Hello Friends!
Let's see, it's June, just past the Summer Solstice. Are you having long, beautiful summer evenings where you are? Or, do you live in the Southern Hemisphere and have winter beating you down? OR, are you in the upper to mid-Atlantic states and have unending rain combined with warm temperatures resulting in paralyzing humidity? Or something else...
I keep looking at the weather in my hometown and it looks perfect. Mid 70's, cloudy with showers... that's how I like it. Unfortunately, I have to look in the newspaper as I am not currently in residence. I am down in that hellhole known as California, specifically the Sacramento Valley. Well, the Sierra foothills, if you want to be specific, but the effect is the same.
It's overly warm here.
What am I doing here, you ask? Well, I came down to help my friend, the Rancher. Her mom is currently residing in an assisted living place and I volunteered to come and help get a grip on the house. Her mom is a hoarder, or at the least, someone who never threw anything away.
Here's the backstory:
I came down here back in March (meant to blog about that trip but was so exhausted I never got around to it) in order to clear out the 'back room' of the house. It's a room that had been added on to their tiny house long before they bought it. It was poorly constructed but it was put to use as a storage room. I know what you are thinking and you are absolutely right. A hoarder with a back room is trouble in the making! Well, that is the truth. The back room was so packed with stuff that one literally could not set foot inside. The mess came up to the doorway.
So, I set to work. There were layers to the hoard and it was a little like archaeology. On the top was the worst layer, the layer where people had recently just tossed stuff into the room from the doorway and walked away. The perimeter and the deeper layers were well organized and packed for storage. But, the Rancher's aunt had died recently and loads of her stuff was superimposed over the existing hoard. I could see the difference between the recent stuff and the original stuff.
It didn't make much of a difference. Old useless crap is old and useless no matter how long it has been sitting in a back room. I'm a good sorter and I divvied things up into useful groupings. Trash, keep, donate, etc. I was lucky enough to find an outfit that did art outreach and accepted many boxes of art supplies.
All in all, I ended up moving a LITERAL ton of material out of the back room. The Rancher has a dump trailer (cue heavenly music) and I filled it up. When she took it to the dump, the weight was 2,144 pounds. Reader, I carried every ounce of that ton!
It wasn't the most fun of visits and I worked my ass off, but it was very satisfying to clear out that room and send so much garbage to the dump. It wasn't all trash and I worked very hard to redirect useful things to appropriate destinations. But, seriously, the woman never threw away a jar. Not just canning jars, but all jars were washed out and stored on shelves, in boxes, in bags, etc. Every mayonnaise jar, peanut butter jar, pickle jar, everything. All washed and put in the back room. That wasn't the worst of it, just an example.
So, yeah, I came here and cleaned up a big mess, but it was only the first mess. Now, I am back and cleaning out the mom's bedroom. Here's how the room was: you opened the door and stepped in the room. The bed was about 4 or 5 feet into the room, bedside table on the left, door to the closet on the right. That was literally the only open floor space in the room. In order to make the bed you had to lie on it, or roll over it and try to squeeze your feet into the piles of stuff on the far side of the bed. It was impossible and a damned fire hazard.
I've been here since late Wednesday, so I've had three days so far to get a grip on it. It is now possible to walk around to the far side of the bed! I have sent a large bag of small clothes home with one of the ranch hands (he has a whole passel of kids to clothe), I have a big stack of boxes and bags to go to the donation place (Goodwill, or whomever), and I have been filling up the trailer again. There won't be nearly as much stuff this time around, but I need to go through it carefully. There is an unbelievable amount of paperwork. For one thing, the woman never threw away a piece of paper. There are receipts and notes and greeting cards dating back to the 1950's. I'll have plenty of interesting things for the Rancher and her brother to sort through and make decisions about, but the big bulk of it is going out. I've found so many brand new, tags-still-on, unworn articles of clothing! I've got a stack to take to the Mom's new home (well, after I wash it all), and it includes shoes and slippers and shirts and pants and shorts, and, and, and... But, the bigger stacks are things that are no longer of use here but might be worth someone else's while. I mean, she'll never wear these 20 coats again but someone else might. I've saved her out a couple that she can wear.
My next step is to gather up the donation items and start taking loads to drop off. That will be satisfying. In the meantime, I'm plugging away at it, reducing the mess bit by bit, bag by bag, box by box. It's slow going but I'm making progress. My back is killing me, though.
If this post is rambling and unintelligible, I apologize. I'm tired and need to lie on the floor for a few minutes. Do a few gentle stretches. Relax and breathe non-dusty air...
I'll make another dent in it tomorrow.
Cheers!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Holy moly, what a good friend you are to do that! And in such heat! When my Mom went into the nursing home, I had to clear out her one-bedroom apartment. Now, she was no hoarder so it was nowhere near as bad as the situation you're dealing with, but still a huge task. So you have my sympathy. The one thing my mother never threw away was any kind of government letter/notice or "official" papers like pharmacare receipts. Ripping up that ton of paper before garbaging it was one long pain in the ass. Or in my hands, if I'm being technically accurate.
I do have a stack for the shredder. My hands can't take that kind of abuse!
The big take-away for me is to look at my own house and get serious about reducing the crap. I don't want to leave this kind of mess for my daughter!
What Debra said.
And then, what you said.
Having cleaned out my mom's place I know very well about the pains. In my move (to a smaller apartment) I had to make more decisions about what we get rid of. Only today, in unpacking another box I brought over from the old place, I found someone else's (that is to say, not my mother's) death certificate. That piece of paper, along with several others, were shredded today.
I repeat, what Debra said!
Deborah, I get it. I have found birth and death certificates in the last few days and there are a lot of layers to the emotional fallout potential with both. I am sorting and boxing for the adult kids to deal with later. *This time* it is not my parents, it's the parents of my friends. And, that makes it so much easier. For me.
Well now I feel MUCH better about the situation I live with. Lots of "stuff" and "future projects" and way too much clothing and knick knacks, but nothing like what you describe. Still I do worry about how much crap our daughters will have to deal with. They may have to hire you : )
8, I haven't even gotten to the knick-knacks yet! They must number in the thousands, or at least the high hundreds. The Rancher's mom collected sheep and owl figurines by the scores. I've also found a sizable collection of frogs and cats, but mostly sheep and owls. If the Rancher were able to do it I would set her up with an Ebay account and have her sell all of it. Might as well recoup a few bucks, right? There's no way she could manage such an endeavor, though, as she is barely keeping the ranch going.
Hoo boy, it's dreadful work to go through a hoard. My grandmother wasn't a hoarder by any stretch but she did have a Depression era mindset and it was a lot of work clearing out her house. And there were 5 of us working on it! We finally threw up our hands and brought in an estate sale company. I don't envy you this job.
Wow! Good work, you!! So impressed - and good karma, too.
Post a Comment