I know I live in a crappy apartment but this crossed the line!

For the past few days DH and I have been commenting on a bad smell that's been wafting through the hallway on our floor. It kind of smelled like something was rotting. Today I came home from work and found out that my across the hall neighbor had moved out in the middle of the night over TWO weeks ago, and left a TURKEY LEG to rot on the heater in his apartment. Nothing else was left inside except the meat on some paper towels. I've had it with this place. My neighbors are rude, disgusting, and down right disrespectful. This is the SECOND time this has happened to my husband and I; the last time our next door neighbor moved out and left a whole bunch of doughnuts in their cabinets that caused us to have a major ant problem all summer. Has anyone ever dealt with stuff like this before?

Ew, why are people so disgusting on your floor!!?? I would SO move!!

Originally Posted by Trouts mom

Ew, why are people so disgusting on your floor!!?? I would SO move!!

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February 12th is the day our lease is up. DH and I have had a count down going since I bought the 4th set of ant traps. I am sick of it.

I'm soo sorry! I would be very upset too! I live in a very crappy two bedroom duplex in a VERY bad part of Memphis. Our landlord is aweful, and you have to raise hell so to speak to get anything done. We recently had some very trashy neighbors in the duplex attached to ours- they had 12 people in a two bedroom duplex...but very expensive trucks, satellite, and most importantly, money to buy lots of beer and leave the bottles in the street .....they never once sprayed for bugs, and they CONSTANTLY left food out everywhere...which caused quite a bug problem, even though my mom and I constantly sprayed for insects and kept our duplex immaculant. It was aweful- they finally got evicted....and now we have new neighbors....which instead of blessing us with bugs, choose to blast us out with their music which they play as loud as it will go while sitting out in their trucks and drinking (mind you, all of this is in front of their small children - I feel soo bad for those kids!). So I definitely feel your pain....I have a ton of stories about former neighbors....I could defintiely go on and on....but I don't want to bore you lol..../ Thankfully as of late, i've been staying at Colin's (I have ringworm, as does Colin and Kenzie- so i'm staying at his house so I won't spread it to the rest of my furbabies or mom) and i'm away from all of the junk that goes on in my neighborhood.

Originally Posted by lookingglass

February 12th is the day our lease is up. DH and I have had a count down going since I bought the 4th set of ant traps. I am sick of it.

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About ant traps....here is a full proof method that is much cheaper and works every time!!! - Go buy some chalk (the regular kind you'd use on a chalkboard in school)....draw a line around the perimeter of your entire apartment, refridgerator,pantry...everywhere .....ants will not cross the line. This will keep them out of your food and apartment. Good luck!

Originally Posted by StarryEyedTiGeR

About ant traps....here is a full proof method that is much cheaper and works every time!!!

- Go buy some chalk (the regular kind you'd use on a chalkboard in school)....draw a line around the perimeter of your entire apartment, refridgerator,pantry...everywhere

.....ants will not cross the line. This will keep them out of your food and apartment. Good luck!

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I've chalked up everything in the apartment I could. They still kept coming along with some small roach type bug that gave me the shakes. To get rid of them I had to demand the management company to spray the apartment next to mine. They finally did sometime last week, and the bug problem stopped. Now we have flies from the turkey leg issue, so I've left out a big glass of red wine for them to fly into and die. I've tried everything to make my place as clean as possible down to washing out everything we own with bleach. This just sucks. I want to buy a house ASAP!

Do you know by chance what kind of flies you have? Common household flies or fruit flies??? If you have fruit flies....here is a full proof method to get rid of the suckers! Colin and I tried it this week after some tried to eat my bananas...and it works like a charm!

Take a regular drinking glass and add a squished up piece of apple or banana to the bottom of it (the smellier the better). Then put a small funnel at the top of the glass so that they can not fly out- fruit flies will not fly up a narrow funnel. Once you put the funnel in there, put scotch tape around the side where the funnel meets the glass so they can't fly out through the side. Once you have a few fruit flies trapped in there....put a few drops of dish soap down the funnel...then fill the glass and funnel with scalding hot water and cover the enterance of the funnel with scotch tape so the bugs cannot swim up it. Let that sit for a little bit and it will drown them - works like a charm!



If you look behind Kenzie in this picture, you can see what it looks like (The first time we did it, we made a paper funnel- those don't work well, so use a plastic cooking funnel instead )....this is before we added the water and soap to drown them.

Doesn't your rental agency have anyone to inspect and clean these apartments after people move out?!

Sorry you are having such a lousy time with your apartment. Sending you vibes that you get to move asap and that the bug problem stops. Nasty neighbors and lousy landlords are scum.

You know I just thought about something there are certain cases where you can get out of a lease if the living conditions are unhealthy and bugs definately are unhealthy I would write everything down and talk to a lawyer about whether or not these would be enough to legally break the lease.

You can call the local Health departmend and turn in the apartment complex.
For ants, we found getting the sticky glue traps for mice actually worked better.I put something in the middle like a piece of candy, and they LOVED it!!But, they couldn't get off.

If you have the "house" fly type of flys you could hang up through sticky fly traps (in the hallway!!). I can't believe someone did this (on purpose of course!!)

I'm stunned that it took 2 weeks to discover this! Is there no super/manager looking after this place? I guess in those really large buildings I can see how someone could move out without anyone noticing. Ugh. definitely look into breaking your lease. At least you've got the option of buying a house and have that to look forward to!

