Saturday, May 10
May. 11th, 2025 01:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Beautiful weather.
My Sweetie got up early to go get the mower, and hopefully it will be useful to us.
Then he went to town to help our friends clear more of the husband's parent's house.
I got up when I had slept enough, did chores and such, and then I went to help.
They've been clearing this house for almost two years now, and when I went in there today it was easily still more full than most people's homes ever get. The way the house looked today, I would have thought that they had just started, not that they had been working at it already for so long.
I know from talking with them, and from my husband helping them, that they took out big dumping trailers full of full-on garbage. Expired food, moldy clothes and books, pizza boxes and other food packaging. Broken things and ruined furniture.
They've sold many things that were still good, like not-ruined furniture, collectibles, and tools.
There is still an entire garage full of things they've taken out of the house and put prices on it, to be sold in a soon to happen yard sale. They've already had yard sales, too.
I didn't feel like I helped that much today, but my husband says I did. What I mostly did is sat with the wife, L, and helped her price things. It's tough because some of these things ARE worth money, but only if you are willing to sell them one by one, over a long period of time, where you put them on Ebay or Etsy and sell them for a boutique price and somewhere just the right buyer comes along, and you are willing to box it up and mail the item, and to deal with etransfers and such online.
Well, there were literally a hundred or more items sitting in boxes in the living room alone that were all kind of collector things. Brass animals. Carved soapstone animals. A spinning wheel. A vintage set of '50's serving dishes in the original box. A vintage '50's child's ironing board and play iron set. I can understand feeling like those kinds of things deserve to be sold for their worth.
Yet, there were, sitting in the same space, a garbage bag of not-collector worthy cookie tins that I would have taken straight to the thrift store. Bags of frankly ugly old acrylic yarn I would have donated. Cheap glassware and mugs. Cheap ornaments. I could have taken a whole truckload from that one room of things to donate, or even to set outside for anyone to take for free, and never thought of them again. L wants to sell every....last ...thing for a dollar at least. Ancient aluminum pie pans that I would have tossed, she wants to sell them.
I tried to at least get her to remember that they don't need the money from these things, they need to stop paying to heat a house that should be sold. If they don't sell everything pretty soon, then they will have to donate it or just bring it all to their own home. For now, they can have yardsales in the garage in the parent's yard, but not forever. The house is listed and expected to sell quickly.
Then, they kept handing me things for ME to take. A stack of vintage jeans to make something, some leather working things I probably should just pass right along, some tins for organizing craft things that I might use, and...two walkers that I might take home to give to family.
I felt, after only one afternoon of dealing with this stuff, like just bagging everything up and donating it. Maybe only selling the very best of it. There were tons of jackets everywhere that no one will buy in a sale, likely. Walls of National Geographics and ENCYCLOPEDIA that no one will want. TONS of the lovely old bric a brac that no one wants any more. Teacups, crystal, little figurines, and a ton of utter kitsch.
I can't imagine what they already threw away.
I was under the impression that today was "the last big push" that would empty that house. That's what my husband led me to think. That house was as full as most people's homes if they were kind of hoarders, and today we moved out a trailer's worth of stuff as it was priced, and it didn't make a dent in it.
Well, I give them a lot of credit for dealing with this mess. This is the second house now, that these parents hoarded up (they still owned THEIR parent's house, that they hoarded, that my friends already cleared out and sold before this one), and shame on them for leaving all of this for their son to deal with.
After that, we headed home.
We then went to the park/lake down the road and walked for a while on one of the less-traveled trails. A very nice night to do so, and we took Roxy.
I'm very grateful that Roxy was able to do a longer trail like that again, and didn't seem sore at all. She was very happy to be there, and had no trouble keeping up. I thought those days were over for her, and I'm very glad that they are not over.
We came home, we ate, and watched "Poor Things". It was unnecessarily strange, surreal, and shocking in many places, though it kind of hit it's stride about halfway through and overall I enjoyed it.
