A person's room says a lot about them; it's where they spend a good amount of their time, and they can decorate it to their choosing. Which means their room is also where they keep their secrets.
People on Quora reveal what they accidentally found while cleaning someone's room. Content has been edited for clarity.
Caught In The Act
“I had just got back on a Sunday morning from a trip out of town. I was living with my (at the time) boyfriend in an apartment, and I was doing the typical Sunday routine; cleaning and laundry. When it was time for me to start the laundry, I went into the bedroom to gather the blankets from the bed. I usually washed those first; not sure why, I just do. My ex-boyfriend was sitting down in the living room watching T.V. as he normally would do. So as I’m removing the comforter and the bottom blanket from off the bed, I find a pair of beige nylon no show socks, the kind that ladies wear with flats or Mary Janes
Now even up until this day, I have never ever bought or owned this style of sock. So unless my ex-boyfriend had a personal interest where he liked to wear women’s socks or something, I knew he had another woman in the apartment while I was gone, in our bed. I wasn’t sure how to confront him. He’s already cheated once, so regardless my mind was made up at that point that I was done. I decided then to just carefully fold up the socks, leave them in his work boots, and go about my day in peace and silence.
The next morning when he was getting ready to leave for work, I was sitting in the kitchen. He sat down next to me to put his work boots on and give the usual hug, kiss, and say goodbye.
As he went to put on his work boot, he stuck his foot in and said, ‘What’s this?’
He took his boot off reached his hand in and pulled out the ladies’ socks. He turned as white as a ghost.
I just simply responded, ‘Oh, those aren’t yours? Well, they aren’t mine either. You should probably give them back.’
He just got up and left for work. Having the audacity to try and text me later about it saying I ruined his day, and couldn’t I have waited until he got off work or something to address this.?
That’s how my five-year relationship ended, just like that.”
Taking A Look Behind The Curtain
“My stepmother died two months ago, so I was still in the process of mourning when I found what I wish I hadn’t. To make it clear, I found two things, both bad. When this occurred, I was helping my dad paint the walls of the bedroom hallway. As we were working, I noticed my stepmother’s door was slightly open. I reached my hand out to close it because I don’t like thinking back on those moments.
So long story short, my dad and I found her diary. In it, she had described how unhappy she was in the marriage and admitted to cheating, but couldn’t handle the guilt and decided to end her life. I had never suspected a thing living with her, but looking back on it now, there were some red flags and some odd behavior here and there. I never thought much of it, just chalked it up to her being in a mood.
We also found lots of little baby clothes hidden behind the underside of the bed. We were sure she was not pregnant, and after some diffing, we found out she was schizophrenic. My dad and I didn’t know this, because she had just entered our lives a year before she ended her life.
For that reason, I don’t have much of an emotional, connection with her, but I was still sad when she died. She had ‘fixed’ my dad for the better. And now he is back to his old depressed self.”
What Was He Doing On Those Trips?
“A few years ago, one of my friends was in a car accident and in the hospital for several weeks. I went to his house to gather some clothes, toiletries, and some books for him. While going through his drawers. I found a false bottom in one. Curious, I looked inside the hidden compartment and saw several passports from different countries. All had his picture, but different names. Including three US passports. Also in the compartment were driver licenses and ID cards from different states and countries, again his picture but different names.
I am certain most were fake (I assume one was real), but I couldn’t tell the difference. He traveled a lot and was gone for weeks at a time, and always gave vague answers if anyone asked him about the trip.
I put everything back, gathered the clothes, and left. I never mentioned anything to him.
I still do not know the story behind the multiple IDs and passports.”
Fired For Doing The Right Thing?
“Last year, I had a summer job as a housekeeper at a small motel.
A pretty monotonous and repetitive job—except one day it wasn’t.
I entered this room of a person who was rumored to be on hardcore substances and was the off type, so I already had a premonition that I was bound to see at least one upsetting thing in his room.
As I cleaned through it, I eventually discovered something obscene—his stash of colorful ecstasy pills and a few tablets he’d stupidly hidden in a briefcase under his bed, without even locking it.
It lifted my eyebrows, but it wasn’t what I was most aghast to see. Something much more heinous was.
