What a Day!

What a day!

Sheesh.

I swear I moved more stuff today than we even own.  It was brutal.  It was not fun.

You see, my daughter and I bought a house.  Now typically, when one buys a house, said house is empty of all of the previous owner's possessions and ready to move into.  Makes sense, right?  People take their stuff with them when they move out.

Apparently, not everyone does this.  Some people... like the people we bought our house from, for example... leave all the crap they collected over the years and don't want to take with them behind.  They just leave it.  They make no attempt whatsoever to deal with it.  They just pick through their things and take only the stuff they really like and want to keep.

Last Friday - May 10th - we got the keys to the house.  We were so excited.  I had never seen it before, so I was really excited.  And nervous.  When we entered the house as ours for the first time we were stunned at all the stuff that was still in it.  There was a polite little note from the previous owners explaining that they had left "a few things we thought you might be able to use."

A few things?  A few?

I would hate to see their idea of a lot!

Closets and cupboards were full of stuff.  Food, electronics, instruments, cat food, dishes, vases, decorations, paint cans, tools, cosmetics, candles, plants...  One bin was filled with nail polish.  We could have gone into business with that alone!  It was nuts.

And the more we looked, the more we found.

The crawl space was crammed with scraps of wood and leftover tiles, linoleum and laminate flooring.  There was a pile of tiny pieces of gyproc each about 3" x 12".  A headboard, short lengths of molded plastic back splash, bits of wood and  plastic...  It just kept coming.  And coming.

There were no less than six weed wackers!    Mops and brooms and dust pans and even a vacuum cleaner!  Laundry baskets and laundry hampers.  Three floor fans in various stages of use and repair.  A guitar amp and a guitar.  A computer, a CD player, two sets of speakers, a sub-woofer and other various electronic gadgets.  A hand saw.  A hack saw. And a tile saw.  Clamps and a hammer.  Two socket sets - both nearly complete.  Bags of stuffed toys.  Giant stuffed toys - including a five-foot long neon orange and green squid.  (Which is kind of amazing, actually.)  And garbage!  Literal garbage.

It took three of us two days to gather, sort and organize the colossal pile of stuff.  I estimate that thirty hours of labour went into this wee project.  And about two percent of it was useful and worth keeping.  About two thirds of it went to the dump.  At a cost of $455 to get it picked up and hauled away.  A good pickup load or more is going to the thrift store.

Un-freaking-believable!

I'm exhausted.  I ache all over.  My feet are threatening to go on strike.  My neck hurts.  My legs hurt.  And I just want to curl up and go to sleep.

I took photos of all the stuff and sent them to our Realtor.  I know it isn't her problem, but I thought I would ask if there was any way she could help us get compensation for the costs of dealing with all that stuff from the previous owners.  The poor woman was as shocked and disgusted as we were and is working on it for us.  Not sure what will come of it, but it is certainly worth a shot.  Had there really only been a "few" things, we would have been fine with it.  But this!  This is just ridiculous.

Thursday we get to do it all over again.  At least this time it will be to move our own stuff in, instead of schlepping someone else's stuff out.  I am so looking forward to getting this done.   But right now I'm going to go and tuck my grandkids into bed.  Then I'm going to follow suit and crawl into my own bed.

Good night, folks!