Beautiful weather.
My Sweetie got up early to go get the mower, and hopefully it will be useful to us.
Then he went to town to help our friends clear more of the husband's parent's house.
I got up when I had slept enough, did chores and such, and then I went to help.
They've been clearing this house for almost two years now, and when I went in there today it was easily still more full than most people's homes ever get. The way the house looked today, I would have thought that they had just started, not that they had been working at it already for so long.
I know from talking with them, and from my husband helping them, that they took out big dumping trailers full of full-on garbage. Expired food, moldy clothes and books, pizza boxes and other food packaging. Broken things and ruined furniture.
They've sold many things that were still good, like not-ruined furniture, collectibles, and tools.
There is still an entire garage full of things they've taken out of the house and put prices on it, to be sold in a soon to happen yard sale. They've already had yard sales, too.
I didn't feel like I helped that much today, but my husband says I did. What I mostly did is sat with the wife, L, and helped her price things. It's tough because some of these things ARE worth money, but only if you are willing to sell them one by one, over a long period of time, where you put them on Ebay or Etsy and sell them for a boutique price and somewhere just the right buyer comes along, and you are willing to box it up and mail the item, and to deal with etransfers and such online.
Well, there were literally a hundred or more items sitting in boxes in the living room alone that were all kind of collector things. Brass animals. Carved soapstone animals. A spinning wheel. A vintage set of '50's serving dishes in the original box. A vintage '50's child's ironing board and play iron set. I can understand feeling like those kinds of things deserve to be sold for their worth.
Yet, there were, sitting in the same space, a garbage bag of not-collector worthy cookie tins that I would have taken straight to the thrift store. Bags of frankly ugly old acrylic yarn I would have donated. Cheap glassware and mugs. Cheap ornaments. I could have taken a whole truckload from that one room of things to donate, or even to set outside for anyone to take for free, and never thought of them again. L wants to sell every....last ...thing for a dollar at least. Ancient aluminum pie pans that I would have tossed, she wants to sell them.
I tried to at least get her to remember that they don't need the money from these things, they need to stop paying to heat a house that should be sold. If they don't sell everything pretty soon, then they will have to donate it or just bring it all to their own home. For now, they can have yardsales in the garage in the parent's yard, but not forever. The house is listed and expected to sell quickly.
Then, they kept handing me things for ME to take. A stack of vintage jeans to make something, some leather working things I probably should just pass right along, some tins for organizing craft things that I might use, and...two walkers that I might take home to give to family.
I felt, after only one afternoon of dealing with this stuff, like just bagging everything up and donating it. Maybe only selling the very best of it. There were tons of jackets everywhere that no one will buy in a sale, likely. Walls of National Geographics and ENCYCLOPEDIA that no one will want. TONS of the lovely old bric a brac that no one wants any more. Teacups, crystal, little figurines, and a ton of utter kitsch.
I can't imagine what they already threw away.
I was under the impression that today was "the last big push" that would empty that house. That's what my husband led me to think. That house was as full as most people's homes if they were kind of hoarders, and today we moved out a trailer's worth of stuff as it was priced, and it didn't make a dent in it.
Well, I give them a lot of credit for dealing with this mess. This is the second house now, that these parents hoarded up (they still owned THEIR parent's house, that they hoarded, that my friends already cleared out and sold before this one), and shame on them for leaving all of this for their son to deal with.
After that, we headed home.
We then went to the park/lake down the road and walked for a while on one of the less-traveled trails. A very nice night to do so, and we took Roxy.
I'm very grateful that Roxy was able to do a longer trail like that again, and didn't seem sore at all. She was very happy to be there, and had no trouble keeping up. I thought those days were over for her, and I'm very glad that they are not over.
We came home, we ate, and watched "Poor Things". It was unnecessarily strange, surreal, and shocking in many places, though it kind of hit it's stride about halfway through and overall I enjoyed it.
