Moving...not so Green.

I've recently moved apartments, just five blocks away but financially feasible for my remaining year at Northern.  Now I intended to be as green throughout the process as possible, and in the beginning it was good.  I recycled last semester's notes (that I have no intention of looking at ever again), I was packing at a slow pace seeing what all I had and making a mental list of what needed to be donated since it hadn't been used in two years, etc.  Considering I had a little over a week overlap between my two apartments I didn't really see the point in rushing to get everything done.

The downfall of my green efforts began with the remain effects of my former roommate, that moved out two and a half months before myself.  She had left countless of open food containers hidden throughout our kitchen.  Items consisting of flour and cereal and everything in between.  And when I say hidden, I mean hidden; on top of the fridge, behind our food containers, in the freezer, etc.  Any open food was deemed roommate's and was immediately pitched, regardless of whether it seemed okay or not.  Over two months of being open to the elements of our apartment wasn't a chance I or my current roommate was willing to take.

I had never been so disgusted with my former roommate as I had then, at least in the cleanliness department.  It took me forever to clean up  the food remnants on top of our fridge.  And yes, the classic cleaning supplies came out.  The green cleaning supplies just couldn't handle my desire to get my full security deposit back.

The walls were dusted paper towels were exclusively used, and washed but a magic eraser was used.  The windows washed with Lysol all purpose spray.  The floors were scrubbed and vacuumed.  And the grand total was three city trash bags and two boxes of recyclables, and very disintegrated fingernails (furthering my goal of reducing the harsh chemicals used to clean my apartment regularly).  Not bad in comparison to my friend who cleaned out her apartment and had twelve trash bags.

And we got our full security deposit back!

Cleaning the new apartment was much greener.  Almost used exclusively were the Seventh Generation Anti-bacterial wipes, which work amazingly just FYI.  Though the intense cleaning wasn't mandatory for this apartment since it had just been cleaned by the previous tenants so they could get their security deposit back.