Cleaning Out

I’ve been spending a lot of time at the rental property we recently acquired.   I’m just flummoxed, bewildered, in awe or maybe in shock to see what the prior owners left when they departed.   It wasn’t like they ran out of time to remove their belongings, they had vacated the home probably a year-and-a-half prior to selling the home.   They had plenty of time to go back, at their leisure, and remove anything they wanted to keep, or throw away even.

The bedroom had shoes, undergarments, hose, makeup, notepads filled with notes, bedding and random items.   The closet was partially full of clothing.   The bathroom had makeup, toothbrushes, supplies and even a tray full of change.

There was furniture including a sofa, chairs, end tables, book shelves and filing cabinets.   The linen closet was full of linens.  There were more pillows abandoned than I would have expected a house that size to have in total.  And paperwork.

The paperwork was surprising.   One bedroom had it strewn all over the place.   It was as if they went through it hurriedly, checking to see if there was anything they had to take, and then left the rest in disarray on the floor.   Bills unopened, bank statements, collection letters, correspondence, legal documents, tax documents, pay stubs—all sorts of things I wouldn’t want unknown people to have access to personally.

The living room had a chair with a single knife and matches on the seat and an empty wine bottle on the floor beside it.   I don’t know the situation surrounding it was, but it doesn’t look good.   Medication for bi-polar disorder and anxiety that might be for one of the children that visited, but that’s just a guess.

And then there’s the kitchen.   The power has been off for over a year.   They left food in both the refrigerator upstairs and in the basement.   Both are duct taped shut with “Do Not Open” signs on them now.  Food was left in the cabinets in boxes and containers.   Where mice could chew in, they did.   The amount of mouse droppings indicates a large infestation.   I don’t know if the cabinets can be salvaged with the amount of feces and urine accumulated on the surfaces.

There is a full basement, largely in the dark without power.   We had previewed the property before the most recent owners, considering buying it.   At the time the basement had a kitchen and tiled flooring.   Very low ceilings but it was rentable and rented.   When we went down there the other day we found the lower cabinets torn out, the tile floor removed and the bottom sections of dry wall cut out.   Signs of a flood, my brother-in-law, Bob suggested.   As I went through the paperwork I found a statement to have a company come to look at the septic system about a backup.   Did the septic overflow into the basement or was there a plumbing leak?   It’s hard to tell, although there is no septic smell.

Here’s what one of the rooms in the basement looks like that I haven’t gotten to yet:

So there’s a lot of work to still be done.   I wonder what I’ll find when I go through this pile of stuff?

The Big Boy Update:  My son got interested in my crystal sphere on the shelf tonight and decided to become a wizard.  He and his father made a “spell book” with illegible writing of mystical spells.   He set the “crystal ball”, spell book and a crooked walking stick I got from the flea market this weekend and made a wizard’s corner in the bedroom just before bed tonight.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today was my daughter’s second day of track out.   She doesn’t like track out, she says, because it’s boring.   I did some things with her, my mother came over and even Shane came to sit with her for a while, making jello.  She’s staying up late now, listening to a show on her iPad in bed.   Hopefully we can keep her entertained through the two weeks we have at home before we travel to meet my in-laws for a week.   The third week, I know she won’t possibly be bored.   Who can be bored on vacation?