Tim and I went over and worked on the Wayne St. house today. Now is not a good time to be buying any new supplies for the new build, between property taxes and insurance and whatnot. So we changed it up and worked on finishing up some projects at the renovation. We had the materials for that already bought.
Now, we call this house 'the hoarder's house'. We got a lot of the things out of there, but there is still a ton of stuff left. One of the things that I did today was to go through old record albums. They have so much old stuff dating back to the forties. A lot of Broadway musical soundtracks. Mantovani, Mancini, Glenn Miller, Count Basie and other orchestras that scored old classic movies. It didn't stop. Chubby Checker. A lot of albums that seemed to be collected under a theme "Girls in Music" which was a album of 50s songs that were titled with girl's names. Just so much stuff. Remember Barry Sadler? The Ballad of the Green Berets? My grandparents had that album and played it a lot. It was quite different from their regular diet of polka music. If you want to read a sad story, read about Barry Sadler. Died at 49, after being shot in the head in Guatemala. A few years earlier, he'd shot a friend between the eyes in a dispute over a woman. He also wrote like 23 popular novels. Who knew?
Anyways, I keep thinking that these albums would probably be worth something to someone, but I'd have to find that someone. I gave away no less that 200 albums already, and am still finding more, these in an upstairs bedroom that contains three irons. One ironing board. Two rotary phones, 4 hair dryers, the old kind that came with their little cases which held the motor and there was a hose and a bubble cap sort of thing that you would put on your head. We already hauled out 4 sewing machines and two of the newer irons. I mean, this house has a lot of shit.
I have boxes of mid-century mod decor that was bought and never unboxed. Brand new clocks and dated hanging lights, and clocks and wall sconces. Brand new appliances, still in their boxes. I mean, a trash compactor. Who even hears about them these days? But we have a brand new one, in an unopened box.
We've got the matching punch bowl too and the short glasses which I discovered are called low ball glasses and used for cocktails.
It's the never ending job, really. We gave the furniture away to someone who flips furniture, and while the house is emptier, it is not yet empty. We found a family member, and were able to ship out two truckloads of family photos and movies, along with the projector to play them on, and a screen. (We've still got another if anyone needs one.) Sometimes I think that house might never be empty.
But we have found treasure there as well. A suitcase full of photos and tintypes, as well as pictures from Paris after the destruction of WWI, and a souvenir black velvet banner sent home to some soldier's mother. Even a Victorian death photo. But their are no names on the pictures, so we haven't got a clue who these people are.
We found a set of pearls in a china closet. Old trolley tokens on the fireplace. We haven't had a trolley in town for a hundred years. Silver certificates folded up and stuck under a lamp. Calendars saved that date back to the civil war. They are so pretty. I'd like to save the pictures on some of them. Old magazines from the '30s.
I like history, but...really. What do you do with all this stuff? After a day in this house, you will whole heartedly buy into the whole Swedish Death Cleaning thing. I guarantee it.
I did get some things out of the house. I gathered up all the old fashioned wooden hangers and brought them home. Once cleaned up they will be nice for Tim's heavy hunting coats. There is a cast iron clothes rack, a pretty thing. I'm going to paint that black and put it in the garden at the new house to hold a couple hanging pots.
But. That was today. And tomorrow, we will head over and get back to it.
I just want to retire. Really. I just want to be done with all this work. I am starting to think it will not happen.
The things you found are quite extraordinary and very interesting, but I can see how you might feel you'll never get to the end of it all.
ReplyDeleteShame you can't start an antique shop with all that stuff. We have house clearance here when a house needs all its stuff gone and they make a few bob.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how much demand there is for electric wall clocks, no matter how fancy. Dated light fixtures (remember the black wrought iron look so popular in the late 60s, early 70s). Appliances, indoor grills, fondue pots. etc.
DeleteWhy don't you have a car boot sale?
ReplyDeleteFor a time, we were hauling stuff outside and putting 'free!' on it. Very little went. We were moving the same stuff multiple times.
DeleteI hope you have better luck/better market for offloading the records. My great uncle was a hoarder and collected the top five albums from the Hot 100 every single week since he returned from World War II until his death maybe 10 or 12 years ago. We had to rent the largest Uhaul rental they have and stack them two and a half layers deep to get them all loaded up. We had visions of dollar signs for a lot of the albums but the reality was, storing them and piecing them out was not worth the price we were getting. We finally sold them to one fellow for a deep discount, as long as he hauled them away himself.
