Forensic cleaners like Kellie Polaschek deal with some of life's worst messes.
Forensic cleaners like Kellie Polaschek deal with some of life's worst messes.
Warning: Some graphic content regarding forensic cleaning may disturb. Mentions suicide.
From piles of poo to what you should really be cleaning your walls with, forensic cleaner Kellie Polaschek spills some industry secrets.
Blood, vomit, and bodily fluids. That’s what Kellie Polaschek cleans up every day.
Polaschek, a forensic cleaner based in Sydney, deals daily with what happens when life goes wrong and the mess it leaves when it does.
She and her husband Andrew work together, cleaning up after murders, unexplained deaths, general crime scenes, hoarding cases or those who haven’t quite been abiding by the law.
“The easiest way to tell you what we do is we’re crime scene cleaners,” Polaschek says of the family business. “We do a bit of everything. There’s hoarder cleaning, we do meth lab cleaning, we do deceased estates, if someone suicides, unattended deaths, that kind of thing.” They also work in jails and with Sydney’s trains. “No day is the same,” she says. “You never know what you’re going to.”
It’s grim, often harrowing stuff, so how does she handle daily work that would turn the stomach of the average person?
“You need a strong stomach,” she remarks. It’s the odours that get to most people, “it’s not what you see, it’s what you smell.”
One thing she hates dealing with is vomit. “I just can’t,” Polaschek says. “I’d rather clean up brains on the ceiling than a bit of vomit on the floor.”
She’s also not a fan of human faeces, recounting one job that’s hard to forget. “We did have a guy that had a bit of a poo fetish. He would poo on his floor and make pyramids of poo. But then his bedroom was all clean,” she says. “He’d go out each day wearing a three-piece suit.” She estimates about 120 litres of faeces was removed from the man’s floor. “Literal s*** show,” Polaschek laughs.
The nature of the work makes the trade self-selecting, “you either can do it or you can’t,” she says and has seen plenty of “big, macho guys” turn green and have to leave the scene.
But as with any job, there’s strength in numbers and they always have at least two cleaners assigned to a scene. “You never go into a job by yourself.”
Comedy is another coping mechanism, with Polaschek explaining she and her staff use “black humour” to provide levity.
She also approaches the work with a practical mindset and laser-sharp focus. “I’m just there to clean up that mess in the corner,” Polaschek says of the daily experience, admitting “if you think about it too much, you’d go crazy.”
Some things she can’t forget. “I’ve had a guy that died in the shower and wasn’t found for four weeks.”
One crime scene after a New Year’s Eve incident had “blood from one end of the house to the other” and Polaschek was called in. “We had to go clean it all up and get it back to normal.”
But often one of the most challenging things to deal with isn’t an outcome of the crime itself, but the investigation. Fingerprint dust is “terrible” to clean up. “It just doesn’t come off.”
Exactly how they get blood or fingerprint dust out is an industry secret.
Tools of the trade for Polaschek, a Shark Ambassador, include a Shark MessMaster which will “clean up anything” and a cordless three-in-one vacuum from the same brand that she uses at home because it “does everything”.
There’s also Gumption paste in her cupboard, and baby wipes which will “pretty much clean up anything”.
Domestic mess isn’t something she wants to spend her free time doing. “I don’t like cleaning at home.”
Based in Sydney, Kellie Polaschek has been in the business for 10 years and runs her company with her husband.
When it comes to other handy tips for the average cleaner, Polaschek says to avoid bleach and get out the laundry detergent.
“If you put a little bit of laundry detergent in your hot water and wash down your walls with that,” she says, it works wonders for marks – particularly handy if you’re repainting.
“I’m not a big fan of bleach; we don’t use it,” she says. “Bleach is basically bleaching what the problem is, it’s not getting rid of it.”
Worried that your house is getting out of control because you have a bit of stuff on the ground? “That’s nothing,” Polaschek reassures, having seen some piles up to the roof in every room.
Hoarding or not, a home needs to be sorted out after someone dies.
She recommends people deal with their possessions before someone else has to. “Young people these days don’t want to keep anything their parents had,” says Polaschek. “Be aware of that, parents.”
Aside from all the tragic accidents and extreme incidents – hoarding and cases like the poo piles – on a common level our homes can feel high stakes because they represent uncomfortable truths that are sometimes only visible in our homes.
They reflect our habits, good and bad, and our values. They can show whether we’re holding it together or losing grip.
Polaschek thinks people can give themselves some grace. “You can’t be too clean, there’s always going to be something,” she says. “There’s always dust.”
Every home has some clutter and dirt, it’s only human. “If you don’t have a mess in your house, you’re not really living there,” she says. “I think people need to give themselves a break and not worry about it.”
That said, a mess can be a sign that something’s amiss: an odd smell coming from next door, a relative who holds the door ajar and won’t let you inside.
Is it good to be nosey? Should we be paying more attention?
“People just don’t take notice of their neighbours anymore. You don’t have the conversations that you used to. Everyone’s on their phone. No one wants to talk with other people.”
Polaschek urges people to know who’s over the fence and reach out to their family and friends regularly. “Call your auntie that doesn’t have any kids,” she says, because if something happens, then it’s the forensic cleaners who get called in.
