Har!
I’d have clubbed her like a baby seal. Also, what sort of person throws away lots of usable things rather than calling Goodwill or something? Hell they will come to your house and pick it up! Why throw it in the trash when someone else can use it? This never ceases to amaze me.
OK my aunt is a toy and game collector, She has a disabled nephew and a disabled cousin of mine and they have about 100 thousand dollars worth of toys and games … . so many it fills up 3 rooms and a couple out side sheds
She kept all the toys my cousins had from the late 70s onward
Complete sets of star wars he-man star trek every toy fad even almost 200 playstation games
Its gotten so bad that we think she’s just using the kids as an excuse to buy more toys she likes since the kids play them once or twice but if she wants something shell get them interested in it and then buy it
And her excuse if you say well sell some to help with your money problems ? " the kids will get upset" and other various excuses
So there’s a bit of a rift in the family … I figure well go through it all and keep what they really play with and sell the collectable stuff
Sounds like my recently deceased FIL (who, ironically, I’ve never actually met, as he and my wife/his daughter were estranged.) We’ve been picking up his mail for the past two months and his Playboy sub has yet to run. Hello, Women of Enron!
As the FIL (and his departed missus) used to run a pet store when my wife was a teen, you might expect he might have a large number of pets. Nope. One cat, neurotic. However, he had about a hundred fishtanks. What in God’s name are we gonna do with a hundred fishtanks?
The weird thing is how old a lot of his stuff is. My wife swears that virtually everything in that house is the same as it was the day she left over ten years ago, except maybe for the VCR, and the computer (they weren’t making Pentium II in 1993, were they?). No new furniture, no new books, no DVD player, the kitchen was exactly the same (and amazingly, the kitchen faucet was broken and looked like it had for some time. WTF? The guy must have eaten out every night. Pricey.) What the hell was the guy spending his money on?
One answer: porn. The guy had a huge collection. A lot of it was the kind that the label doesn’t list a name, like Sperms of Endearment or something of that nature; just a alphanumeric designation, like “K29573.” My natural curiosity about this man has been trumped by the fear of what I might see if I play one of those tapes. Some things might just be better left unknown.
On a lighter note…when we cleaning out my grandmother’s house (she hadn’t died, merely gotten too old to live alone) we came across some amazing items. Old 78 rpm records, right next to such gems as Richard Harris’ A Tramp Shining. :eek: We found an old filing cabinet made of wood! Where did she get this, Guadacanal? And four coffeemakers! By the style and color alone, they trace this amusing timeline from the early sixties to the late seventies, which is probably the last time she drank anything but instant. Strange.
I know a married couple, and to describe them as packrats wouldn’t nearly be enough. If (God forbid) they were to die, whoever cleaned out their house would easily be there for a year.
Among some of the things they have outside: a '66 Corvette, 2 mail trucks (one for parts), and a Winnebago trailer the size of a yacht that they keep their eagle in (more on that later). They used to have a porch stacked to the ceiling with stuff (along with a Multilith 1250 printing press I gave them) but cleared it out to make room for owl cages.
A friend of theirs who ran a wildlife preserve died, so they got all his animals and are keeping them in and around their house. In addition to the eagle and owls, they have giant lizards, frogs, snakes, and catfish inside various aquariums in their kitchen, den and living room. This is in addition to their dog.
She tats, so she has all sorts of knitting tools, yarns, strings, and patterns all around where she normally sits to watch TV in the living room. She also has all her sewing materials, supplies, machines and bolts of cloth filling up the study.
He works as a handyman, and also used to publish an auction newsletter. So, he’s gone to plenty of auctions. That’s where he picked up their wide-screen projection TV that takes up one third of the living room. He’s also come across cool items like a portable PA system and various drafting pencil sets. He has a closet full of collector comics which he calls his “retirement fund.” He also has quite a few role playing games, old Apple computers and printers, and a basement full of electronic equipment left over from when he worked as an electronics repairman. All that stuff is stored on shelves, which serves as walls for the area of the basement that they converted into an apartment for her brother.
They used to run a metaphysical shop, but couldn’t afford to keep it running, so they’ve kept most of the jewelry, incense, beads, bumper stickers, artwork, herbs, and books that used to be in the store which they now occasionally sell online. They’re also Star Trek fans, so they have a model of the Enterprise that works as a telephone and a TV remote that looks like a communicator. They also have their own library of religious material. Even though they’re avowed pagans, they love to study religious topics.
Moreover, they don’t really fit DMark’s profiles at all. They’re nice, sharing people who just collect a lot of stuff.
[nitpick]
Um… Pagans are members of a religion. Unless you mean atheists or agnostics?
[/nitpick]
Oh man…reading this thread makes me think of my very-much-alive friend who lives in her mom’s house.
My pal has tons o’ crap in her bathroom that she thinks she needs; so much stuff piled up in her room that only a very narrow path of carpet can be seen from the hallway to her bed; the junk room is full of exactly what you think would be in there; the kitchen cupboards and the fridge and freezer are stuffed with food, yet they say they “don’t have much to eat” and have to go out and get something; her mom’s bedroom has linens and clothes piled up all over, plus a dresser covered with jewelry; the front living room has documents, bills, and such piled up on the dining table and gift baskets with unused gifts all over the rest of the room; the den has magazines, mail and newspapers all over the place; and if one were to sort through the house long enough, one would find stashes of cash whose hiding places have long since been forgotten.
Some mutual friends and I have offered to come over and do an “intervention” of sorts and donate or throw out a bunch of the stuff. Pal’s mom thinks it’s a great idea; pal is iffy about it because she thinks she’ll have a nervous breakdown if we throw out the wrong stuff. She has admitted that it would really bother her to get rid of things.
Oh, and I should add that it is not possible to close the bedroom, bathroom or closet doors because of all the clothes inside them and the other clothes hung over the tops of the doors.