apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

A freezer full of food, the guy who moved in had lived in his car for two years.

When I sold my old apartment, I decided to leave the towels I bought for it, which sounds insane, except that I had bought no two alike, but all of them colors in the faux subway mosaic tile that I had painted my walls to look like. I don't have a picture of how the towels looked on the steel over-the-toilet-etagere, but here's how the walls looked:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artycurtis/sets/531399/

I also decided to change the name of the "subway station" from my name to that of my Buyer. I finished that at 2:30am the night before the closing.

I also left a clothing armoire there, that I thought that space really needed, as well as a little loveseat that wouldn't have been able to have left the apartment without taking the door off the hinges, and I also left the Murphy bed which I had painted to match the walls, so that it looked completely organic to the space.

Come to think of it, I also left the convection oven/microwave, because I had never used it, and I thought it looked good there, and I left some under-cabinet flourescent lighting that I had put in, as well as the curtains and the blinds which I knew I wouldn't be able to use in my next space. AND... I knew that my new place was too big for either of the rugs that I had there.

What was left in my new place when I moved in? The wooden Smith & Noble window blinds. Actually, although I did a lot of painting in my new place the general idea of a pale sagey kind of color was inspired by the color the Seller had painted it. I was also lucky they they had stripped the door frames down to the metal, and while that, techincally, isn't an actual "thing" they left behind, it was a very important thing to me.

I don't think I've ever left anything behind, but I once got a phone call from the previous tenant of an apartment I had in college asking if I had come across her collection of rare coins and her (apparently very expensive) collection of German and Japanese sex toys. She was worried about the coins because they had been her grandfather's and her parents would have a stroke if she lost them, and the toys because she had just broken up with her boyfriend and she said she really needed them - badly.

I was grateful not to have found either.

I have a weird story about this.

When I was preparing to move to LA from Atlanta I put most of my furniture up for sale on Craigslist. I got an email from a girl who was interested in my furniture. Then she asked if I happened to live on ____ street because she recognized it in the photos of my furniture and thought she just looked at my apartment which was up for rent. Turns out, yes she did look at my place and she ended up renting it! She also bought most of my furniture and neither one of us had to move it. How weird is that?

Bookcases -- left behind in my previous rental and I left them there when I moved out, as the seller of my new place had left nicer ones. Same for the window air conditioner.

When I moved into my current apartment, the previous owner had left the kitchen full of disgusting, rotted food and empty liquor bottles.

The previous owners of my previous apartment had left hideous verticle blinds, almost as disgusting.

There is one cabinet in my kitchen that I have not been able to open. When I was walking through the apt with the previous tenant he was asking me if I wanted some of his kitchen stuff and when we came to the cabinet neither of us could open it.
He said, whatever's in there, it's yours.
I am forever curious what is mine, but alas, I CANNOT get that cabinet open!

I left behind my West Elm curtains and curtain rods:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/armchairathlete/168249624/in/set-72157594167449867/

and the honeycomb shades in the bedroom:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/armchairathlete/168246063/in/set-72157594167449867/

both as a courtesy to the new buyers so they weren't completely exposed until they got their own curtains, and because they wouldn't work in any place in my new apartment, and I didn't want to bother with Craigslist.

Like the cabinet story.

In my case house plants. Whoever had the apartment before me didn't want to move three pots of plants. I'm not a plant person. In fact, all I knew about plant care was what I remembered from a high school science experiment in photosynthesis. So I left them on the window sills, watered them once a week, and rotated the pots 180 degrees each week so they would have proper exercise. For some unknown reason, they thrived. The regime even allowed them to survive my repotting them. I finally gave them to my mother's maid and last heard the plants are slowly growing over central Queens.

I've never left anything. It wouldn't have occurred to me to do so. I was slightly appalled that the plants had been left behind but couldn't bring myself to throw them out.

Oh... about air conditioners -- I also left mine in that old apartment, and the Sellers of my new apartment also left me their old one, as well. It still works three-and-a-half years later, although I almost wish it would die, so I could clean the window before putting a new one in, because the installation of the current one is so permanent-looking that I just can't face taking it out, cleaning the window and putting it back in.

