Pills…. all over the floor. Every room I went to had random pills on the ground. I picked them up and put them in a zip lock when I was watching their cats. I let them know and they didn’t seem to care. Watched their cats again months later and again found pills all over the place. So bizarre. – Reddit

Stayed the night at this girl’s house and got up early to make some breakfast. I’m riffleing though the cabinets looking for salt and pepper to add to my eggs. Come to find out this lady has no spices in her house. None. Not even salt. Like what?! – Reddit

A sandbox in the middle of the living room. There were Tonka Trucks and toys and cigarette butts in it. Then came the cat. Ugh. – Reddit

Trick or treating as a kid we were always scared to go to one neighbor’s house. The yard, nor home, was well kept. Stories circulated the neighborhood for years that he was a mean man, had killed his family, etc. As a dare I ran up and rang the doorbell and as I tried to run away an older gentleman opened the door..he said ‘I don’t get many kids nowadays, Happy Halloween!’ and held out a bowl of yummy candy bars. I peeked in and it was a meticulously kept home on the inside. A little candle lit, neatly folded blankets and magazines next to his lazy boy chair. He was so kind. I believe his kids were grown and had moved away, wife had passed away years ago. Made me not believe the rumors that get started about people. – Reddit

We know a family who is very wealthy, one of them is a medical professional, and they have no soap in any bathroom. I have to remember to bring hand sanitizer in my pocket every time we visit. It’s bizarre. – Reddit

I was once a bartender in an affluent area. I would occasionally get invited to after parties with the regulars. More than once I saw a large home barely furnished as in multiple rooms we’re completely empty and they just lived in maybe two rooms of the house. It appears that these people would buy and even rent the homes, to put on the look. – Reddit

Their Labrador in a crate so small it could only turn around with great difficulty. The crate was anchored to the wall, because otherwise the dog would thrash around in the crate until it shook and moved across the floor.

I asked if the dog had done something wrong to be put in timeout in the crate, like chewing up some shoes? My(ex) friend said no, that’s just where the dog lived for the most part. It got out every so often to eat or toilet in the yard, but all other times of day and night it was crated. Their reasoning was that when they let it out the crate, it was too hyper and destructive. Probably cause it spent its whole life stuck in a tiny box!

I argued with the friend and left the house on bad terms. I did phone an animal rights hotline but was told there wasn’t anything they could do. Since the dog was technically provided food, shelter, and decently hygienic conditions it wasn’t illegal to crate them near constantly, even though the org agreed it was neglectful/abusive. – Reddit

Woman I nannied for had a very messy house but she always looked so put together in public. She had 6 kids and always said “don’t judge me, our house is ‘lived in’”. Made me realize it was ok not to ruin your life over a perfect image house as long as everyone and everything was functioning. – Reddit

A carpeted bathroom that also contains a gun safe, wine glasses, a wine fridge, board games and snacks. – Reddit

Super popular, rich kid in high school. Drove a BMW, had a huge house and both of his parents were doctors. Went to a party at his house one night and was absolutely horrified by the filth they lived in. There was dog shit and piss absolutely everywhere in the house and little chihuahuas running around. Then there were even more dogs stacked on top of each other in crates in the garage. I was so stunned and disgusted I couldn’t even have fun and was just horrified for the animals, and him because he obviously thought this was all normal. And because he was cool people weren’t saying anything. All I could think was “holy shit if this is what his house looks like when he KNOWS people are coming over, what the f** does it normally look like”?!? I still feel terrible for those dogs and wish I had told an adult who could have helped them. – Reddit

Hundreds and hundreds of nutcracker dolls. Every square inch of space had one.

EDIT: and not just at Christmas, this was in the middle of summer. – Reddit

I had a roommate once that went away for a bit, and while he was gone we went in the basement for something and discovered that he and his best friend were making paper mache molds of each other’s bodies… like… dozens of them. Full body casts all over the basement. It was very unsettling. – Reddit

If I had not known my neighbor when I was growing up was a WW2 vet and the coat was a war trophy it would have been the SS officers jacket he had in his closet. Fresh and never worn he pulled it off a wagon somewhere in France. Without the context it would have been a massive red flag. Instead him and his wife were a sweet couple that were always happy to tell my brother and I stories from the war. He served in Europe, she served in the Pentagon writing letters to fallen soldiers’ families. I miss them still 20+ years after they passed on. – Reddit

They had a bunch of framed pictures of family members on the wall, and among them was a picture of Ted Bundy. The black-and-white photo of him grinning at something off camera when he was on trial. It was an old lady’s home, and it was otherwise nicely furnished. Not the roughest house I’ve been to for work but it definitely had me scratching my head. – Reddit

A dude I had a crush on didn’t put sheets on his bed. It was so gross and weird. His mattress was all dirty and I couldn’t imagine how it would ever get clean. I couldn’t get past it and it didn’t work out lol. – Reddit

Neighbor has at least a dozen extremely high quality hand painted portraits of President Obama as an African king, high rolling gangster, Jesus, walking hand in hand with MLK, playing basketball on the streets, smoking weed by a burning trashcan, and other cray ones. It’s been a few years since I saw them but wow, dude worships Obama and I had no idea. He never speaks a word of politics. He invited me over for dinner and told me all about the artist and how proud he was to have custom pieces by him. He never mentioned anything political, he just spoke about Obama like he was a sports or religious icon. – Reddit

I go into multiple homes every week. For the most part, people are clean and what I’d call normal.

