Our neighbour Harry is a pack rat.
His flat is rammed full, he has not only his furniture but also his mothers furniture which he had delivered to his flat when she died.
On top of this, he regularly checks out the communal bin store for any treasures another resident may have disposed of, he had four ironing boards at the last count.
He has three storage containers outside, one of which belongs to this flat I believe.
We bought our own as Steve wanted a particular style.
There is an area by the front door which is also full of Harry's treasures. These include, amongst other things, a 4 or 5 hacksaws with no blades, an assortment of hammers and a lump of wood, that's about four foot long and two foot square!
He also has deliveries most day, lots from a company called Must Have Ideas.
Once or twice a week his cleaner visits, when she's finished there are a couple of huge black sacks and a huge pile of recycling by his front door, ready for her to take to the bins.
4 comments:
At the apartments where my late father in law lived, most of the residents, of both sexes, seemed to be pack rats!
If anything was put out by the bins, knackered old toasters, kettles, microwaves, radios, TVs etc, nothing useful, you could guarantee that they'd be gone within an hour!
When we were emptying the apartment, I was taking a small mahogany side table down in the lift one day and practically had to fight old ladies, just to keep hold of it! They must have radar, because as soon as I walked out of the apartment with it, doors started opening all along the corridor, and by the time I got in the lift and went down one floor, the button had been pressed to stop the lift again, and five or six 'old biddies' tried to crowd into the lift with cries of "What have you got there love?" "Are you throwing it out?" "I need one of them!" Aaaarrrggghhhh!
I remained very polite, and said "Sorry, no, this is coming home with me". It was actually destined for the auction rooms, it was worth quite a bit.
I put it into the car, locked it, got the lift back up to the second floor again, to find my husband 'besieged' in the apartment, with said 'biddies' squeezing their way in through the front door which he had left open!
I (gently) read them the riot act, and told them that anything we were getting rid of would be left by the bins.
An hour later, we crept stealthily from the apartment carrying loads of stuff, got in the lift quietly, and when the doors opened on the ground floor, made a bee line for the bins, dumped everything, and practically ran to our car!
Even so, as we drove away, they were appearing from the lift as we passed, it was spooky!
X
They are called "hoarders" here and there is a TV channel devoted to tales of houses in terrible condition with debris piled high. I shudder at the thought of how people can live like that!
One of my late husband's friends was like that. I only ever visited his bungalow once, and it was a veritable obstacle course to even get in the place, never mind find somewhere to sit - not easy, as at the time I was using two walking sticks to get about (I use a wheelchair now).
The worst of it was a good 50% of it, probably more, should have been binned with no further thought - there were piles of ancient Argos catalogues and similar; years and years worth of IT magazines - as an IT professional, you'd have thought the guy could scan any articles he wanted to keep for reference, and keep them digitally. Skis and golf clubs blocked the way through the hall - when I asked when he'd last ski-ed or played golf, he couldn't remember - "Oh, some years ago" was the best he could do.
I shudder to think what critters must have been living in there; the piles of stuff clearly hadn't been moved in a very long time, so there's no way he'd cleaned, probably ever.
If ever I get like that, I hope someone will either stage an intervention, or shoot me!
My mother was the same but as she was in rented accommodation I had just a week to empty her bungalow. It took the full week and we filled two transit vans that the local charity shop sent over. We also filled my sis in laws van and my 7 seated car. All the local came and took with away too.
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