My grandparents. I love them to death, but I swear sometimes they get on my ever loving nerves. And it's not even the normal old people stuff that drives me crazy. Oh no. It's their love for hoarding useless things. Wait, let me rephrase that. Useless trash. I know if they saw this Reddit post they would probably hate me forever, but luckily they don't have wifi. Except for a smartphone with unlimited data, but I'm pretty sure neither of them know what Reddit is. Anyway, I apologize in advance for a big long post, but I guess I should give you a little backstory to explain why they are this way.
My Mawmaw and Pawpaw are 7 years apart. They met when my Mawmaw was 14, but let me tell you, she didn't act like a normal 14 year old. She was already out working her butt off for her next meal. If that wasn't hard enough, she had to lie to her bosses about her age so she could work in crappy burger joints and dangerous factories. She came from a dirt poor family so she did what she had to do. Well one day in waltzed my grandfather, who at the time was repairing machines for one of those dangerous factories, and three months later they were married.
Fast forward about eight years or so they find out tragic news. My grandmother isn't able to conceive. Well low and behold my maternal grandmother, who was and is still part of the family, is having my uncle and doesn't want him. They take him as their pride and joy. 25 years later they are both extremely successful. My grandmother is a well paid R.N. , and my grandfather owns successful rental properties and businesses. They buy a mansion (literally) on a hill. They own Mercedes and Lincolns, and only dress in the finest brand name clothes. I'm talking full outfit of coach that costs like $400. Not counting the handbag. My grandfather only wore Vitale dress shoes and Gucci pea coats. And they had the money to do this stuff, so it's not like they were in debt.
Yeah so here is where the crap hit the fan. My grandmother hurt her leg so badly that she had to have crutches for 2 years. She is never able to work again in her field. My grandfather became so overwhelmed with all his businesses and thief employees that he eventually had to let them go. All they have left is their rental houses. Now, they weren't dumb and had money stockpiled back in case something like this happened. So they aren't poor, but they don't go out and buy $800 handbags anymore. But, the big loss in income caused impulse buying. That's why I'm writing this today.
Here is the good part. The part where I tell you about all of the hoarding. Like I said they live in a mansion, but it's filled with the most useless stuff I've ever seen. Let's begin with the kitchen shall we?
So this kitchen is freaking huge. I mean you can lay down 2 full grown men on each of the 4 counters. That's not even counting the space you actually have to cook in. Well, 3 of these 4 counters, are piled up with useless papers, old phone books, and old pieces of pipes and tools. The only reason the fourth one isn't littered with junk is because, it has a stove top they have to use. What are two people, in their late 50's and late 60's, gonna do with phone books from 1998? Absolutely nothing. The two very expensive refrigerators (yes, this house is actually meant to have two of them. ) are full of old takeout food. I'm not talking about 2 day old Chinese. No. I'm talking 12 day old French fry's from tudors biscuit world. And when I try to throw it out my grandmother immediately gets angry, because "Somebody will eat that." No one is going to eat cold French fries. I can understand bringing home left overs, but I don't understand stockpiling hash browns from McDonald's for a month. Yes, that has happened. It's not like they don't have the money to eat either. They could probably afford to eat at Red Lobster every day if they wanted to. But, that would most likely result in stockpiled shrimp. Don't even get me started on the high shelf wine they have locked away that nobody is allowed to touch. It's from the 70's and is only getting older but, whatever. Oh and the dishes. She waits months to wash them, which results in a rotten milk vomit mix smell. That along with the trash they have piled up, makes a wonderful aroma that only gets fixed when guests can't stomach it. It's not like I can just wash the dishes or take out the trash myself. Trust me I've tried and she gets angry.
Let's move on to the dining room that's equally as bad as the kitchen. For starters, it has white carpet. The house was built in the 50's so I get that they had help to constantly scrub it, but still, why? The once white carpet, is now a wonderful mixture of reds, greens, browns, and that weird tan color that looks like vomit. The masterpiece on the carpet was created 6 years ago by toddlers who loved to throw food. The caked crunchy mess would have made most people rip it up by now, right? Wrong. My grandmother is still convinced she can save it with one of her 5 shampooing machines. 2 of which are older than the hills and broken. The 12 foot long dining table, is littered with trash, dirty dishes, and god knows what else. Two China cabinets, that were once displayed with fine crystal China, are now full of old school papers and old bills. They had those plates shipped in from china, and paid extra to have them hand painted. Some of the papers are from when my sister was in kindergarten. She's now in fourth grade. The 1 million dollar crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, that used to shine brighter than Times Square on New Year's Eve, is now caked with dust. I remember when my grandmother used to take an hour out of her day to scrub each of those crystals individually. Trash bags with brand new clothes sit in piles around the room. Why? Because, "We are going to wear them one day." Really Mawmaw? Because you haven't moved those bags in 4 years. They have over $1,000 worth of Dolce and Gabbana clothes just sitting in bags. 95% of the them still have tags attached. Also, I don't understand the constant need for furniture. I can understand taking your mother's China cabinet after she died, but taking a church pew, kitchen table, and a hutch is ridiculous. Oh and they're all crammed in the dinning room. They don't even match! My grandmother used to pitch a fit if she walked into our house and saw furniture that didn't match.
