The Excavation Begins

There is definitely an eclectic assortment of furniture and knick knacks here. I used to watch the A& E show Hoarders before it gave me the urge to purge everything I own and live in a stark white room, free from all furnishings and knick knacks. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a show about people with obsessive hoarding disorder. They live their lives surrounded by piles of old newspapers, every piece of junk mail they've received since the 80s, unopened boxes of stuff ordered from the home shopping network, piles of clothes stacked up to the ceiling… you name it, they’ve stashed it away somewhere.


There’s a little bit of that disorder here, creeping in at the edges. Just about every surface, every drawer, every cabinet is stuffed to the gills with stuff.

Here's a glimpse at the clutter problem. Look at the picture above. From right to left (more or less) you'll see: an unopened bottle of liquor, a ceramic pot with a screwdriver in it,  four empty crystal decanters, a broken and reassembled taper candle, a china dish filled with incense, a metal bottle containing some sort of sensual oil, a crystal tray with four (empty) perfume bottles on it, a cheap decorative plastic plate, another taper candle, an antique silver cream and sugar set, and my personal favorite, a fake flower arrangement in a vase filled with old Christmas lights.

Above: A typical drawer interior.

The surface clutter problem seems manageable. Everything I don't want, I can just box up and move to the basement. But to be honest, I had a bit of a mini-meltdown on Monday night when I started opening drawers and realized the extent of the problem. I guess I assumed that the owners would have come in and cleaned everything out before we moved in. And to an extent, they did. The fridge was spotless, the floors looked good (or as good as possible in a hundred and fifty year old house), the chest of drawers and wardrobes in the bedrooms were mostly cleaned out, and the surfaces (though cluttered) were all dust-free. But beyond that, though, if you open up a door, you’re going to see it crammed full with bunches and bunches of disorganized knick knacks and personal items. You know that secret “junk drawer” that everyone seems to have somewhere in their house? Well, imagine that EVERY drawer here has, over the years, become a junk drawer.

I can see how it happened. This place was a bed and breakfast before we got here and, bed and breakfasts or rental houses tend to accumulate little pieces of all the people that stayed there.

Example:

Let’s say a family rents the B & B for a reunion weekend. They buy their favorite spices for cooking in the kitchen, and bottles of wine and spirits for celebrating. At the end of the weekend, they have half a bottle of gin left, and a container of mostly unused red pepper flakes. The thought is: Why throw this stuff away? It’s perfectly good! I’ll just leave it for the next family to enjoy…

But here’s the rub: NO ONE wants a stranger’s used food. You’d have to be the most desperate of binge drinkers to want to drink a cheap, opened, half-empty bottle of wine that you found stashed away in a cabinet. Ditto an opened package of individually-wrapped cheese slices, or whatever other culinary artifact you might run across.

If everyone leaves a little something behind for the next family, and no one that arrives new to the place wants anything to do with the old food, you can see how that problem would quickly spiral out of control. I found packages of unopened gravy mix in the upper reaches of the cabinets that expired in 2004. (2004??!)

But it’s difficult to throw away unused food… It feels wasteful, I suppose. But here’s my plea to anyone that’s ever rented a house for an extended period of time: Get over it! Either throw your castoffs out, bring them home with you, or donate them to the local food bank. Stop turning the cabinets into a Food Museum, I beg you.

So, the problem of leftover food in the kitchen has translated to similar problem of leftover junk throughout the house. Junior bought a Pokemon video game for his handheld Nintendo DS system, and finished up the game during his stay? Why not leave the game behind for some other kid to play when he’s here? Never mind the fact that probably no other kid will stay here for months, and that the chance of that kid bringing a DS system is woefully slim, let alone the infinitesimal chances that the kid will bring his DS system and like Pokemon and have not already played that particular game.

But once that game gets into a drawer it never leaves. Ever. No one that comes across it feels empowered to throw it away because it doesn't belong to them.

So, it’s a problem. An overwhelming one. But I’m working on it one day at a time, one room at a time. I got the kitchen cleaned out on Tuesday, and got rid of all of the unopened leftover food. I poured out half-empty bottles of wine and booze that had been in the cabinet for what has likely been years. I cleaned out all of the junk drawers and boxed up all of the stuff belonging to previous ‘thoughtful’ tenants. It’s much, much better in there now.

The scary part is now I have to do that exact same thing to twelve other rooms.

Now, if you’re planning to come to visit us in the near future (I’m thinking especially of you, JoAnn), don’t worry. The place isn’t dirty. It’s just cluttered. The drawers that I cleaned out today, miraculously, weren’t filled with crumbs, dirt, and dust. They were weirdly clean. It was a real surprise, and heartening to say the least. And the beds here are nice, and the furniture is very cool and antique-y. It all looks fairly put together on the surface. The surface clutter problem is easily fixed. And the rest of it? I'll tackle that too. Most of the problem lies in the interiors of the space, the places where any of you, as visitors, would likely never have reason or inclination to look. It bugs me, because I’m living here, and because someone really has to step in and STOP THE MADNESS.

It looks like that person is me.