She was 90 something years old and we were dispatched because she fell.
Her house was like this amazing travel through time and a huge lesson in hoarding. I swear this lady NEVER through anything away. Please let me tell you some of the things that I found while poking around her house:
Plastic bags--the grocery store kind
Ok, so it's one thing to save to Walmart bags to use as trash bags or to carry your lunch to and from work. However, there were literally 50 years of plastic bags in this house and everything was stored in plastic, EVERYTHING....There were bags of bags hanging from the door jambs, the refrigerator door handle, the spindles for the kitchen chair backs, and her walker.
Prescription bottles
It's one thing to save a bottle or two for various things around the house. I've used them for storing nuts and bolts in my workshop before. It's totally another thing to have the past 30 years worth of empty prescription bottles in bags sitting around the house. EMPTY. With the labels still attached on some of them.
Take out food containers
About a hundred of them. Sitting on top of the refrigerator in the basement (Florida room?), towering stacks of them that threatened to fall like the leaning tower of Pisa.
Magazines
Hundreds of them, varying titles from the past 10 years, at least.
The woman had so much stuff in her house that she had made a path just wide enough to fit her walker through. It was amazing to see. I don't ever want to end up like that, seeing that old woman's house made me want to go home and clean up my own house, clearing out the clutter and purging things that I had been holding onto "just in case".
12.30.2007
Assisting the Public?
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2 comments:
You must see all kinds! Is the lady okay now?
Do you ever follow up with people like that?... well, I guess you really can't help everyone outside of the work that you do.
We just bought a house. The people who lived here had so much stuff that much of it is still sitting in the garage right now. Before we moved in you had to find a path to walk through. Thank goodness it's cleaned out now. I can totally picture this woman's collection. Sad.
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