Sunday, March 5, 2017

Unbelievable.....But Not Really

I went to Hampton this weekend, to assist my mother and my uncle in going through Meme's things.  Our goal was to clear out her bedroom closet, and as much of the clothing related items that we could.  I already had an idea of the daunting task that we were facing, but I honestly don't think that my mother or uncle had a clue of just how "bad" it would be. 


The bedroom that was Meme's has a closet that's about 3' x 3'.  The wire hanging racks were loaded down with clothing, and the top rack was packed, and the floor was piled up to the bottom of the clothing with boxes and crates.  We worked on this closet for about 4-5 hours and got everything cleared out of it yesterday.  My uncle took 3-4 trips to Goodwill with everything from that closet.


Today we worked on the spare bedroom.  There was only a narrow path through the room to the closet, due to all the boxes, chairs, and other miscellaneous items.  She had 2 rolling racks FULL of clothes against the wall where the window is, not to mentioned 2 huge boxes of shoes most brand new and still in the box), 4 tubs (jumbo sized) full of clothes, and the closet full of clothing (another 3' x 3' closet).  We pulled all the tubs and loose clothing out into the living room to go through, then we moved back into the room to deal with the racks of clothing and the closet.  While going through the racks, I noticed that a couple of pieces of clothing were kind of bleached looking with the pattern of the blinds on them, then I looked at the blinds and saw THIS:




a close up view


Apparently the heat from sun shining on the window got trapped by the clothing, and totally melted and almost burned up the blinds.  They were crispy and crunchy!  Mom was freaking out due to how close it appears that room came to catching fire, and the fact the mobile homes take almost no time to burn completely up in a fire.  We removed the blinds and put up some curtains that we had found in the other bedroom closet, so the window is covered again and nothing is hanging up on the rack anymore.


Anyways, we worked on stuff in that room from about 8:30am until about 2pm.  All the clothing tubs are empty, the racks are empty, and the closet was cleared out.  Buddy will still have 2-3 more trips to make to Goodwill with the items that were cleared out, then there's more stuff to go through in that room.  And of course, this counts NOTHING that's at Meme's lake house!  There's probably at least as much stuff down there to go through!  Mom's coming back down in a couple months and I'll be taking some time off work to go down and help her at the lake. 


Here are some photos of what we were working with today:




                                the 3 large tubs and 1 under bed container are empty. there's a cardboard box full of lingerie, 4 black trash bags full of clothing, a white bag full of loose paired up shoes, and a box with several pairs of never worn or only worn once shoes


 the "junk" room - those 2 clothing racks are now empty.  we didn't touch the stuff in the middle of the room (the chairs and other stuff)  the 4 drawer wooden file cabinet in the foreground to the left? 3 of the drawers had clothing in them!


It was a tough 2 days, not just physically, but emotionally.  It was hard going into that trailer knowing that it was Meme's, and she'd never be coming back to it.  I mean we knew that day would come, but it just doesn't make it any easier.  What killed me was today I found the thank you card that Steven had mailed to her back when he graduated high school, and she was in the hospital at the time from having a fall &/or seizure and multiple brain bleeds, and wasn't expected to survive - in 2014.  She had it in her little purse that she had carried around at the nursing home.  I brought it home to show to Steven, and we will put it in a safe place for keeps. 


So folks, that was my weekend.  All in all, it was a good one.  I hope yours was as well.

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