I had moved a huge bureau (which I had acquired because a previous tenant, also a friend, hadn't wanted to move it) at least three times, until, exhausted, I left it in the last apartment I lived in before I got married. As it turns out, I'd rather have the bureau now than the husband, who didn't work out.

When I lived in Vancouver, I moved into a real fixer upper of a place. The previous tenant left behind a taupe plastic-coated (not leather, nowhere near leatherette) pullout bed. It was heavy as a brick. Funnily enough, the mattress inside hadn't been used once! I found it came in handy for guests who flew in from back east to visit (I wrapped it in plastic just to be safe), and, because I had been moving across country, I didn't have a couch of my own. It all worked out in the end. It was one of the most comfy couches I've sat on despite the plastic uphostery.

I left it there for the next tenants.

The last rental apartment I had before owning, I sublet out to a friend of mine for a couple of years, before the landlords found out and made him put himself on the lease and get a raise in rent.

Anyway... I left a couple of huge cabinets in there that I had paid kind of a lot of money about 10 years before that, to have made, which I knew just were absolutely not going to fit into my new space. They looked better in that space with the paint treatment that my friend hired me to do than it ever had with the wall colors that I had lived with in there, which were from the person before me.

Grouped by the different apartments I've had, I've left behind:

marble pastry slab;
cute step-ladder, tea kettle, small kitchen table (I left these sort of by mistake! Didn't have the heart to take them away from the roommate who stayed after me - she moved them with her to her new apartment a year later!);
complete set of fine china, large pottery barn pastel rug;
window blinds, overhead lamp shades;
cleaning supplies, brooms, new sponges, dishsoap - and I always leave lots of soap and toilet paper - especially if there are workers coming in to renovate;
Perfect blue shower curtain with nice roller hooks, ceiling lamp.

This leaves out all the countless things I've sold and given away, of course. The people who moved into the last apartment actually called me to ask if I made a mistake leaving the pastry marble; they loved having it. In fact, I know that all these things were kept and used after I left.

Oh, and no one's left me anything (except dirt and bugs) - not even an air conditioner or pulls for overhead lightbulbs or closet rods or working cabinet doors or....

My studio apartment in San Francisco came with a fair-sized walk-in closet, but the shelf/hanging bar was practically falling off the wall (it was hanging on by a couple of nails). After about 5 years in my place, I finally got around to ripping it out of the wall, patching the holes and replacing it with a couple of big wire-frame shelving units, coated in a white epoxy. Since didn't have any use for them in my new apartment in LA, I left them behind for the next tenant when I moved out. They were an expensive gift, but it saved me having to put up some kind of replacement for the original shelves, and I was pressed for time.

Not something we could take but we only just finished the bathroom remodel of our dreams when we decided to sell.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/house-tours/house-tour-jamie-pup-redoes-his-bathroom-002146

We only got to enjoy it for about a month :(
How's that for good planning?

My first view of my apartment was in the afternoon and the manager told me the previous tennant had left abruptly that morning with no advance notice. There was still food in the refridgerator, which the manager took care of before I moved in. However what caught my eye was a series of Ikea wavey mirrors hung one above another to create a floor length mirror. I asked the manager not to take it down and won the maintence guy's everylasting devotion because it would have been a pain for him to do!

I found a film container full of pot in the back corner of my kitchen cabinet when I moved into my last apartment in SF.

My 3rd to last home in Africa was a tiny space that had windows on all 4 sides. My little space wasn’t yet done when we moved onto the property, and the sweet landlord let me convince him into putting more windows in the little house, which was originally dark, depressing, and claustrophobic, since it was supposed to be the servant's quarters. My design called for about 10 windows in all; two in the bathroom - one with a view of the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I needed curtains and decided to sew my own out of an ivory chiffon. I decided to do curtains with tab tops. I didn’t have a sewing machine. So I hand stitched each and every tab, about 4 tabs for each panel, stitched each and every panel, sewed the tabs to the panels, and then finished the bottom with an ivory satin ribbon. Um, needless to say, after more than a year of living there, I never did finish hemming 100% of the panels, although all were hung and worked beautifully. Since the curtains were custom made for each window, I left them for my landlord, along with the extra ribbon to finish the hems. I hope that he got a tailor to finish them up and is still enjoying the curtains and the beautiful little house.

