A self-employed cleaner, Rayann McMullan has dealt with some pretty challenging scenes over the years.
But one recent visit to a 'pizza-obsessed' hoarder's house was so horrifying it reduced her to tears multiple times – leaving her “scarred” by the experience.
Rayann, 25, took on the job after spotting a plea on Facebook. A landlord needed help in clearing out rubbish left behind by a former tenant in Tameside.
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Although used to rolling her sleeves up and getting on with deep-cleaning work, Rayann's jaw dropped when she stepped inside the one-bedroom apartment in Droylsden.
Shocking snaps show the entire flat swamped in hundreds of pizza boxes, stale food, plastic bags and bottles of urine.
Rayann said it took two full days to clear out the flat – crying several times at the prospect of having the tackle the jam-packed bedroom.
Clearing the pizza boxes took four hours alone, with Rayann being 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, from Collyhurst, now says she gets flashbacks whenever she sees a pizza box. "I got really excited when I was offered the job and then the landlord sent me a video,” she said.
"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 continued: "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.
"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."
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