I got out from under the bed, deciding to take the briefcase with me to report it, and I now started searching the room for more unusual stuff, instead of cleaning it. I’d cleaned enough anyway.
I searched the drawers, cabinets, and cupboard, and found smoke butts and dusty clothes and ancient adult magazines, but nothing more. However, I was determined to find more secret things. I checked under the mattress of the bed, and my eyes sparked when I got my hands on a neat-looking manila folder. But it was in no way what I thought it was. Opening it, I took out certain photographs… photographs of horrific violent child photos. Mutilations, torture, biting, and a lot more.
I was so terror-stricken that in my shock, I didn’t notice that the man had come into the room and as I heard the door shut, I swiftly turned around to meet a chilling death stare. He ran towards me and clocked me real hard in the face with a gruesome punch (he had brass knuckles on), but I managed to narrowly escape and ran out of the room. I made it down to the reception, where there were, fortunately, a bunch of people who defended me against him.
He was arrested and I was fired. Haven’t heard from that motel since then.”
The Mom Tried To Hide The Letter
“I was helping my mom clean out her cedar chest. It was one of those chests where folks kept their most prized possessions; vintage baby clothes, wedding dress, wedding albums; important memories.
We enjoyed our little trips down memory lane and then we came upon a stack of airmail letters tied in a bundle. My mom remarked they were from an old lover; some juicy details and then not much more.
A few weeks later, a letter arrived bearing familiar handwriting. It was from that old past lover. She didn’t want to open it in front of me and instead shoved it in her purse as we hit the road to go to the fitness center together.
En route, I asked her for more tidbits about this exciting old lover and she nearly crashed into the median out of nervousness. Strange. Not long after, I’m on a date with my boyfriend and recount this story.
My boyfriend didn’t say much except, ‘How long ago was this guy in her life?’
I said, ‘Oh, that’s easy. It was sometime before I was born.’
Suddenly, things took a curious turn. The next chance I got I glanced in my mom’s purse to see if the letter was still in there. To my dismay, it was not. The next opportunity, I rummaged around in every nook and cranny of her room looking for it. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find it. Flabbergasted, I called my boyfriend and we went through a list of possible secret hiding places my mom possibly could have hidden it.
Finally, the only place I had not looked was inside her log burner fireplace. I had struck gold, finding it shoved inside along with old bills, used tissues, and empty toilet rolls. To no one’s shock, the lover in the letter had asked about me and expressed an interest to meet me. I had four other siblings – all older which he had not asked about. I later confronted my mom about the fact that I had a different biological father, and steps were taken to arrange a meetup.
I was outwardly relieved to discover I was not related to the other father I’d grown up with, as he was a very disturbing person. I was 19 at the time. Despite my mom’s reluctance to tell me this truth, things worked out fine in the end. And it seemed to help explain a lot of curious things i had wondered about growing up.”
She Had No Reason To Be There
“When I was a schoolboy back in the seventies, I was bullied for being overweight. Eventually, one group forced me to start wearing a girdle under my uniform.
For two years, I managed to keep it secret. When I was 16, my younger sister found it in my room. I came into the room to find her holding up the girdle with a smirk on her face. In a panic, I told her the truth and begged her to keep it secret. She didn’t believe me at first, but when she talked to one of the bullies and got it confirmed, she nearly passed out laughing.
From that day on, I could hardly bear to look at her any time I had my uniform on, knowing that she knew what I had on under it. She’d never miss a chance to taunt me; she was patting me on the backside, and putting her hand on my leg under the table to run her fingers along the cuff at the end of the leg before pulling at it and letting it snap back, and so on.
Any time she’d see me at school looking miserable, I’d get a whispered, ‘Is your girdle killing you?’ – a line from an old 1970’s TV ad.
These days she looks back on it as a fuss over nothing. If I get annoyed, she just tells me that, if I found it so terrible, I should have stood up for myself. I don’t know if she means I was weak or is implying I liked it. Either way, it’s always been a barrier between us.
And I never did find out what she was doing in my room in the first place.”
She Left A Permanent Reminder Of What He Did
“While moving three years ago, my ex-boyfriend and I were cleaning and packing up his room. He had gone with his father to take the bed to our unit, and I arrived to pack up what was left.
He kept insisting, ‘No no, I’ll go back and do the cleaning.’
