Just in case Part 1

 

I've hired two women to help me shovel out the Hoarders Nest that I call home.

Art saved SO MUCH SHIT!

Cardboard boxes from small appliances..."Just in case"

Old medicine...again..."Just in case"

Shoes he never wore or hated or that pinched

Miscellaneous keys, screws, hardware bits and bobs

The last two feet of unused vinyl flooring.

Upstairs in the kids rooms was worse.

They have all moved out and moved on but the second level of this house 

has remained their dumping ground and storage facility.

Art was a major contributor to this mess also.

He kept his hunting and camping gear in there along with TVs that no longer worked, old computers, and other things he had no place for in the rest of the house. 

If he didn't know what to do with it, it went upstairs.

Eventually the upstairs became unusable, with both bedrooms packed with crap.

All of the kids college boxes were up there unused and unopened since they came home.

Old college notebooks, textbooks, dorm room stuff, stereos from the 80's.

My wedding dress, the girls old Prom and Homecoming dresses hung in the closet too.

Parts of the ceiling in this 120 year old bedroom had started to come down.

Plaster and Lath and fermiculite rained down on any one who dared open the door and go in.

It was like this before Art got cancer. Before he got ill him and I both wanted to clean out the upstairs and turn one bedroom into a guest room for the grandkids sleepovers.

The second bedroom would become my little nest, my little holy place, my nook...

A place for me to light my candles, to read, to write poetry, to stare out the window at the trees.

To me it was/is/has the best view in the entire house and I've coveted this room for years.

But the thought of actually cleaning it always overwhelmed us too. It was a  mountain of stuff.

We'd close the door and say "We'll do it another day."

*********

I waited six months after Art died before I touched any of it. 

One day I went upstairs, opened the bedroom door and the sight that greeted me was no different than the sight that had greeted me for 10 years or more. Only this time I felt like I had had enough.

I was sick of the mess. I wanted to shovel out these rooms. I was living in a house full of trash.

It felt like I was suffocating under the weight of the stuff left upstairs. 

I couldn't breathe and I wanted this shit gone. 

I was the one living here, by myself, left with the trash, the memories and the grief.

I told the kids that I was going to hire these woman to help clean and sort the mess.

And the kids balked. Don't do it they said. We will do it. We are busy, give us time to do it.

Now before ya'll think I am as cruel as my kids now think I am-

They have been saying that they would "get to it" for years now but it never got done.

They all have lives, kids, jobs, houses of their own. There was never time to do it.

Sumertime it was way too hot upstairs. Spring, Summer and Fall raced by and before we knew it another year had gone by and it never got done.

So.

I called a friend of mine who is an interior designer to come over and give it a looksee. 

That's when she told me that she and her mother-in-law also did hoarders nest cleaning.

It felt like an answer to my problem especially when she told me they would do it for free. 

No charge for their services because I was her friend. I only had to pay for the new bedroom ceiling to be put in and for any knew furniture that I chose.

When my kids found out they were embarrassed that I would show a complete stranger the size of the trash mountain that was housed upstairs.

I told them that it was being done for free and that I trusted these women. I told them that nothing was being thrown away, only sorted into piles or boxes to be gone through at a later date, that it would all be organized and much easier to sort once the mountain was removed from the rooms.

We chose the sitting room on the first level as the sorting room because nobody ever used that room.

It was going along nicely, the boxes were coming downstairs, the trash was being thrown out, I could see progress being made. They worked for 10 hours that first day. And the difference I felt and saw was amazing. It felt like a weight was being lifted off of my shoulders. I was thrilled.

And then the kids found out. And all hell broke loose.