I wish I had a picture to post, but there were some scary dudes about, so I just walked by. I've been living at my place for about two years, and about a block away there has been this duplex with a couple that had a lot of shit out front and on the sides. Also telltale high chain link fences with green fabric blocking the view of the side yard. Now they always seemed harmless to me. They would put up little signs with sweet things to say to the community. Sometimes they would leave a cooler of water bottles out for people to take. You know, they were doing their best. But you just knew there was more under the covers there. Well recently they seemed to be packing up to move out, and stuff just kept coming out of the place. I thought they were still in the process of moving a couple weeks back, but it seems like they got overwhelmed and just split. Now, there are two big red dumpsters out front, but it's not clear that the remaining stuff is being cleaned up. Half the fence has been bent diagonally down and there is a old piece of plywood with a spray painted KEEP OUT!! FUCC YOU! Tons of shit spilling out into the street. This morning I was on my walk, and there was one rough dude picking over shit in the side yard, and two more guys headed toward the place, so I made a strategic left turn. Seems like any good stuff has already been carted off. Hopefully the dumpsters mean that the owner will actually have someone clean up all the stuff blocking the road though. This is all to say I really think i need to go buy another display cabinet and get my collection in order because I have toys piling up on horizontal surfaces, and the fig-leaf between collector and hoarder seems to be a nice glass case and risers. Also, I don't collect old plywood and bike tires, but I'm not sure that makes much of a difference. Thanks for reading. Hope you have a good week!
Good move Blake. I just bought a second Fabrikor for my Micronauts and Microman and it completely changed my zone, got my workbench back, and my brain too. Gave me enough space to go through some Lego to set free back into the world.
I have a garage full of wood (in the hope of using in the fire pit), several 'project' bikes (and their accompanying wheels, tyres, replacement components) . . . . and I'm taking the 5th on the collector-hoarder distinction.
Oh boy, reminds me of when I was maybe 11? My friend had a hoarder house on her street. The worst part was that she wasn’t just hoarding “stuff,” she was also hoarding cats. We went once to peek through the windows and I saw a hallway strewn with boxes and cat shit everywhere. After that we looked through the garage window, she had blankets and crap spilling out the back of her car with the back hatch open, and there were 5 kittens sitting there. While we were looking, it was like she manifested out of the darkness of the garage and STARED at us. We were like “OH HI you have cute kitties, thanks bye!” She was a mess and was wearing a nightgown, but it was hard to feel bad for her with the cats being in such terrible condition as they were. Apparently Animal Control and the ASPCA were called multiple times, but nobody ever took the cats away from her. Years later I saw people in biohazard suits pulling planks of wood out of the house. I guess she moved on to a home or the great beyond, and the house was condemned. I can’t imagine how contaminated the floor was. Now it’s just a cute little house, probably a family lives there.
Update: Yesterday there were two dumpsters out front, and I saw them being carted off. Two new dumpsters there today and workers filling them up with wheelbarrows full of crap. It looked like they were still working the inside of the place and had not started on the back yard. Simultaneously there are two gentlemen loading up a very broken down pickup dangerously high on the other side of the place. I imagine they are free to take what they want as long as they don't get in the way. This is not a big place, just a small duplex. So nuts. At least the street is about half cleaned up now. I can't imagine moving in there after this. Probably toxic shit in the walls. But my neighborhood is slowly being converted to higher density, higher cost housing. So they might do demolition next, but if so, why cart off the stuff first?
In Portland now. Every piece of building material is seperated into it's useful or garbage like bits. so everything would need to be emptied out before it gets demolished and then separated into brick, wood, and other materials.
The saga has ended Looks like they completed the cleanup. I do hope the scavengers scored some good stuff.
There was once across from my moms house, tiny little ranch house. It was condemned and they pulled 12 dumpsters of crap out, but the kicker was they pulled the womans dead husband out too, who knows how long he had been dead. But some one bought it for 15k fixed it up and now rents it for 1.5k a month, not a bad little rental property now.
Annecdotal, but there was an estate sale near me on Thursday in a very affluent neighborhood. Thought there might be some rad stuff, so headed over there and the place was an absolute pigsty. Mold, mice and mice droppings, mildew, 30+ year old carpet, the works. You never know from the outside...
