I'd rather get rid of my brother than the cats. LOL. There are no shelters that take cats in our area & I'm very attached to them. As much of a nuisance as they are, I love them as if they were my own children. I just need to be better at keeping the environment clean. I've locked them out of the pantry now. They didn't want to go back in it with all the Lysol smell, so that was a bonus. If I can keep them out of there, it won't be a problem.
Part of the problem is that the litterboxes haven't been cleaned (which is partially my fault but also my brother's because he promised to clean litterboxes and then announced one day that he doesn't "do litterboxes". My best friend had to trick him just to get him to take the trash out. He has no respect for me or our mother so he just makes messes & expects me to clean up after him. I started thinking back on it & realized that my dad and I were the only ones who cleaned. Mom always hated cleaning and wouldn't do dishes. She never taught us to cook or clean. My brother always got away with not doing any chores because he would put up so much resistance it was easier for my father to do it or to guilt-trip me in to doing it. So he never learned to be responsible for himself. After my father passed away, it all fell on me & my brother just thinks I should have to do everything by myself & won't even clean up his own messes. It's incredibly frustrating.
I'm going to continue to do some cleaning today and get the litterboxes fixed up again.
The new fill valve worked in my toilet, although we have to hold the lever down for quite awhile before the toilet actually flushes. My friend had a hell of a time trying to get the old fill valve out. It didn't have the quick release inside the tank and the plastic nut was really stuck. He'd put it on when the tank was detached & tightened it well, but tried to remove it while it was on the toilet & it wouldn't budge. He ended up breaking it to get it off before putting the new valve in. It has a quick release so if I get another fill valve with the same release I can change it out without having to remove it from the bottom of the tank. I think part of the problem is that the toilet isn't seated properly- flange is still broken and needs to be replaced so the toilet moves. Once I get the house cleaned up enough, I'll get the plumber over to change the flange.
Here are some pics of the pantry before cleaning (but after my friend moved the metal shelf for me):
After:
I plan to move the shelf again and put something over the metal screen across the bottom boards and all over the metal screen to make it easier to clean. I'm trying to figure out what I can put over it-- maybe some sort of plaster that I can paint. Dad put metal screen around the perimeter to keep mice out but they got in when the door wouldn't close properly.
I'l do another after picture with the shelf back in place once I finish more cleaning. I still need to go through stuff on the shelves and throw out stuff that is expired. Some of the crud on the floor was from old sodas that expired & leaked-- cans of food that were so old they leaked, etc. There were a bunch of unopen red mountain dews that were empty or half empty. I'm going to put all of the cardboard and thin plastic stuff inside a bin to keep mice from chewing.
Editing to add updated pics. I finished cleaning the floor in the rest of the pantry-- had to get down on the floor to scrub it & got as much crud off as I could. Then I put some empty storage bins in there. I'm not great at organizing and putting stuff away so I need to figure out what I'm going to put in which bin and how to stack stuff. The shelves on the door made it so I can't fit a larger bin than the one that's in there through the doorway.