I'm assuming the tenant had an issue with your landlord - I know of people who've done things like that as payback to a lousy landlord.

I'd definitely be looking for a new place if I were you. Sorry that you have to deal with all that!

Originally Posted by GingersMom

I'm assuming the tenant had an issue with your landlord - I know of people who've done things like that as payback to a lousy landlord.

I'd definitely be looking for a new place if I were you.

Sorry that you have to deal with all that!

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Yes, our apartment building just had a new management company come in, and set down some new rules that some tenants aren't happy with. First, you can't invoice your rent it has to be paid in full by the first of the month. Second, no more loud parties. Third, you have to have a parking pass. Forth, no more than two animals per apartment.

They are also remodeling all the apartments around us; giving them new counters, cabinets, and fixtures in the bathrooms.

All these rules seemed reasonable to me, but there are some people who can't seem to follow them.

Originally Posted by StarryEyedTiGeR

Do you know by chance what kind of flies you have? Common household flies or fruit flies??? If you have fruit flies....here is a full proof method to get rid of the suckers!

Colin and I tried it this week after some tried to eat my bananas...and it works like a charm!

Take a regular drinking glass and add a squished up piece of apple or banana to the bottom of it (the smellier the better). Then put a small funnel at the top of the glass so that they can not fly out- fruit flies will not fly up a narrow funnel. Once you put the funnel in there, put scotch tape around the side where the funnel meets the glass so they can't fly out through the side. Once you have a few fruit flies trapped in there....put a few drops of dish soap down the funnel...then fill the glass and funnel with scalding hot water and cover the enterance of the funnel with scotch tape so the bugs cannot swim up it. Let that sit for a little bit and it will drown them - works like a charm!



If you look behind Kenzie in this picture, you can see what it looks like (The first time we did it, we made a paper funnel- those don't work well, so use a plastic cooking funnel instead

)....this is before we added the water and soap to drown them.

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I just use a small jelly jar (holds about 1/2 cup of liquid). For every cup of water used, add 2 Tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar. Then add 2 drops of dish soap. Stir gently. Then just leave it on the counter. No funnel or lid or rancid fruit required.

It just looks like a jar with water in it. The flies land and because of the soap breaking the water tension, they can't fly away.

Originally Posted by Natalie_ca

I just use a small jelly jar (holds about 1/2 cup of liquid). For every cup of water used, add 2 Tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar. Then add 2 drops of dish soap. Stir gently. Then just leave it on the counter. No funnel or lid or rancid fruit required.

It just looks like a jar with water in it. The flies land and because of the soap breaking the water tension, they can't fly away.

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Wow! Awesome idea! Thanks for the tip. (The funnel is a bit unsightely, but so far was the only thing I found that worked for fruit flies lol.) I will definitely try that! Does it work on common household flies too or just for fruit flies?

Oh yea, I feel your pain.
My old neighbor was a total cokehead who blasted his music so loud that it shook my bed... and there was an apartment between us. Insane. Also, since he was always on coke (or whatever other drug was the flavor of the day) he was always awake, so the music was on at 5 pm, midnite, 3 am, 6 am, noon... seemed like 24/7. He also put his trash in the hallway. And never took it down to the dumpster.

It sounds like he moved in next to you.

Places that advertise themselves as "quiet" and have rules like the ones lookingglass mentioned are usually better I've found... because idiots like turkey-leg-dude don't move in in the first place.

Not too much time left!

I'm almost tempted to find out this guy's name and fax it to every apartment complex in our area. I'm still a bit upset about the whole thing.

I know exactly how you feel about this!

When we were in the process of immigrating to the UK, my mothers uncle offered for us to live in his flat after we'd sold our house. The flat was completely empty except for a rather odd smell which seemed to get worse and worse over a few days! (He didn't live there - he live in Germany, just owned it and rarely ever allowed anyone other than his son or daughter to stay there on visits home to SA) We'd not properly moved our junk into the flat yet, so we weren't cooking in the kitchen (which was a very good thing) and were ordering in take away's instead!

Anyway, my sister and her best friend (who lived with us at the time) decided one day that they needed to get the house into some kind of order and started cleaning the kitchen while my mom and I were at work (the girls had already given up their jobs)! Leigh (the BF) was scrubbing down the sink (she's a complete OCD about the sink and always gives it a good scrub before she washes the dishes!) but the water wasn't going down! She got out the new plunger I'd bought and gave it a plunge or two but nothing! So she got out some bicarbonate of soda and vinager (which makes a brilliant sink unblocker btw) and tried that... Still nothing!!!!!! The next thing she said this most awful rotting smell started coming up from somewhere and she had to get out the flat because it smelled so terrible!!!!!!! My sister ran (From what I've heard and smelled ....bravely) into the kitchen to grab the house keys off the counter and there were thousands upon thousands of maggots - big and small - coming up from the sink plug hole!

I don't know what was down the sink or where the maggots were coming from but it took 7 bucket loads of maggots, boiling water and alot of bleach to make me semi-ok to go into the kitchen... needless to say... we never ever cooked in the kitchen after that and pretty much lived on Takeaway for 6 months until we left the country! Some nights I'd pop round to my boss and cook our dinner there and drive back to the flat with our cooked food!