This show made me gather up and toss out two bags of garbage after watching it - and my house isn’t that bad! Mostly it’s just various “old stuff” stored away somewhere, unused.
I have a sister-in-law who was/is a minor hoarder. (I’ve told this story here before, if it’s familiar.) She used to live above my husband (her brother) and I in the split-level house we rent, until she was evicted for not paying rent. She loved “bargain” shopping, outlet stores, and garage sales. If we were going to throw something out/leave it on the curb for some passer-by to grab, she’d say she could use that/give it to someone she knows. So among other things we gave her our old futon for her to use or to give to her daughter when she went away to college. We gave her an artificial Christmas tree for her friend. None of those items was actually passed on, though. She collected empty boxes and packing materials for a home business she was working on.
She kept old toys from her daughter when she was in early grade school age, and clothes from then too (when they were evicted, her daughter was 16 or 17); this stuff packed our enclosed back porch and by the time I cleaned it out because she’d abandoned the stuff, most of it was damaged by weather effects, mold, etc.
One weekend she actually tried to have a garage sale at our house. I didn’t go out there to check things out, but it was a big selection - lots of women’s clothing especially, and she worked in sales for women’s clothing and always had good taste in clothes so I figured her stock and sales technique should be decent. That plus children’s items should have been big sellers in our area. Her parents also gave her some stuff to sell. The stock, as she was preparing for it, took up both slots in our shared two-car garage. After the sale was over, most of it ended right back in there, and it was weeks before we could nag her into at least moving the items out of our half so we could park in there again. I know she attended lots of garage sales so she should know good “marketing” techniques, but I didn’t see any signs up, unlike for other area sales. I wondered if she really didn’t want to let the stuff go.
She was evicted (well technically, her lease was not renewed - they’d started eviction proceedings and she paid them back the rent plus court costs or whatever else, but a month later the year’s lease was up anyway) in April, and several months later, the landlords had found a renter and were cleaning up, painting, etc. when they discovered her half of the garage was still packed full. We’d been nagging her about that, the back porch (which I finally dealt with), and the basement. She did manage to clean out the garage but I suspect more legal proceedings were threatened.
The futon and Christmas tree are still in the basement. So is a set of china; I have no idea of the financial or sentimental worth. So are all those boxes from the home business that never took off, and the packing materials too. Plus lots of old clothes, old toys, and a whole lot of actual trash. For our house, any extra garbage cans beyond one can had required the purchase of a “garbage sticker”, which I think cost $6 each. A lot of bulky (non-spoilable, thankfully) trash items went down in the basement to be hidden amongst other items; I don’t know if she thought they might be of use or if she was avoiding having to pay to throw it out.
It’s been a couple years since she’s lived here, and any time we make noises about throwing stuff out in the basement, she pleads for us to not do it, saying how valuable some of it is. She makes excuses about how she can’t do it until (date in future) but swears she will have it done over that time. Last time it was work calling her in. One time she insisted she absolutely must have access to our apartment - I asked why she would want to take stuff up a skinny, rickety wooden staircase with a low ceiling and a corner in it, and through a narrow room and 4 doors, when she could enter the storm cellar entry from outside the house, up a broad cement staircase and only two doors. She didn’t have a good reason. (Considering that she’s taken cases of microbrewed beer without asking or replacing it and let her boyfriend borrow our car while we were away - even she didn’t have permission to do it, but she went into our apartment and grabbed the keys off the desk - we don’t trust her there if we’re not around.)
We’ve been gradually taking bits out with our own garbage. We’re a tad miffed that we’re having to deal with this, but she won’t. She put so much stuff down there that I wasn’t able to see that water had seeped into the basement during a storm - previously we’d seen it to be practically impervious to leaks in storms - and ruined a box of books I had stored there. Every now and then I flip out and say “we should hire someone to just take it all” but then the cost comes to mind, and there’s nothing down there that’s actually dangerous. So bit by bit, it goes to the garbage, or anything that’s still good goes to a charity. (I found a never-worn pair of women’s white sneakers, still in the box, amongst a pile of used packing materials and empty boxes.) Occasionally we mention it and she goes into overdrive with excuses about why she can’t do anything about it now but she will on X date, but she needs access from in the house or she can only do it if she can get her college-age daughter to help and the girl is so disrespectful or or or… :smack:
