You learn a lot about a person when you’re allowed inside their home.

Especially when you’re there unsupervised in their bedrooms and bathrooms, cleaning up but still keeping an attentive eye to what’s going on around you.

And housekeepers really see a lot of dirt in their daily routines.

AskReddit users divulged the secrets that they know.

1. That’s a good thing!

“Dog walker, here. I was dog sitting for an older work friend once and saw her “days sober” calendar.

I was simultaneously sad, because I had no idea she was struggling, and happy for her because she had almost a full month marked off.”

2. That’s gross.

“My friend who cleans houses said she once had a girl who left dirty pads all over her room.

She refused to clean it”

3. House of tunnels.

“House I used to work at had a secret passage from the master bed to the attic, also a secret passage from a cabinet in the great room leading to the exterior of the garage.”

4. Hidden away.

“Where she keeps her dildos.

It’s not obvious.”

5. Got a DUI.

“That she got a DUI. Typical religious white collar family; husband, wife, and 4 teen kids. She had one of those at home breathalyzer tests from the court sitting in the master bathroom, it takes your picture as you blow into it and it sends it to your probation officer.

I only know because I was on probation a few years ago and had one too. Curiosity got the best of me and I looked at her public record…yup. DUI and she messed up on probation too, had another court date. After that I started noticing 12 step books and such.”

6. It’s in the air.

“Haven’t been a housekeeper in years but we can always tell when your marriage is falling apart.

The amount of “giving up” is clear.”

7. Creatures of the night?

“Buddy of mine used to clean houses with his mom. He told me about this one massive mansion they would clean and how there were no mirrors in the entire house. There also weren’t a lot of windows and if there were, they had thick drapes. He met the family only once and told me they were very pale and quiet people.

He worked for fucking vampires.”

8. They know it all…

“Housekeeper/Nanny here…

Eventually we find everything.

Mainly where the sex toys are, where dad hides all his empty energy drink cans, where mom stores all her shopping purchases with tags still on them… parents in general hide their unusual items in the most usual places. Simple boxes in bedroom drawers, in random linen closets, mostly readily able to find and just out of they way (I’ve helped move several families and doing the checks for packing has gotten some interesting results)

We know when the parents are tired and dont want to come home. We know sometimes the bar trips the parent takes before coming home.

We know schedules that they say are the reason aren’t really the reason

We know personal preferences they have over the years to any random assortment of thing. Seriously who buys mayo to put on everything as their condiment of choice?

Some things that we know, they know we do and accept it. Alot of the stuff we know, we find out and DEFINITELY play dumb with.

First milestones in nannying are a big one. Keep that to the parents finding the first tooth we found days ago, the walking steps they took yesterday were really the first today. Why take those moments from parents needlessly is our perspective.

Housekeeping is usually the who is dirtiest. I know which parent doesnt brush their teeth every day. Which parent is having an affair with a coworker and left behind a recognizable item on accident.

We know that they dont even consider or think much about us knowing all these things.

The worst was accidentally listening to my bosses get it on. They had left the monitor for the baby in their room. It was not turned off and they to this day do not know I heard them (and turned off the monitor).”

9. Peeping Tom.

“One of my regulars was a literal math genius in one of the best universities in the country. Her apartment was across from the dorms. Aside from sleeping with her students (and others she’d pick up on Casual Encounters), she showed me her toy collection (which was extensive) and gave me a set of binoculars and asked if I wanted to join her on Saturday night when she liked to watch the kids having sex in their dorm rooms.

I politely declined. Maybe I made a face or something because she tried to make me feel more comfortable by asking me if I’d like a drink. I accepted (normally I’d say no, but I had to ask her something relating to her kids I don’t remember what). Anyway, we sit on the couch and she pours me some wine and then says, “I know” with a big smile.

She stood up. I got a little nervous. But then she headed to the piano and started playing Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. And that was that night.”

10. Nudie pics.

“The little old man im house sitting for due to a stroke had has a hobby of taking nude photos of women. There’s a stack of them under his bed that i found while trying to coax his cat out. His ex wife (who was the one who hired me) had no idea why there was a futon in his living room with multiple light fixtures pointing to it.

The entire setup reminds me of the casting couch in porn (if that couch was a futon.)”

11. Affairs all over the place.

“They did well to hide it but I know both of them are having affairs. She gets really giddy the week she meets her lover. She is usually quite dowdy in the way she dresses, but puts on much younger looking items to meet her man. The week she doesn’t meet him is the week she is more glum but gets bombarded with messages so she is stuck in her phone.

He, on the other hand, he is a lot harder to catch. I find seemingly innocuous handwritten telephone numbers and names (always female) on scraps of paper. He is a professional that works all over the world and travels a lot and has a massive network so it is part of the job.