ReplyDeleteI can get lost in projects like that. I too love history and love pondering on old photos and artifacts, thinking about the stories they could tell. That is why I am probably not the ideal person to bring along in cleaning out a place like that. I would end up with a car load going home and not much emptied out of the house.
Let me tell you a story, Ed. It was during one of Tim's layoff times. He was working at that house. At one point, I went upstairs for something and found that he was bringing home stuff, lots of stuff and it was stacked everywhere in the guest rooms. I really was quite upset about it and there was a lot of talk about "I'm not going to have it!"
DeleteI understand your story but from a different perspective. It was me giving my wife the same talk after we sorted through my grandmother's possessions after her death and ended up with a van full of things when we had no place to store them. But I was wrong because they ended up somewhere in our basement, where I do not know.
DeleteOh Debby, it sure seems as though the amount of work that you do outweighs the fun and relaxing that you get to do. I am closer to feeling retired, and then we end up have to clean out homes filled with stuff. I've done it too many times now, and am thoroughly traumatized. I would love to Swedish death clean our home, but my Hubs is a maximist, and I am a minimalist. I love to see nothing on any horizontal surface, just artwork on the walls. If I am the last one standing, I will do my damndest to empty this place out so our son doesn't have to. Less is lighter.
ReplyDeleteI just hate waste, and I keep thinking that surely, there is someone out there who would want this stuff. I haven't found that someone, but when I do....
DeleteGoodness. That sounds like a threat, doesn't it?
We have a relative who passed, and his house was FULL TO THE BRIM with stuff, so his sister hired an auction house to come and box it all up, and take it to their auction house to sell. They sell it, take their commission, and send you your check. The great thing is, they do ALL the work. When my Hubs now 94 year old mom dies, that's what we will do with her home. I've told my hubs I cannot do this again. I am done, and don't care what is in the house. He will have removed anything of value before the auction house comes in to do their thing.
DeleteFrom your description of the place I imagine that I would very rapidly lose heart with all that clearing out. Just too daunting a prospect for me, I would just give up and set fire to it all.
ReplyDeleteDo NOT think it hasn't occurred to me.
DeleteI remember when my Dad gave me a couple of silver certificates and told me that they were valuable. Being only a young teenager, they soon left my care. He said if I took them to the bank that I could get more than a hundred pennies for them. Sheesh, who needs a few more pennies? But if I had actually requested Silver in exchange, now that would have been interesting. Even better, he could have taken me to the bank and done this with me.
ReplyDeleteQuilters look for old irons as they wear out, send yours off to Goodwill or a thrift shop. Such hoarding is overwhelming. Take care!
Tim brought them home and they are stashed here. Somewhere. Probably his top dresser drawer.
DeleteOh my! That seems like too much history in one house.
ReplyDeleteIt originally belonged to a couple from Tidioute, who came to Warren and built the house in the '20s. That is where the oldest stuff came from. When her parents died, the woman inherited the house. It seems like she moved her parents' things to the attic, and began filling the house with her things. At some point, she met this man, who was divorced, and his wife and kids moved to California. There were carefully documented payments to her for child support stacks and stacked of check receipts that he brought along with him. They never had children and seemed to be drinkers. A lot of parties. He was a
Deleteman of importance around town. She died. He remarried, and moved into his new wife's home and left this house sit in silent decay for many years. The marriage fell apart. Her grown children hated him. In the end, he moved back into that old house and I don't know how he could have lived in it. It really was uninhabitable. In the end, he died, and his last wife's kids tried to go through it, sold it to us, and...well...here we are. Still sorting through two generations of STUFF.
Fascinating, sad, interesting.... all this and more. I do love history and family stories, if walls could talk, as the old TV show told us.
DeleteDebby- someone wants this stuff. (Probably another hoarder.) Anyway, there are people who make their living dealing with houses like this. I wish you could find one because that is just overwhelming. Not as much physically as emotionally.
ReplyDeleteI think the worst part, Mary, is that you just can't take a shovel and scoop it all on a big truck because...the man was rumored to have hid money and valuables around his house. We've come such a long, long way, really. If you can imagine a black full size garbage bag filled with nothing but salt and pepper shakers. They must have swiped the shakers from every single restaurant they'd ever been to. Another bag of nothing but the coupons that came with cigarettes back in the day. Stacks and stacks of newspapers. Old alcohol bottles cleaned and stashed. His office contained 40 years of insurance billings and payments. (Okay, that one we DID shovel out, throwing the stuff from a second floor window into the back of a dump truck). One closet contained probably 20 sets of sheets, all new, all still in their packaging. Everything needed to be sorted through carefully, so as not to miss anything of value. We are still sorting all these years later.