Then we have the people whose animals don’t get let outside often enough, or the litter boxes aren’t cleaned often enough. Or the children have the run of the home, and no one cleans for them. That’s all normal to some people.

We also have a large group of people who collect odd things, or old things. They can’t let go of the past, or of great grandma’s tarnished brass. That’s also normal to some.

The worst, to me, are the hoarders. With just a pathway leading to a tight space for one, they expect me to adapt to their living conditions while finding a place to sign multiple documents. Some claim to be remodeling. Others claim to be moving in or out. It’s obvious their claims are untrue.

But what gets me about these hoarders, is that if they aren’t sick and in bed on the final days, they are business professionals who walk right next to others, looking tidy and clean. They are doctors and nurses, they are attorneys, accountants, and some even own multiple properties across the country.

I’ve learned that we really don’t know a person until we’ve seen their home. – Reddit

Turned on the lights and bugs scattered. Not even a path in this dudes house. Couldn’t get the door open at first.

Second worst one was a different family who were hoarders, except they were taking care of their bed bound grandmother there. Flies and ants crawling around on her. Unable to move or scream. – Reddit

I also do home visits. Some homes make me feel so itchy or suffocated that I can’t wait to leave. On a few occasions (bedbugs), I’ve had to tell the client we can only meet at my office from now on. – Reddit

I was a farm hand living on site while I was in my late teens. I accepted the job over the phone and had no way of screening the property. (Almost fifteen years ago.) I was a poor kid, and desperately wanted the “opportunity” of working for this rancher.

As soon as I got into the house, my stomach fell – the fridge could have earned a top five placing on Hoarders. The walls and windows had holes in them, with roots and branches growing well enough inside that some were curled into the carpet and the radiator parts on the back of the fridge. In the laundry room, mushrooms grew in the cracks of the foundation.

On one of my final days, upon hearing a commotion in the basement, I discovered a mattress set that I still cannot accurately describe. Imagine it being caught in a flood, pressed by those waters through the panels of a livestock yard, then left to ‘dry’ in a damp basement…. It became the final resting place for some long-disappeared house cat, and I’ll never forget the sight of it. She/he had been decomposing in all the ways for some length of time….

So. Red flags from the doorway. In every doorway. And the basement. – Reddit

Pack of chicken breasts in the fridge. Except it was fully open and he leaves it there like that and just takes one when he needs to. But raw chicken open in the fridge made me question some things. – Reddit

Black mold in the shower. It was our fifth date, I think, he was a nice guy, very smart and kind, and I went to his apartment that he shared with a roommate. The whole place was a pit but when I saw that shower I knew I had to call things off. Luckily the Covid lockdown started a couple days later and we just stopped texting each other. – Reddit

My friends moved into an apartment in the complex about 6 months after me. They weren’t very organized but for the 2 years they lived there they had an Amazon box with a yellow hand towel over it and a 6 plug power strip inside. It was on the floor behind their table and I nearly tripped on it multiple times, but it was never moved.

They (2 brothers) eventually bought a house and when I visited that box was sitting in their living room. I doubt they noticed and just thought it was a box to clean later but I bet it is still there, 7 years since I visited them last.

What makes it weird is the older brother is a massive germaphobe, but they live in what I can only describe as “the enclave of the man-child”. – Reddit

When my friend and his wife could always afford new shoes/outfits and nights out with miscellaneous substances but their kids slept on a mattress on the floor with no sheets…like … Where are your priorities?! – Reddit

I worked on the outside of a house one time, working around a window and I could see 2 dead hummingbirds sitting in the window sill inside. Not taxidermy, just laying there dead. Horrible. – Reddit

Cat that was restricted to a basement. Granted the basement was pretty massive and smelled like they cleaned the litterbox, and it had food and a water fountain. But still the poor thing would spend all day meowing at the door, it needed love, and companionship. – Reddit

i drove nearly 5 hours to meet a guy that i had been talking to online for months. i get to his place and in the bathroom is an unflushed toilet with a #2 that has very clearly been soaking in there for awhile. Noped out of there so fast. – Reddit

I did home visits for students from poverty. Some were refugees, others were here on asylum, or farm work programs. Wow. Were their houses clean. Mopped and dusted daily. Gardens were immaculate. Kitchens well organized. I guess I expected their homes to look like the homes of poor Americans, but nope. They treated their new homes in America like castles and welcomed our visits. – Reddit

I grew up on a farm and when I was about 14 a neighbor who lived in a little lot cabin a couple kilometers away asked for some help stacking some boards he was cutting on one of those small sawmills. I arrived early the next day to help and he said he was just cooking breakfast and would I like some eggs. I had already eaten breakfast so I said no thanks. We went inside to his cabin which was nothing more than a bed in the corner and a woodstove and on an old rough cut wooden floor. He pulled his frypan down and picked up an old sock from off the floor in the corner and then wiped out the pan and dropped the sock back on the floor and started cracking eggs into the pan. I was suddenly glad I hadn’t accepted his offer of breakfast. – Reddit