My weirdo fiance used to leave EVERYTHING except his computer, cd's and his "favorite concert t's" whenever he moved. He had a Toyota Corolla and he figured if it couldn't fit in the car in one trip - the heck with it. It used to make me batty. He's grown up (a little) since.

Well, as a sign that gentrification is in full effect, left behind in my recently purchased Clinton Hill apartment was a box of hollow point bullets which I will soon deposit safely (I hope) in the hands of New York's finest.

When I went into my student apartment for the first time it was one of the big thrills of my life, arrived late at night with friends and sleeping bags after a concert (CSNY) in a farther city. The former tenant a university librarian who had lived there almost 20 years had left a little wire cat sculpture on top of a door. I recently took it out of my pantry in my house (30 years later) and put it over the window in my kitchen among some ceramic birds. Writing this is the first time I realized the similarity between that little sculpture and the cat stepping stones I made for years. Maybe it influenced me in some life altering way.

jamie pup,

You and my mom really should start a business together.

I have learned to be happy if the previous tenant leaves any light bulbs that work. Several times I've moved into apartments where every light bulb was burned out. I began to think that people saved their old, burned-out bulbs and put them back in when they moved out.

Oh - that was not strictly accurate. My first Boston apartment had one working light bulb. It was a GREEN 25-watt bulb - no useful light but it cast its green shadow on everything. It made me think of the "golbloots" episode of I Love Lucy; I was afraid I was going to have to have a zorchectomy.

My current apartment had a kitchen cabinet full of tomato paste. The rest was sqeeky clean and empty.

I think the all-time strangest thing I found in a house we had just bought was rubber doorknob covers on the doorknobs. They were made to look like molded brass. I had never seen anything like this before. I wish I had kept them. The previous owners had also left a refrigerator so disgusting I needed a face mask to clean it and 60 years of nicotine embedded in the walls (only one original coat of paint), which actually sheeted down the walls when we washed them down. I LOVE Simple Green.

We found a taxidermied iquana and a leather whip in the attic of an old house rented during college days (I'm not sure I even want to know their history!). In the place I just moved into over the weekend, so far the only find has been a bottle of "highly toxic" gun cleaner liquid - weird.......

Personally, I always try to remember to leave a roll of toilet paper behind. Always a nice little surprise for whoever is moving in and hasn't unpacked all the essentials quick enough. :^ )

the only thing i've ever left are lightbulbs for the landlord. the ceiling was about 20 feet high & i had no way of getting up there.

on the other hand, i find things left behind fairly often. the worst was when i moved into one place. i was doing a deep clean before unpacking as i always do & i found empty beer bottles & jean cut offs in the kitchen cabinet. how skanky is that??

What DIDN'T get left behind by the sellers of our very first house, which was heated solely by a wood stove: a single stick of firewood. They did leave behind a very nice note commending us to Jesus, etc., but they carted away every last scrap of what must have been 3 cords of wood in the woodshed. Froze our asses off until we found someone to deliver some wood.

What got left behind by the seller of our condo: That white waffle-weave Target shower curtain recently discussed on AT, plus enough cat hair behind the fridge and stove to literally fill a half-gallon container (discovered while painting).

lizinsac--

Our neighbors made nursery up in their attic, the walls of which they thought were painted a darkish tan. The wife put the baby to bed, turned on the humidifier, and went downstairs. Later that evening, she went up there and called down to me to come see. When I got up there, it looked like a horror movie, with rivulets of sticky brown gunk running down every surface. The tan "paint" was all nicotine. It was horrifying.

