I enjoy looking a pictures of abandoned houses, buildings, and towns.
I notice that some pictures show houses and businesses with furniture and knick-knacks still present. What sort of circumstances would make people move out of place without taking their stuff? Even the the little stuff.
Maybe the stuff left behind was included in the sale price (plenty of houses are described as “fully furnished” after all)? Particularly if it was obtained via inheritance or re-possession which would make it more likely the contents were kept.
I’m speaking more of abandoned houses in abandoned towns.
But, I wasn’t aware that people did the same thing to non-abandoned houses.
It does cost money to move, something people abandoning houses are short of. Faced with having to leave behind 90% of a lifetime’s possessions, some people might rather cut all ties with the past and start anew. It could also be that illness or prison make them leave in a hurry, and weeks, months, or years later it’s just not that important / possible to go back for a few things. Or maybe if they are moving in with relatives or friends, especially far away, they don’t have room for much more than a suitcase. Just guesses, though; I really don’t know.
As other’s have said, could be illness, death, imprisonment, etc. In addition sometimes people simply don’t have the means of getting all or even most of their stuff out of a house when they are abandoning it. After all, there has to be a reason they ARE abandoning the house. When I lived in Maryland the family across the street from us abandoned their house. The guy who lived there with his wife and kids had lost his job years before. Then the woman lost her job as well. They couldn’t afford a moving truck (or even a working car). My wife and I loaned them a couple hundred bucks for food and such and they decided to move back down south somewhere they had family. They ended up leaving most of their furniture (mostly junk), clothes (same), kids toys (mostly cast offs from other people in the neighborhood, as were a lot of their clothes), etc. They even left their TV (an older black and white model) and radio.
I’m sure a lot of people make similar decisions. For that matter, when we moved from Maryland to New Mexico we left a ton of stuff behind (most of it in the trash, since the new owners wouldn’t have enjoyed having it in their new house)…we simply couldn’t fit it all in the trailer we had rented, so anything we didn’t have a particular attachment too we just left on the curb.
-XT
In some areas, some entrepreneurs have a booming business in clearing out foreclosed houses. They find furniture, clothes, toys, household items, food (usually rotten by that time) and all manner of things. The workers can pick through and take home anything they like, but 99% of it goes to the dump. There’s not time or resources for the company to even try to sell it.
By the time foreclosure is completed and they have to leave, as others have said they may not have the money to move everything. Also, being in that situation can be very depressing – it can be hard to come up with the energy to deal with the stuff, easier to just walk out.
ETA: This American Life once did a story about an abandoned house, where EVERYTHING had been left behind. Pretty interesting. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=951
Diamonds02, do you have any examples of these pictures?
I was thinking about places like Bodie, CA. The houses in Bodie have all kinds of stuff left-beds, tables, cups and plates. The undertaker’s shop even has a supply of coffins.
In Bodie’s case, this was (most likely) because it was remote, and travel was difficult when it was abandoned-and Bodie had been in decline for years. Probably, the families that were left decided one day to just leave and start over somewhere else.
Actually I know one of these guys, he has a 15,000sq foot warehouse and a thriving ebay/craigslist sales business on top of charging to haul it off. Some of it he has deals with used appliance places that give him $X each for any washer/dryer/stove/whatever but alot of it he sells online.
It’s also extremely physically taxing and/or expensive to move large furniture like tables or bedframes, and also requires transportation capable of holding such.
For those who are short on money and may be elderly or disabled on top of such, it’s not surprising to see how these may be left behind.
When you lose most of what you have you really can’t care about the rest you left behind. It’s too overwhelming and you are in the live from day to day mode. You can’t save most of the stuff anyway. Pick and choose a couple things you can keep with you and the rest stays. Life moves on and so do you.
No…the truth is that it’s really infested by vampires! 
We had a tenant here move out to be with her BF on the East Coast, and she took only 3-4 bags worth, she just left the rest behind. It was just too much trouble and expense to ship it all.
I thought they had to hold the stuff for a certain amount of time before they could sell it. Do you know if he has to do that?
My Dad repo houses when I was a kid, I remember him telling of photo albums, wedding dresses, dead pets…
A lot of people leave stuff behind in those small storage unit places. Around here once a month they have auctions of the stuff left . The way they work is you have to take the stuff right away so you need to have a truck if there is a lot of stuff.
I called him and asked. He said the foreclosures are done deal when he goes in, apartments they have to hold for 90 days from the date of the eviction and that they charge the landlord a small fee for the storage. Some of the personal stuff like pictures, diplomas, they hold longer and return for a trivial storage fee.
I abandoned pretty much everything i had to escape an abusive boyfriend I was living with. Only the fact that we had just moved recently and most of my ‘heirloom’ stuff and photo albums were stored at my parents saved those. I ditched a lot of recreational paperback books, vinyl albums, clothing and cheap kitchenware.
Some times, when it seems like the ghosts will let you go, you’ve got to make a break for it, even if that means leaving everything behind.
There are some here. (Screwy navigation design; click on the circles to access the photo galleries.)
There was a report on Foreclosure Alley that had a section on a ‘trashout’ crew. Depression seems to be a significant factor in foreclosure abandonments.