Other people's stuff

Real quick mention that before my dad went back he had socked away in envelopes in books, and in his safety deposit box a surprising amount of money. Enough that the poor guy who had to count it nervously ran it through the counting machine 3 times and then another person ran it through twice. The reason he did this has to do with his divorce back in 78. What he did with the money before going back to AZ is private. My dad had never counted this money and had NO idea how much there was, when presented with the final total he was shocked to say the least.

Also forgot to mention that after one day of the "try not to die" apartment heating technique I went out and bought a space heater.

YES!

sigh™... So there I am, finally alone in a tiny apartment filled with "stuff", and my nephew won't be up for about 3 or 4 days. As the old saying goes: "stuff is the junk you keep, junk is the stuff you throw away." I have an entire apartment and a storage unit to go through and I need to do it before the new year. I had a job prospect that would require me to start on or around the first of January and this is December 12. I'll just cut to the chase on that one. I did not get the job (but would not find out till the end of December).

I did some quick counting and estimating that there were about 1 to 2 thousand books in the apartment, weighing around 2500 +/- pounds. I best get cracking. Initially it was slow going, I treated it like a computer program with limited memory and too much data. I used every available space as buffer and boxes as hard drive space. the hallway outside the door was my output buffer. I would start going through stuff making quick decisions on whether it was "important?" paperwork or some other item that needed to be kept, and whether it was junk. In between all this I would work on cleaning the kitchen (gross) and the shower (gross).

It went kind of like this. I started with the first bookcase that was on top of another book case. I put all the books in a small u-haul box until each weighed about 60 pounds. I also Setup a trash bag and a box, trash in to bag, "important?" in to box. Every nook and cranny was stuffed with papers of some kind, like tax info, or medical whatnot, or tools, or whatever. Day one saw the following:

 ONE! ONE EMPTY BOOKCASE, AH AH Aaaaahh!

That and several items that I was not taking back to AZ went to the hallway. I now have a stack of boxes 6 feet high in the kitchen in front of the stove (the only open space) after I got rid of the chair (to the hallway) that had piles of envelopes full of pictures of fire trucks (to a box), and 5 totally new (unused) cookie sheet pans (to goodwill). In between this I get lunch, dinner, and deal with other things.

So now it's getting late. I have to clear my buffers for the next day. All the space on the floor is filled with junk/stuff and I am wiped out. So it quickly and unmercifully gets sorted. At some point or another I discovered that he actually had a vacuum cleaner in the Mary Poppins closet. That was a chore in itself to get it out. I clear the floor so I don't trip and kill myself if I get up in the middle of the night. Now I get to haul the trash to the dumpster... "What the heck is this!" Instead of a dumpster they have 2 dumpsters (rather small ones) and 3 - 5 foot high "garbage cans". Each one has labels as to what goes in where and dire warnings about horrible fates to those that ignore said warnings. I didn't sort the trash in to garbage, paper, glass, plastic and whatnot. In Phoenix we have 2 cans "garbage" and "recyclables". Whelp screw them. It all goes in to the trash.

Side note every fast food restaurant and the cafeteria in the hospital had multiple cans like this. I just threw it all in to the garbage can in the cafeteria and NO ONE paid any attention to them in the fast food restaurants, stuff went in to whatever people wanted to put them in. It's a JOKE really. I also found out the hard way on my previous visit to Seattle I grabbed some provisions from the grocery store and went up to pay for them. After I paid I am standing there waiting for the guy to bag them. He looks at me like I am retarded and says "what?" I said "aren't you going to bag these?" he says "Seattle has banned using bags, plastic or otherwise in their stores, If I want bags I have to pay a dime for each one"... really? Another reason not to live there. I later found a trick, you visit the produce aisle and grab a bunch of plastic bags from there to put your groceries in.

The dumpsters would prove to be a problem as you will see later.

Now as stated in the title of this chapter, the reason why you should deal with your "collection" before you die or are otherwise incapacitated. If my dad had been there to "assist" in sorting everything it would have took 3 or 4 times longer, because he would have wanted to go through everything thoroughly and would have kept almost all of it. He should have done this himself years ago (sorting and cleaning) but his obsession controls his life. At the start of this I kept trying to sell it to myself that he was a collector not a hoarder. And I would now classify him as an unintentional hoarder, meaning he did not intend to keep all this stuff but was too busy or tired to deal with the decisions involved. I am a good son and I have a pretty good idea what is good and what is junk. The scale of this was beyond most people's comprehension. Like fighting in a war, you have no idea what it was like because you were not there. I knew that I was going to get grief if I threw the wrong things away, but I could not call him every time I came across something that I was unsure of, as the saying goes "it is better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission". I would make the decisions and face (or duck) the consequences myself.

now back to our story.

So I have the floor cleaned up and I can once again (sort of) walk though the apartment. Now I have the daily briefing calls to my sister, my wife, etc. After the first few times it became a serious pain to call everyone and tell everything separately. So I setup to do conference calls. I had to (after the first trip in October) upgrade my phone to unlimited minutes because I would have run out after a week. the daily briefing done I collapse on the rack. No TV (it had such bad reception I had only a couple of choices of what stations to watch and it had a 12" screen), and No radio (the only radio I found was an old solid state realistic that drifted), so for 3 weeks I got little or no news of the outside world.

Remember this is only day 1 of the packing and prep to move. I won't bore you with the daily details of packing after this. Each day could fill several pages. SO please... PLEASE... for the sake of the sanity of your next of kin, clean up and make decisions about your stuff before someone else has to! I have been to a few estate sales and it is not pretty what people do when they go through your belongings, workshop, and house. As many people know, your next of kin often are too lazy to properly deal with your stuff and they either junk it, donate it, or just give it away.

I typed this several months after the move, so I may miss something, skip something, or put something in the wrong order.

Next Post:
"now comes the nephew" or "How 2 nut cases entertain themselves in hell".