Tent city in the backyard. None of it mine!
This lush landscape is about to change. Last year temperatures reached more than 50 degrees below 0, Fahrenheit! It’s been a cool kind of summer but there were a few hot and muggy days and I did get the air conditioner out of the attic and used it a couple of times.
Saving the environment is one of the classic excuses hoarders use to justify the junk they collect. They want to convince everyone that they’re doing their bit to save the landfills from filling up while turning their own home into a landfill. A friend of mine had bought a house about 30 years ago that was previously owned by a hoarder. After all this time his house still has that musty smell and closed in feeling. I’ve had home improvement developers tell me that the only way to properly clean up a house after a hoarder is to gut the place all the way to the studs. Tear out the walls and ceiling and even the floor that usually gets bowed under the weight of all that storage. The property itself is usually neglected. As you can see by the photo there is much work to be done here, the roof is 32 years old. That’s well overdue and it’s getting replaced this year before the snow flies. Needless to say I’ve been too lax around here and allowed my neighbor and house partner to talk me into putting things off so she can clean things up around here a bit first. Ha! Obviously I was in for a long wait. Then her kids came along and made things worse.
Notice the attic door of the garage is open and you can see the fan
The daughter who’s in her 50’s has been living in the loft of the garage with her boyfriend for many years. What had started out as giving them a place to stay until they find another apartment has become more of a permanent residency going on about 10 years now. The grand daughter who’s in her mid to late 20’s was pregnant when she moved into a small room in the basement. Her kid is now going on 3. She too has a boyfriend and the father of her baby living like that with her. This is dysfunctional and not temporary. When the first inspector came to look at the new boiler I had installed he had to go into that little room in the basement to check the gas meter. I don’t think he saw it. He stepped out of that room immediately with a look on his face like he just saw something from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He didn’t say a word, he just quietly picked up his tools and left. I received the first letters from the city inspector in February. When that inspector came and saw this and he was horrified. He kicked them all out and got them into a hotel for the rest of winter. The garage and the basement are not fit for habitation for humans or animals. Fortunately my neighbor is not an animal hoarder and she does take her garbage out to the bins. So at least I’m not crawling with bugs and rodents. I’ve got 3 cats so whatever mice do show up they are on them. There is a difference between a hoarder house and a garbage house, though the two are often combined.
As you can see by the photo that as soon as the weather broke the kids came back. They thought they were clever putting up tents, there’s no law against having tents in the yard. Well the city wasn’t fooled and had to kick them out again. And again when they snuck back. Sympathy is draining fast. Can’t find affordable housing? Ha! A friend of mine recently moved back here and stayed with me after living on the West Coast for nearly 40 years and he found a job and an apartment in three weeks! The apartment was small and the job didn’t pay a lot but he didn’t have much trouble getting it together. My attic that is my space is a lot more habitable than the garage and the basement but he wasn’t interested in making that permanent. So it can be done! Yes, rents and property has sky rocketed in the past few years and people need to learn to pool their resources and work together more than ever now. We see immigrant families doing this all the time and eventually they become very successful and independent.
So this is not good for business especially my business where I take people on tours to estate sales. I’ve worked sales in the past and would see someone come in on the last day and make an offer on all the books. They’re a big wheel on Amazon, so they claim. I don’t recommend doing that. I’m an avid reader with a Bachelor’s degree in English and I do have a lot of books and I too sell books on Amazon and I can tell you right now, not everything sells. I’m just a small seller, I limit myself to one box of books listed on Amazon and the rest I take to 1/2 price books. I used to put them on the retaining wall out front for anyone to pick over for a few days then I’d take the rest to Savers. I now have a Little Free Library that I’m painting and getting ready to install out front. I’m naming it “The Happy Shaman”. I’ll definitely feel like a happy shaman if I can get this house cleaned up and in shape.
Road Trip Minnesota 