As a landlord of a rental apartment, my take is that leaving ANYTHING behind is really incredibly inconsiderate, and the ultimate in "make my problem someone else's because I'm too lazy to do it myself."

patrick, i thought the same thing. it is always understood that the space should be left broom clean. remember don't burn your bridges, you may need a recomendation from a former landlord.

Patrik and Patrick (too),
I agree. Everything I've left behind (which is a lot), I've done with the knowledge and approval of the landlord, or of the roommates who were staying on after me. I'm still friends with two of my old landlords - in part, I think, because they were impressed with the quality of my home repairs and general trustworthiness. I've always left a place looking and working better than when I found it. Some things I've asked my landlord to do, especially if they have a super dedicated to the job - but otherwise, I've taken care of most stuff myself. And I've never minded inviting a landlord in for a beer....

Sea--

You wanna rent a really cute two-bedroom townhome in Miami?! And I dirnk Michelob Ultra. ;)

And in the list above, re: taxidermied iguana and leather whip...
We have a winner!!

Oops, "drink". Think I've been "dirnking" already.

Patrick (too),
I know! Never been to Miami, but it sounds tempting....

I dream of being a landlord myself someday... and then I think about all the problems that can come up with the wrong tenants. I know, because my folks used to rent our house out during the summers - one couple kept DUCKS (yes, live ones!) running around downstairs - ruined the floors entirely. And others have just generally accelerated the rate of run-down-edness and disrepair to an alarming degree. ...And then I see how my neighbors live, and think of the unlivable state that some people have left the apartments I've moved into and, well, it seems like a good tenant is hard to find.

If I were a landlord, I'd want absolutely nothing left behind - and everything would have to be at least "broom-clean".
And by the way, I know I've been very lucky with the landlords I've had. - Always willing to think a bit outside the box, and to be real.

in my very first apartment at the age of nineteen, the previous tenant left a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew, a tiny bag of pot, and a really beautiful glass pipe. they were sitting in the bedroom atop the radiator.

since then i've always left a bottle of wine and a note whenever i move out. i figure it's good karma.

eric,

That's really nice. The theme developing here is that leaving behind a really clean apartment with some wine in the bedroom or beer in the fridge is ideal....

I've left furniture to former roommates, but I haven't left anything in an empty apartment that wasn't there when I moved in.

When I bought my first house though, the seller left behind all kinds of stuff, some of it quite helpful (especially to a first-time home buyer), some of it trash. The helpful stuff included a washer and dryer (they were going to throw them out but asked if I wanted them at closing, they work perfectly well), tools, garden hoses, two enormous dressers (in the attic, which I use for storage), an over-the-toilet storage unit, blinds, trash cans, shelves, all the household appliance manuals, and more stuff I'm forgetting. The trash included dirty area rugs, a rusty ironing board, an old non-working dehumidifier, broken flower pots, used furnace filters, dried cans of paints, old chemicals, rags, etc.

I think the good stuff balanced out the bad though, and it definitely saved me some cash.

Here in the midwest, you generally leave anything that is attached when you sell - curtains, blinds, lightbulbs, hardwired light fixtures, etc. I can't believe someone would take lightbulbs.

When I rented, there were always mini-blinds provided by the landlord that, of course, stayed. We don't seem to upgrade our landlords' property, like is more prevalent in NYC.

And it is just courtesy to leave the current roll of toilet paper.

in all my apartments i have left nothing but a few cleaning supplies under the sink (a little dishsoap, and some 409), light bulbs, and toilet paper. i have always scrubbed everything, and i mean everything from the floor to ceiling, including the walls, the day before leaving after everything has been moved out. i replaced switch plates that were scratched, or just dingy from use (in my first place, i don't think they were changed since the 50s) and i replaced the air filters. i have re-painted a room or two although i never painted a different color; it looked bad so i painted it. i have also always gotten my deposit back.