Being the nice girlfriend I was, and already 10 minutes away from his house, I said ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll do it.’
His mum was already in there packing. He must have thought she did some cleaning too and he was in the clear. When I got there, she was loading things into the car. So, I went into his room/loft and sifted through things. Left under the bed were used protection and love letters dated fairly recently to our move day. The moron should have thrown them out.
We had never used that type of protection. After that day, I insisted on it. He thought it was because I was doing the dirty.
However, I just found out where he’d been dipping his wick. I was hardly impressed. Funny, all he could get was the riff-raff of our town.
I was hurt, but I decided well, if we’re living together hopefully he has changed (delusional. I was an idiot… cheaters rarely change. I was scared no one would want me I guess).
I kept the letters, and then I received messages from my single friends on dating apps who had come across his profile. I waited until he got home from work, and I asked him if I could read something out. I was no longer scared. I was going to take pleasure in this.
Boy how I enjoyed watching the color drain from his face as I read those letters out. Dates and all. I enjoyed him telling his mother I was moving out eight months into the lease.
I enjoyed her telling me, ‘You better have a good freaking reason to be breaking the lease with MY son!’
I enjoyed reading the letters out to her. I loved reading the dates out too, and she put two and two together that this girl he’d been sleeping with wasn’t from years prior, it was about three or four months before we moved out.
She came to help me pack my things.
I paper-mached the letters to his fridge before I left. Permanent reminder. It was a work of art really.
What a joke. He thought I was so loyal and dependent on him, I would never leave.”
That Was No Ordinary Bathroom Closet
“I worked for a carpet cleaning company for about five or six years, and going in and out of people’s homes (about six or seven a day on the average), I would see some rather interesting things. Pulled many adult toys out from under beds with the cleaning wand, as it had very powerful suction. Usually, I would call my assistant in and ask him to remove it from the vacuum or throw it at him as a joke. We always tried to have fun, all the while keeping a quiet low profile as to not embarrass the homeowner or ourselves for acting so immature.
I also saw people cooking crack up in their kitchen. We walked in, and they just kept on like they were baking a cake. Saw dead rabbits floating in a swimming pool, stashed substances, mad money elderly men would try to hide from their wives and would forget about. Taped to the back of furniture, under bathroom scales, and so on. We cleaned just about anything, so the spectrum of homes I went into was huge. From famous athlete’s homes to a shack out in the middle of a cow pasture, I’ve seen quite a bit.
All that being said, the craziest thing I ever came across was a love-making dungeon type torture room tucked away in the home of a wealthy elderly couple. This was 15 years ago maybe, so this wasn’t any Fifty Shades of Grey fan appreciation piece or anything. After the couple showed us around, told us what furniture they wanted to be moved and what not to touch, we started setting up the truck. You always want to start at the furthest point from the truck to ensure you pulled enough vacuum line, and 90% of the time the furthest point was the master bedroom. Especially typical of these cookie-cutter golf community homes.
Anyway, we start setting up, and as I lay down the cleaning wand, the handle bumped the bathroom door and it popped open. I would’ve had to open it regardless in order to clean the carpet in the threshold under the door. A lot of these homes have huge walk-in closets in the master bathroom, which normally have carpet in them. So, we would go ahead and clean it even if they hadn’t asked as a courtesy or to avoid a callback. The bathroom door opens, and I see the walk-in closet door just to the right of the bathroom door. I turn to my assistant and let him know to leave a bit more slack in the line because I was going to knock that walk-in out for the nice people, maybe score a tip in the process.
Well, needless to say, I didn’t end up cleaning that closet. I opened that closet door only to find what looked like a medieval torture chamber. Wrought iron fencing up the walls, iron candle holders, two sets of hand and feet cuffs, various whipping utensils, adult toys, a gimp mask, and a couple of leashes. I immediately pulled that door closed, jumped out of the bathroom, and closed that door. I looked behind me, no one had seen. The homeowners were outside paying us little mind. That would’ve been awkward!
Of course, when my assistant came back in the room, I asked him to go into the closet to apply some spot remover to a stain I couldn’t get out. The look on his face was priceless when he came flying out of the bathroom. I was on the floor laughing my butt off. The couple had to have been in their late sixties, early seventies. We laughed and cringed the rest of the day and told the story to the entire crew the next morning. We all had a good laugh and then back out to see what strange encounters the new day would bring.”
