Woman Says She Came Home From a Cleaning Service Visit to a Gas Burner Left On With No Flame, Then Found Her Purse, Tax Documents and Real Silverware in Two Garbage Bags Downstairs

She smelled gas on the stairs before she reached her own door. Inside, she says, one stove burner was turned “totally all the way on, no flame, just emitting gas,” and a fan was running. Her phone was already out, “because I knew something was gonna be crazy, and I needed to record it.”

The creator who posts as @bronxiemthope told the story on October 4, 2026, as an update on what her caption calls “the worst Cleaning Lady service I’ve ever had in my life.” She says she found the service on Instagram and had used it before: “It’s always, like, different cleaning people, and they were okay.” This time two workers she had not had before came while she was out. She does not name the company.

The gas, she says, “gave me a terrible headache.” Then she looked at the kitchen. “It wasn’t that they didn’t do enough cleaning. What they did actively made it all worse.” The silverware had been washed and put back “covered in grease,” according to her video, and her caption says dirty dishes went into the cupboard “as if they were clean.” Her view of that: “I would have been happier if they had not done dishes. Rather you don’t do something than do it so bad that it creates more work.” She emptied the drawer and rewashed everything in it.

Then she could not find her purse, her white noise machine, the book she was reading or her reading lamp. Two garbage bags were sitting downstairs, and she decided to look in the top of one. The first thing she pulled out, and holds up to the camera, is a blue tote bag that she says had been “clean, hanging on a doorknob in my bedroom.”

She put on rubber gloves and went through the bags. By her count in the video and caption they held a purse and two messenger bags, the book and the lamp, mail marked as tax documents, dirty dishes including a Pyrex bowl, pieces of “real silver” silverware, “a whole stick of organic grass fed butter,” a full box of Wheat Thins, her seltzer mixers, and gift bags that she says had been “literally tucked in my closet in a box.”

“I get it with little papers or little odds and ends,” she says. “But why would you throw out somebody’s purse?” Her summary, spoken in the video and typed in her messages to the service: “There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it.”

The last minute of the video scrolls through her text thread with the service. Her side lists the items, with photos of the drawer, the bags and the tote. The replies shown on screen apologize, say the two workers who came that Friday are no longer with the company, and offer to reduce the charge for the visit to $150. They also say the appointment was booked as a “regular cleaning package for 2 hours with 2 cleaners,” with the main bedroom and its bathroom as the priority, and that the home needed an initial deep cleaning.

Her caption rejects that framing. The owner, she writes, “keeps acting as if the issue is that they simply didn’t clean enough” and that she should have scheduled a longer cleaning. “That is not the issue though. They threw out things that were obviously not garbage and they actively made things worse and they could’ve hurt everyone in this building.” All of this is her account and the messages she chose to show; the video does not include the workers’ version.

If a Cleaning Crew Will Be in Your Home While You Are Out

Go to the stove first when you get back. In her account the knob was fully on with no flame, and she smelled it from the stairs. Look at every knob before anything else, and if you smell gas, turn the knob off, open the windows and get people and pets out until it clears.

Record before you touch anything, as she did. Film the knob position, the inside of the drawers and cupboards, and each bag before you open it.

Check the trash before it leaves the building. She got her things back only because the two bags were still downstairs. Tell the service in advance that every bag stays inside by the door, so you can look through them when you get home.

Put the terms in a text before the visit. The service’s reply leaned on what was booked: two hours, two cleaners, bedroom and bathroom first. Add your own lines to that thread: which rooms, whether dishes are included or left alone, and that nothing gets thrown away unless it is already in a trash can.

Do not count on a closed door. She says gift bags came out of a box inside her closet. Papers like tax mail, plus purses and anything silver, are safer locked in one drawer or one room that the written instructions name as closed.

Ask who is coming. She says the service sent different people each time. Ask for the same crew, or ask whether new workers come with someone who has cleaned your home before.

If things are missing, send one itemized message with a photo of each item and what it costs to replace, and say what you want: replacement, a refund, or both. The offer shown in her thread was a reduced charge for the visit; a list with replacement costs puts the missing property on the table as its own item.