in my first apartment, i was left with cock roaches, an old fridge that has only one door and the freezer is inside - which was frozen over and i had to unplug it and defrost the freezer - and windows that were on the rope system that either had the ropes cut, or were painted over once a year by the landlord and were painted shut for fifty years. my second apartment, my boyfriend's sister and brother in law moved to louisiana (he got a scholarship to lsu) and we finished their lease and they left all sorts of things: a wire mesh strainer that extends, a whole mess of china they got for their wedding, glasses, a toaster that makes eggs too (all this was left because she found she was seriously allergic to gluten and could no longer use it) a swiffer wet-jet, laundry detergent, all sorts of cleaning stuff, curtains, a big red easy chair, a twin bed for the spare bedroom, a toilet hutch, the shower curtain and rings, a picture in the bathroom that matched the shower curtain, make up brush cleaners - the list goes on.

in my current apartment we were left the light bulbs (in the fixtures and a big box full of them), bug repellant and fly paper, oven cleaner, some not-yet-installed track lighting, some shelves, and a junk drawer full of...junk... and some nice big bamboo shades for the porch.

The last apartment I lived in had a vintage bronze chandelier that had seen better days. I cleaned it and replaced all of the prisms which were missing. When I moved out, I left the prisms for the next tenant.

When I moved into my house, there was a huge vintage folding screen (solid wood) in the basement. I'm currently restoring it, which includes repapering it with grasscloth or some other vintage wall covering.

Our former landlord in San Francisco encouraged us to leave things rather than Goodwilling them, provided we put them in a single, tidy spot. Apparently the city attracts newbies who show up in a taxi with a single suitcase, so he likes to have a stock of household goods to help them get set up. We left a microwave (there's a built-in where we live now), a coffee table that needed repairs, and *sob* the plants that wouldn't fit in our car (having taken the succulents as the most likely to survive Phoenix).

Our most interesting find from our house in Troy was that the former owner had left behind little shelves that would be very Brocade Home now, but that I never got around to repainting and finally gave away.

I, too, am shocked that people take lightbulbs with them. How cheap can you get?

I've never encountered anything really disgusting. In one rental apartment, the previous tenants left behind a stack of magazines (just regular women's magazines). I'm not sure why they didn't just put them in the recycling bin. Perhaps they thought we'd enjoy them? The other slightly odd thing was in the otherwise clean, empty cupboards was an empty, cleaned-out pickle jar. If you've emptied every last thing out of the cupboards, why not take the jar too?

I make it a point to leave places very clean when I move out. In our last apartment, we cleaned every nook and cranny and the new tenants made a point of thanking us for our thoroughness. We were rewarded by good karma in our new house on moving day: the house had been cleaned so thoroughly that you could probably have eaten off the floors of the [unfinished!] basement. The previous tenants of our house did find, up in the attic crawlspace, a collection of 1950s chrome automobile accessories.

summer after freshman year of college friends & I moved into a place on cape cod only to find that in addition to the ping pong (used exclusively for beer pong) table the landlord had promised us, she had also left behind the basement tenant! A sometimes sweet, sometimes creepy (black satin sheets/black walls/black light) that he made SURE to point out & discuss in detail when giving me the tour of his apt) 45ish Rasta named Ollie... now that was an interesting summer...

oops - black satin sheets/black walls/black light were all referring to his bedroom decor.

I have never left anything in an apartment before-to scared to get hit with a charge to clean it out I guess. The strangest thing I have found was when we moved into this house. It was FULL of stuff-tires, cleaners, dishes, linens, and tons of old plastic christmas containers (you know-for candy, nuts, etc...) and ALL of them were full of pot. Hundreds of tiny ziplock bags of OLD pot. Years old from the looks of them. We bought this place from 2 doctors, and it was the last thing I thought we would find.

we found a brand new (well i guess it was worn once.) vera wang wedding dress. size 8. anyone interested?? on the other hand my bf left this amazing sapien shelf in his apt which i will never forgive him for: http://www.dwr.com/productdetail.cfm?id=5280

I moved into a studio apt. on W. 88th St. in 1977 and found a dresser left behind. It made the move with me 10 yrs. later and still use it.