A Truly Heartbreaking Note
“I was helping to clean my friend’s daughter’s room out one day after the daughter had moved out. Her daughter had a rough school life; she was bullied a lot in primary school up to high school by the same person. I was emptying her drawer, and it had lots of pictures of random things she had drawn over the years. As I was looking at the pictures, I noticed a letter with the word ‘Read’ on the front.
I opened the letter, and what I read was heartbreaking. Apparently, she was planning to commit suicide one day a few years ago, and the letter said:
‘Dear all,
I’m so sorry about all the trouble I’ve caused. Maybe I am better off dead, and maybe I am a big fat cow. Please accept me for being me, but it’s time I say goodbye to this planet and goodbye to you mom and dad. Thank you for raising me on this planet and bringing me alive, I’m so fat and ugly though, goodbye.’
I was sobbing my eyes at that letter. I decided to throw it away due to emptying it, and I didn’t want people thinking I was being nosy and reading everything. Now, the girl is happy and is no longer being bullied. One day, I will need to tell someone what I read, to make them aware of the bullying consequences; the girl was overweight and that’s the reason she was bullied all the time at school. I’m glad she changed her mind about giving up on herself.”
He Looked So They Didn’t Have To
“My father-in-law died two years ago. My mother-in-law died five years earlier. He had a couple of girlfriends that we knew of in his last two or three years. He was a very nice old man with a gentle way about him. He was extremely educated. He had taught at a university for several years after retiring as an engineer. He traveled all his life as an engineer due to the large construction projects he worked on.
When cleaning out his house and preparing it for sale, we went through lots of things in the bedroom. It was tough for my wife and her brothers because he hadn’t removed any of their mother’s belongings. It was very sad for them to go through everything but they also laughed a lot looking at things that brought up memories. We expected this room to take a few hours. It took a week.
As they went through things, each of the siblings picked keepsakes they wanted to keep. There was nothing of any serious monetary value except some of her jewelry, which mostly went to my wife being the only female.
A lot of time was spent on photo albums and boxes of paperwork. Then, in the back of the large walk-in closet, they found an old-fashioned trunk with a newer master lock on it. I was called in to get the lock off. I carried outside on the patio and used a portable grinder and cut the lock.
I opened the box and looked inside and was shocked to find adult toys and a life-size silicone butt with an opening. I was pretty shocked but I guess the old guy had a wild side about him. I went in and told my wife and her brothers that the box had adult stuff in it and they probably didn’t want to look. I offered to sort through things and toss out stuff. They got a good laugh and talked about how they didn’t expect any of it. I put on a pair of yellow dish gloves and got a black garbage bag so you couldn’t see anything I threw away.
I immediately tossed out the toys. There was a stack of wooden smoke boxes that had been stained by a lubricant that was on its side and had leaked. Everything was dry, so it had been a while. I opened one of the boxes and found pictures. Some were digital prints that were from the last few years with, let’s call him ‘Jim,’ and several old ladies. Big Jim might be a better name. I was shocked and impressed at the same time. This old guy who passed at 82 probably kept the little blue pill company busy because he stood at full attention in each of the pictures. I’ll just say that one of the old ladies was very limber and not in the way her joints move, but in how much she could open up and accept large objects. You can’t unsee some things.
I decided to keep going and flipped through other boxes. They went back years to what must have been the 1970’s. There were old Polaroid pictures with Jim and other women going back many years. I flipped through quickly and realized that none were the mother-in-law, so I’m assuming he was a serial cheater for a long time. My mother-in-law was a very sweet lady, and I was very disappointed to realize he cheated on her for all of those years.
There were love letters or at least correspondence with others, and I did see mention in a few of San Francisco and other cities away from where he lived so he was doing this on the road. I threw everything in the garbage. I tied it up and put it on the bottom of the pile of bags already at the curb. I reported to my wife and her brothers that the old guy must have had quite the libido and because he had a few photos of himself and some old ladies that would haunt me and they definitely did not want to see. They agreed and thanked me for taking one for the team. His secret died with that bag and I’ll never tell them.”