However, in his bin, wrapped in tissue paper I’ll find a torn off section of paper with a room number and presumably time written on it. This method is used with at least 7 different women judging by the different styles of handwriting. I’m pretty sure he is banging more than that though.”

12. Rich folks.

” Petsitter. I’m not going through people drawers and shit, but just being in people’s houses has taught me a lot about how people are.

My wealthier clients tend to be extremely unhappy with their lives. I’ve got marriages that are complete shams and spouses who cover up this fact by filling their home with endless amounts of useless shit. These people have so much money that they can just drown their sorrows by hoarding objects instead of dealing with their actual issues.

Their animals tend to be extremely stand offish or extremely needy, and they’re always horribly untrained. And this is usually because they buy animals just cause they can. There’s a void and they fill it with an animal that I then take care of for them.

My lower class clients tend to be genuinely happy. Their houses are usually kind of falling apart and their cars are decades old, but they’ve got cute notes around to house to their children or spouses and the layout of their living / bed room is intimate and cozy. Their animals are decently trained and friendly most of the time. And this is usually because they devote time and energy into training and loving it rather than locking it in the backyard with a bowl of water from 9-5.

The point I’m making is mostly about the rich people. They don’t know that I know how secretly unhappy they are. They don’t know that I know that their marriage is failing, their children don’t want to come by to see them anymore, and their trips to moms house are more of a call for help than a vacation.

Obviously I’m not saying that rich people can’t be happy, but my petsitting experiences have led me to make many, many conclusions about how people with money are generally less capable of actually fixing the problems in their lives and tend to just bury them instead.”

13. A big list.

“My mom is a housekeeper and I used to work with her before I moved for school.

Let’s see:

when couples were getting married/divorcing/expecting

when you’re fuckin’ (at least put the used condom in the trash)

where you keep your sex toys

where you hide your gun

you have a pill/drinking problem

the alarm codes to your house and the secret password. And where the spare keys are. And the spare spare keys are. And which windows don’t lock properly.

if your kids are drinking/having sex/doing drugs and sometimes before you. Also, your kids tell us everything…

one of her clients she cleans for their daughter and sons family too. I forced my mom to stop cleaning for the son because his wife is a psycho, a chronic liar, and just married the son for the money. She would tell others in the family that my mom was trash and stupid etc. (My mom suspects she’s jealous of me because the parents really like me. They paid for and entire year of my college and she was livid.) But we still know the deets about the family fights, how many times they’ve taken money out of the trust, how in debt they are to their parents, and how they don’t talk to the daughter after the borderline brawl they had at Disneyland…and much more.

my mom used to clean for a major league baseball player and she knew when he was leaving for another team

my mom has a lot of police officers and federal agents as clients and we know about what is going on at work, we don’t go looking for it but most leave their work out (eg. one client worked for the DEA and we knew about drug raids and our areas human trafficking rings). I also know that your police K9 LOVES belly scratches (my mom would bring me because her employees were terrified of them and they won’t let anyone clean until they got attention), playing fetch and can open all the doors in the house to do random perimeter checks.

one client has a huge nude picture of the wife in their walk in closet (that doesn’t really qualify because they HAVE to know we’ve seen it. But BAM naked.)

most important, your pets names and where the treats are.”

14. That’s a rug.

“Was a housekeeper for a family for 9 years… I knew that the husbands hair on top of his head wasn’t actually real.

Well maybe it was real, but it wasn’t attached.”

15. Hanky panky.

“I used to do housekeeping for a while. I found out that the guy i worked for had a wife AND a mistress. He would bring each at different times to his vacation apartment that i serviced. It was sad because when he was with his wife he was really sweet and sensitive and they would just have a relaxing time if i did happen to see him. They would also clean up after themselves a little so the job was a bit easier while they stayed.

When he would bring his girlfriend he was much ruder to me in front of her (i think trying to be suave and look powerful) and they would both trash the place, she would always leave her underwear, dirty dishes, bottles and cigarettes everywhere.

He didn’t know (or at least didn’t acknowledge) that these women were clearly different people. He referred to both of them as his wife and would call them both “babe”. He seemed unaware or uncaring that i clearly knew they were different women. One was 20 years younger than the other!

I felt sad for the wife because she clearly didn’t know about her husband’s mistress but it was such a well paying job and i needed the money so i never said anything.”

16. Classy.

“Not a house keeper but a nanny. A family once took me on vacation with them so I could watch their kids while they‘d go out and explore the area. That week, my bed was the couch in the living room.

It’s late at night, the kids are sleeping, I’m laying on the couch and the parents get back. The dad says, “is she sleeping” referring to me? I didn’t say anything so apparently he assumed yes. He then started farting very loudly.”

You just never know what’s going on behind closed doors, do you?

Have you ever worked in this field and seen things that maybe you shouldn’t have seen or learned secrets you weren’t supposed to know?

Tell us about them in the comments.