here they do rental inspections six-monthly rather than yearly and there seems to be a higher turnover of property managers here (we have now had six property managers in less than three years). This means that the new property manager has no idea of the condition of the house was before you moved in, and we have no idea of the standards of the manager in question. Some managers walk in the door, check that there is nothing requiring maintenance and that you aren't punching holes in the wall; others check every nook and cranny for spiders webs, only just stopping short of running a white glove along the edge of the skirting board to check for dust! So we had a clean house just in case.


The only good thing about this inspection is that it did coincide with the need for spring cleaning and after three clean-ups it is actually finished. Alex is very interested in the vacuum cleaner (it has an 'on switch', it makes noise, there is a fabulous cord and there are parts to put together so I don't blame him.) and he was attempting to "help". I am tempted to train him to use the machine properly only his father says that he doesn't want his son to be a janitor!