If I have to describe my job in one word, it has to be “routine”. But while other people associate the routine with something dull or dreary, I find it helpful. It gives me the structure to plan my day and every single job I take – how much time I will need, what challenges to expect and how to overcome them. However, sometimes even the most carefully laid plans get derailed by the unexpected.
Such was the case a few weeks ago when I took a move-out cleaning job for a two-bedroom apartment on Wilson Str. in Camberwell. I knew the neighbourhood well – a quiet residential area nearby the spacious churchyard of St Giles. From the conversation with the customer – a polite, business-like sounding lady – I got the impression that my crew was in for an easy job with no potential complications. “We have already packed and moved the boxes out and tried our best to keep the place clean while we lived there. I cannot think of any particular issues requiring extra attention.”
Music to my ears. Don’t get me wrong, I do like a nice cleaning challenge from time to time. But the appointment was on Monday, and I like to ease into the week with a hassle-free cleaning job. When we arrived at the address, my expectations for a simple case grew stronger. We parked the cleaning van in front of a small, cosy white terraced house – the kind you can see on countless streets across London. In the distance, probably less than two hundred yards away, I could make out the steep grey spire of St Giles over the treetops.
Sometimes you can pretty much sort out what the interior of a house will look like from how property owners maintain the exterior. Our cleaning job-to-be was no different. When the crew entered the front door, we knew the former tenants had taken pride in keeping their second-floor residence in perfect condition. There were no spiderwebs in the shady corners, no thin layer of dust on the windows or the residual smell of fried oil in the kitchen. The apartment might have been stripped naked of possessions and decorations, but you can discern good housekeeping when you see it.
Not to get too technical, but a tenancy cleaning crew usually starts the job from the one room furthest from the front door and moves clockwise until it covers the entire residence. In our case, it meant starting from the bathroom at the left corner of the hallway, splitting the apartment in two. Then we had to cover the two bedrooms, finish with the living room/kitchen box, and finally vacuum-clean the hallway carpet. Overall, I did not expect the whole thing to take us more than two and a half hours.
I will not bore you to death with all the cleaning details of the procedure. The appointment was proving as straightforward as it possibly could, without a single hiccup slowing us down. My colleagues had already moved to the living room, and I was about to plug in the vacuum cleaner and start working in the hallway when Dave – the newest member of the crew – called me from the other room.
“Boss, I am not sure what to do with this one.”
Although a rookie, Dave has a good head on his shoulders and a problem-solving attitude, so he must have stumbled into something irregular. Was our perfect tenancy cleaning job about to be derailed?
A quick aside – one of the main chores in our move-out cleaning task sheet is dusting all shelves and drawers and checking if the former tenants have forgotten something there. Quite often, they do, so our job is to return these possessions to their owners. Dave was standing near an old walnut chest of drawers. One of the compartments was sticking to the right, and I could see a small, antique-looking wooden box. “I was dusting the drawer from the outside when this thing popped out of nowhere!”, Dave explained excitedly.
I felt like, all of a sudden, I had stepped into a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story. A secret drawer and a mysterious box inside – that called for an investigation! I carefully picked up the box, noticing beautifully carved initials on its top, M. E. It was definitely hand-made and probably at least a hundred years old. Fortunately, I had seen similar boxes before and knew how to open them. I slid the cover to the right, and it gracefully revealed the contents of the box.
It was full of black-and-white photos, none of them taken with a modern camera. One picture captured a wedding, with the unmistakable mass of St Giles in the background. The clothing style and the grainy quality of the image made me think it was taken before the Second World War. Another photo depicted a young woman with a very young girl, probably four or five, on a beach. Yet another was the beautiful portrait of a dashing young soldier in a First World War uniform, probably one of Kitchener’s volunteers.
I had the strange feeling I had unknowingly opened a time machine and travelled back a hundred years ago. Some inner instinct told me the pictures must be important to somebody – they looked like a family heirloom, and throwing them away would be just a crime.
I picked up my phone and called my customer. “It most definitely is not ours, but let me contact my landlady and see if she knows anything about it.” From our previous conversations, I knew the landlady lived nearby, so I hoped she could arrive before we finished the job.
And so she did – an elegant woman in her early forties, who caught us packing up our equipment minutes after doing the final check-up. “Bill, nice to meet you”, I extended my hand and gave her the box with the other. She introduced herself as Victoria and looked at the pictures. “Oh, my God! It’s Grandma! And this has to be my grand-grandmother, Mary Eaton, whom I am named after!”, she exclaimed in wonder, looking at the beach picture. “Where did you find these?!”
We pointed at the drawer, and Dave showed her the hidden compartment. “We’ve had that thing in the family since I can remember, but I never knew about the extra drawer. Gosh, I wish I could show these pictures to my Grandma, but she passed away a few years ago. Anyway, thank you so much!”
And I thought I had seen anything on the job… How can routine prepare you for something like this?