The living room irks me the same, if not more, than the dinning room. So, like I said, this place was built in the early 50's. In that time period lamps were very popular, and so were those chain lights that you would have to string from the wall to the ceiling. In this gigantic living room, that is the size of a 2 bedroom house, they have accumulated over 12 lamps. This wouldn't be a problem if 11 of them weren't broken. Why wouldn't you throw out a lamp that surges whenever it's touched you may ask? "I haven't gotten around to it." It's sat there for over 6 months. When my uncle was moving houses he was giving away his couches. Guess who showed up to take them when they had 2 perfectly good, specially ordered, Italian leather, shipped from Italy, couches sitting at home? If you guessed my grandparents, you are correct. Also they didn't throw out there expensive couches either. Nope. Now 4 couches sit awkwardly placed along with 2 recliners. Oh and they don't match either. Piles of clothes and old books are littered around the room. Toys from when my sisters were toddlers lay around collecting dust. The $900 curtains they paid to have designed and shipped from New York to fit there 14 ft wide windows, are now coated with dust and cobwebs. In 2011 they specially ordered a 72 inch T.V. to replace their floor model that went absolute haywire. After setting it up, my dad told them he'd haul the Old one to the dump since it didn't work anymore. Needless to say, it sat in their foyer for years. IT WOULDN'T EVEN TURN ON! Finally, my dad caught them gone and had to secretly haul it to the dump because you had to turn sideways to make it to the living room. A few months back, when the 72inch gave out, they brought a new curve T.V. Again we offered to haul the old one to the dump. Their answer, "We'll find use for it." Now the monster T.V. sits behind the awkward couches. They have 4 D.V.D players stacked on top of each other. Why? Because, after one stops working they go out and buy another one to set in the same spot.
The foyer is has piles of useless crap everywhere. Well, some of it is very nice stuff, but it hasn't been used in years. Fine leather, custom tailored jackets hang in the giant closet collecting dust. They brought in an outside bench and sat it in there because, "It's gonna rot." Ok, but you let your handmade $800 picnic table rot outside? Christmas ornaments sit stacked in boxes in corners everywhere. A lot of times they get knocked over and broken. I know what you thinking. It doesn't matter. You can pick up ornaments at the dollar tree. But, these ornaments they paid to have the display tree at Macy's to be stripped for. I'm still haven't been told that price. More bags of clothes stay stacked beside the stairs. They block a closet full of expensive jackets that they refuse to use or sale. The grand entrance is blocked by an exercise machine and god knows what else. Ok, I get that we use the maid's entrance, but that's no reason to block the beautiful main entrance. The service and repair entrance (beside the stairs) hasn't been opened in years due to the crap in front of it. The beautiful, hand picked, hand painted, slate floor is all cracked up because of the heavy furniture that keeps getting brought in. They now have a hole in the wall, because the heat system gave out and instead of calling someone who actually knows what they are doing my grandmother decided to fix it herself. Still haven't figured out that one.
The bathroom downstairs has gotten pretty bad to. So, it has a huge built in vanity with a giant mirror. This thing used to look great, until my grandmother painted bright blue. Why? Because we made her get rid of her 10 year old paint and instead of tossing it she used every last drop on that vanity. There is now snap down flooring stacked in there until she finds a use for it. Which will most likely be never. Over 30 hair dryers, straighteners, curlers, and hair sprays are scattered across the Vanity.
The laundry room smells of dirty clothes. They spent $1,000 on a top of the line washer and dryer but only choose to wash certain clothing. So half of there clothes end up sitting in the laundry room for months. The washing counter is covered with old clothes and towels. The washing tub is unusable due to the filth built up in it. Once clothes where so piled up they filled up the laundry shoot that is located upstairs. I was pretty pissed about that. The butler pantry has cans of food from 2007 still in it. They can't even get in it anymore. As you can imagine, the second service entrance is blocked by all that crap. The old people chair that goes up and down the service men staircase (it was there when they moved there.) is now piled up with trash.
I'm gonna have to end this post here because this house is so big I think I would run out of room to describe it. I'm just at my last straw. I don't understand why this is happening, because they are both very well educated people. My grandfather went to law school and my grandmother was a 4 year R.N. Part 2 will be about the upstairs that is by far the worst part.
Submitted January 16, 2017 at 05:20AM by Haley_Jade_1017 http://ift.tt/2jUzjze hoarding
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