Down the Drain

The penultimate day of moving out of a house involves pouring a diverse array of colourful liquids down the sink.

The penultimate day of moving out of a house involves pouring a diverse array of colourful liquids down the sink. Somewhere, perhaps 50km downstream of our house, there is a drainage worker who thinks Pride campaigners have hijacked the pipes for publicity. In no small part, these liquids paint a rich tapestry of the life we're leaving behind and I've discovered that there is much to be learned from their gunked-up lids and putrid aromas.

To put it bluntly, flavoured liqueurs are a no-no. I couldn't resist a swig of 8-year-old Maltese fig liqueur before it went the way of the Draino and boy did I regret it. It made me instantly drunk and left a sort of rotten cheesecake flavour in my mouth which I can still detect now, a few hours later and after having sampled the dregs of a bottle of bisongrass vodka (which had something floating in it) and an unlabelled red syrup that might have been a cocktail flavouring, but then again could just have easily been cough medicine. Whilst we're on the subject of medicines, don't even think about sampling any of those. Don't even smell them. Just throw them straight in the bin. A brown bottle of something etherish almost tipped me into a seizure, just from a tiny sniff.

Resist the urge to bring back some of the local poison from your holidays. The bottle of Cuban rum is still three-quarters full and has changed hue from 'Deep Amber' to 'Urinal Splash'. Port is another one of those tipples that feels like a good buy after a boozy distillery tour, but inevitably sits unopened until moving out day. If you must, buy one bottle - not one of each colour and the one that comes in a little wooden case.

Multiple big bottles of cheap gin and vodka tell the story of a party that didn't quite live up to expectations. People don't tend to drink as much as you think they will, unless they do, which leads to other problems.

For your own sake, I'd strongly advise avoiding keeping any bottle with less than a quarter still in it. This always get pushed to the back and will mischievously resurface the day before your big move. If you're anything like me, you won't have the heart to bin them so you'll end up moving onto the next phase, which is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you, slightly pissed on honey whiskey and arak.

Cleaning products provide the chance to experiment on the edge, especially if you're tipsy. I knew that mixing ammonia and chlorine can produce a deadly gas, so I poured them down the sink sequentially, with 96% alcohol in the middle for shits and giggles. The result didn't kill me but did produce a stench so strong it made my nose tingle and eyes water and immediately sobered me up. I tried to cover the semi-lethal haze with a room freshener spray from Zara which left the utility room smelling like a shopping mall toilet. When Jessi walked in she immediately knew I'd been up to something (even before she saw me sitting in a daze in the kitchen) and threw all the windows wide open.

At some point in the history of the house I must have been on a 'natural cleaning products' kick. A 5kg tub of bicarbonate of soda was a particular challenge to get rid of. What my exact plans were for this chemical stash I can't recall, but I estimate I used about 100g. The rest went into the kitchen sink with the waste disposal unit at full tilt, whipping it up into a sort of meringue which only got worse when I added Fairy Liquid into the mix to try and smooth its passage. It expanded dangerously outwards as I slapped at it with a silicone baster. For good measure, I washed that down with a big bag of magnesium bath salts which dissolved pleasingly on contact with the water and seemed to keep the previous cream pie from expanding any further. On the plus side, the sink is pristine now.

Vinegar, another 'cleanfluencer' favourite, is best kept for salad dressings in my opinion. As a cleaning product, it might leave your windows streak free, but it will also make your house smell like a seaside chip shop for weeks. A bottle of that went down the sink, leaving a disgustingly malty tang hanging in the kitchen for hours. That was followed by three bottles of dishwasher rinse liquid; clearly on multiple occasions we'd seen this product in the supermarket, figured we should be using it, bought it, but never once had the gumption to actually use it. Does anyone actually bother with this stuff?

I won't talk too much about the foodstuffs. I'm terrible at throwing away anything edible so we've been lathering dinner with a violently spicy Indonesian ketchup for about a month and literally every dish I've cooked is soaked in soy sauce from my bulk buying phase: I still have at least a litre of that to get rid of but I can't bear to throw it away so I might season the plants with it before I leave. That will be on top of multiple bottles of suspect wine that have been horticulturally employed.

The sun's going down now, and I still have a pint of vermouth and some citric acid to deal with, so I'll sign off. If you never hear from me again, you can assume that the combo didn't work out, although you'll be guessing as to whether it was toxic off-gassing or intestinal burn that finished me off.