A cleaner says one job was so extreme it repeatedly reduced her to tears - as the 'pizza-obsessed' hoarder's house was stuffed to the brim with hundreds of takeaway boxes and bottles of urine. Self-employed cleaner Rayann McMullan spotted a landlord's Facebook post pleading for someone to clear out rubbish left in a Manchester flat by a former tenant.
Although used to rolling her sleeves up and doing deep-cleaning work, Rayann's jaw dropped when she stepped inside the one-bedroom apartment in Droylsden, Greater Manchester. Shocking snaps show the entire flat swamped in hundreds of pizza boxes, stale food, plastic bags and bottles of urine.
The 25-year-old says it took two days to clear out the flat, and cried multiple times at the prospect of tackling the jam-packed bedroom. Clearing the pizza boxes took four hours alone, and Rayann says she was forced to leave a Jenga-like stack behind as there were too many to keep making repeat trips down the stairs.
The mum-of-three claims she was 'scarred' by the experience and now gets 'flashbacks' whenever she sees a pizza box. Rayann, from Collyhurst, Manchester, said: "I got really excited when I was offered the job and then the landlord sent me a video.
"So I thought, 'right okay, that is a different job to what I would normally do'. When I got down to doing the dirty part, and all of the clear-out, I thought, 'oh no, what have I got myself into?'
"It was really, really bad. I thought I wasn't going to be able to do it alone. There was stale food everywhere, and thousands and thousands of pizza boxes.
"They were like some kind of pizza-obsessed hoarder. There were so many of them that I couldn't bag them all up. There were [already] so many bags outside.
"I had to leave a stack of boxes and explain to the landlord that I can't keep moving them [the pizza boxes] up and down the stairs because there were so many of them. When I got to the bedroom part I thought, 'oh my God'. I kept looking at it and going to start, I kept stopping and starting.
"I can't tell you how many times I started crying because I didn't want to do it. That job has scarred me, all I can picture in my head is pizza boxes. Whenever I see a pizza box now it's like, 'oh no, flashbacks'."
Despite the stressful experience, Rayann was delighted with the final result and claims that she has since been inundated with job offers from clients who have seen photos of the impressive transformation. The hard-working mum says she feels the experience has made her more 'determined', and inspired her to tackle similarly enormous clean-ups in future.
Rayann said: "I've had a lot of people message and ring me for cleans - I can't keep up with it. Since posting and sharing it into other pages on Facebook, another landlord has reached out with another property like that.
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"I did think, 'Oh no, not another one', but I'm determined to do it. The first time with [the original hoarder house] I thought I wasn't going to be able to do it, but now that I've cleaned it I feel like I can do a lot more.
"It made me more determined. I am happy I did it. I am really pleased with the transformation that I've done, so I can give myself a pat on the back for that."