DeleteYes- there's always that rumor of money being stashed with hoarders. I understand how incredibly difficult this job is.
DeleteIt's a lot of work cleaning out an old house like this but there are some incredible articles. Some should be in a museum or in archives. These people had a lot of stuff so it would be interesting to know what made them tick.
ReplyDeleteWe kind of got a picture of them through the years. Her sister and her children lived with them during a desperate time and knew them personally. In the end, paperwork tells a great deal about people. Old love letters from a marriage that failed. Receipts. Years passed, and the detritus of those years filled that house. In the end, he was a very ill old man living alone in a house with a huge hole in the roof, making his way through the place via paths weaving through the piles and piles of stuff. Every two years he had that house painted though. It looked quite fine to anyone walking or driving past.
DeleteDo you have antique dealers where you live? Could you get some to walk through and see the stuff you have discovered? Maybe they would make you an offer that would convince you to let it go...
ReplyDeleteWe have done that. We have given stuff to anyone that wants it.
DeleteWhat's the TV program where a couple of men go and pick through old houses and barns and storage places ... is it "American Pickers" or something like that! They look for the old stuff, buy what they like and resell it!
ReplyDeleteSet guidelines ... if they find valuables and/or money ... You get that!
It might be worth looking into!
We've invited people to go through. We've had this house for probably 6 years. The upholstered furniture needed to be burnt. Sadly, a great many of the old books needed to be burnt. They were in the attic, and the roof had a huge hole. (You could sit on the toilet in the upstairs bathroom and look at the stars.) The wooden furniture all went to a furniture flipper free. My sister needed a dining room table, and we had one. Year by year, we are getting rid of this stuff.
DeleteI sure don't envy your position ... all you can do is clear bit by bit and maybe you'll discover a million dollars or a forgotten Rembrandt!
DeleteWould it help to treat this house as a hobby of exploration rather than as a project to get done asap? It sounds like you and Tim might need and value your time and pleasure more than the money right now, so maybe it could become a pastime to dig into at a pace that lets you enjoy the journey of discovery rather than a grueling marathon to just get through?
ReplyDeleteIt would not, actually. We pay to have electricity and heat to the house, and we pay property taxes on it. It is basically a house that is costing us money. It was a huge project to begin with, and we have made significant headway on it, replacing a roof, doing some structural repairs due to the water damage, putting in new windows, a new heating system, rewiring and residing it. We are mudding right now, but we have ripped out the bathroom and the kitchen, and those things need to be replaced. We also need to rebuild the back deck for the sliding door we installed. We got side tracked for a year because everything came together to get the start on the new house. We also lost a year due to Tim's health issues. We need to finish this house and get it on the market.
DeleteStop in at a local antique mall and tell them what you have. If I lived closer, I sure would be picking through that stuff to resell. The mall probably has vendors who will buy that stuff from you. From what you mentioned, there is money there for someone.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about antique dealers is that they've come to the house, but they do NOT want to sort through the junk to find the treasure. They want us to find the treasure and bring it in.
DeleteExhausting is an understatement!
ReplyDeleteI am just tired of going through someone else's crap. I got enough of my own. It's enough to turn a girl into a minimalist!
DeleteJust say it backwards — ffuts. Ffuts the stuff.
ReplyDeleteOh, AC. You have given me a new word. FFUTS. It will be my own personal epithet. Thank you.
DeleteIt seems to be more than hoarding, rather an historical collection. You have to do what you have to do and I guess some will go to the right people but you can't do everything.
ReplyDeleteSome of it has historical value. A big black bag of salt and peppers...still filled...the salt shakers badly corroded...not so much.
DeleteWow. It sounds like an amazing treasure trove of stuff. Aren't there people who clear estates, and take stuff away to sell or auction or get out of it what they can? Seems like that might be the route to take. I don't know if they also require some kind of payment, though.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that they are glad to sell the stuff, but they are not going to sift through the stuff looking for what will sell.
ReplyDeleteWhen we moved back to Hawaii from Chicago16 years ago, we got rid of a lot of stuff... but somehow, somehow we have accumulated more. What the heck. I guess that's because to set up house here we got more things. I guess. And of course, Art just doesn't like to get rid of things. You now got me looking around me on what I can get rid of.
ReplyDeleteSend Art to this house. He would be horrified, come home and start hoeing out stuff.
Delete