I knew a guy in high school whose house had junk piled about waist high all over the place, with trails between rooms. It wasn’t rotting garbage or anything nasty smelling, just random crap. I hung out there because he had a better computer than me, but it always weirded me out. The really strange part was that his dad was a firefighter.
There was another guy who lived in apartment across from mine with stacks of newspaper piled pretty high. Everyone in the complex tended to leave their doors open on summer evenings since there was no AC, so I could see straight into the archives. All he ever seemed to do was play solitaire on his computer, which had a magenta tinted monitor image.
You know what? Consider that your good deed PSA of the day.
I may have to go on bed rest within the next couple of months…I think I’ll start today teaching my husband how to do the portion of housework that I normally take care of. (He’s mean with a vacuum, but doesn’t know his way around a kitchen).
Maybe I can make the transition easier on him.
I’m not painting all PM’s with the same brush, but when we relayed the info to the PM about the lack of a vacuum or a lawnmower, she said, “I didn’t know that.” There may have been external drive-bys, but I guarantee no one from the PM’s office went into the house.
The fact is, no one is going to care about your property as much as you are. So, we’re buying a new investment property close by, and we’ll manage it ourselves.
When DSL first came out I had a job as an installer. We wnet to peoples houses and did the install for them. I saw lots of dirty houses but the worst one ever was unbelievable.
When I walked up to the house it looked like any other house in the neighborhood (your average middle class neighborhood). The front door was open with just a glass storm door. It was too dark inside to see much especially through the streaks of what I thought was mud but turned out to be dog shit on the glass door. When I was let in th first thing I saw was the living room. The carpet had been pulled up about halfway across the room and down the halway so it was bare concrete with piles of dog crap everywhere. The half of the living room that still had carpet was leterally piled to the ceiling with garbage. Pizza boxes beer cans fast food wrappers you name it. The smell was overwhelming. It normally took 20 to 30 minutes to install and test the DSL I finished this install in less than 5 minutes and only took one breath that entire time. The room the computer was in was empty except for a table with the computer and a phone on it and a chair. It was still filthy. When I picked up the phone to move it out of my way 3 roaches ran from under it.
Up until this install we didn’t have an option to refuse to do the install unless there was no adult present. After describing the conditions to my boss we then had the option to refuse a job because of smell or filth do to the health hazard.
I understand that humans are able to adapt to almost any conditions that over time things get worse and you just get used to it. So I can understand how they live like that but they have to know that its bad and to expose a stranger to it I can’t understand.
I’ve heard stories from others about all sorts of cluttered/dirty/nasty houses, but the worst I ever was in myself was a house up the street from where I grew up.
When I was a kid (until I was maybe 10 or 11) I was friends with a girl named “Sally” who lived about four houses up from me, on the other side of our fairly average, middle class residential street. We mostly played outside, and her yard was a lot of fun – much bigger than mine, with a little pond where frogs lived, all these weird trees and high grass, and lots of strange vehicles in the driveway (maybe these should have been signs of something, but I was only a kid, remember…)
One day, though, it was hot out, and we were thirsty, so Sally let me come inside to get a drink, and I witnessed the grossest house I’ve ever seen. The whole place smelled musty and gross, and everything was dark. They had a couple of really expensive pure bred dogs that they treated like junk and locked in cages in the living room most of the time (in addition to the scary-ass Great Dane/pit bull mix who lived in a pen in the backyard, baying and leaping like it wanted to eat your face all day long), but, apparently, they let them out sometimes, because these animals had crapped on everything in the house – all over the floors, on the rugs, all over my friend’s bed, everywhere. The sight of this little girl’s room, all stark and sad to begin with (no toys, nothing on the wall, etc.) and every flat surface in it covered in piles of shit jarred and scared me even then, and now that I’m an adult, it just makes me ill.
I never went in her house again, and I still wish to this day that I’d told my parents and had them call DCF on her mom.
This is a good thread for those of us who could end up treading that path. Not the dirt - ewww. But it’s far too easy to accumulate and not toss. I live in a place that’s too small with a lot of stuff I’m unwilling to give up because I don’t plan to live here forever and I think it’s stupid to toss something out only to buy one later. This is exacerbated by my dad’s estate taking far too long to wind up (due to a conflict with step-family) and my being unwilling to get rid of things until it was over. Finally, I suffer from ‘environmental guilt’ - I feel bad if I don’t recycle or reuse things.
I have a large stack of slide trays (you know, the round ones for slide projectors) that I can’t stand the idea of tossing, but I’ve tried various things (including posting here asking for ideas) to figure out what to do with them to no avail. I keep thinking some good idea will surely come up.
My building will be having a yard sale in a month or so - a lot of things will go then, including some reusables that will go in the free pile, and after that I’ll have more space to shoehorn the things I want to keep into but in the meantime, I’m almost at the point where I’m walking a trail among my things
An ex of mine was a major slob - he had a tub that had probably never been washed, trash around the house, and general grot. I gave him hell for it - he’d let his four kids stay in those conditions when they visited him!
Some years ago when I did a lot of Scottish country dancing, we’d go to events in different towns and get billetted to folks’ houses. In Vermont once we stayed at the home of two professors. You’d think they would be neat and organized, but this was a house that had general stuff (not really trash, but papers and books and clothes) piled about two feet high throughout the house. This was a place that had a walking path about a foot wide through the piles. The bathroom wasn’t actually too bad. The kitchen had some dirty dishes but nothing like the other places described here. The fridge, however, was another story - we didn’t dare eat anything there we hadn’t brought; there were some scary looking science projects in that thing.
Quiddity (your name makes me smile :)) Glomfuster: Have you looked into Freecycle? Just today I’ve rid myself of a vacuum and two dining chairs which we didn’t need, but were too good to throw away; also, with Freecycle people come to you, so you don’t need to take the stuff off to the Goodwill.
It’s awkward because I’m in a condo. I’m counting on the yard sale where I’ll put out ‘free’ stuff, and I’ll include that in the ad. In fact, what I might do is mention the yard sale on Freecycle, where I’ll list the free takeables. I can hold them for whoever says they’ll take them. Thanks for the idea!
Until I read this thread, I thought my sister-in-law’s place was bad. We helped her move once, and had to tear up carpeting (in a rental) because of the cat poop. She was so embarrassed, she cried.
But I’ve never seen anything as bad as the places described here.
Does it run in families? The people I knew who grew up in dirt and disorder don’t live that way now.
