Normally, this place is impeccably clean, because when people come over, we want them to feel, "Yeah, it's a real house. This is not a college dorm kind of thing." Even though, after the party, it looks like it. Most times, and before the sink got clogged last week, that's the goal: this is going to look like a real house, with real people who are responsible.
Something that we share is a blue collar respect for hard work. Our families ingrained that into all of us. And a desire to raise up a class. All my family is expecting something. It's pretty intense. You feel an obligation to your parents. They put so much hard work and effort into making sure that you had everything growing up, and now you're going a step further than they did, because you want to prove to them that it did pay off.
Having a house, I think it goes with our idea of succeeding. I don't want to rent an apartment. I want to rent a house. We've never had a house. None of us. This house embodies everything we've always thought was the ideal.
-Edda, Ryan, and Tyler
Photos and text from the forthcoming book "Cleaning: People Talk About Housework"