<p>Thank you so much for this thread and for the photos, coralbrook. It’s fascinating. How horribly sad it is that the elderly gentleman was living in these conditions. Your endeavors to be fair and helpful during this process are really admirable.</p>
<p>Wow, that’s a lot of trash. so glad the car started, at least enough to get it out of the garage. I hope the bug bombs are effective.</p>
<p>It’s curious that the paper shopping bags are so neatly packed. It looks like it’s newsprint paper on top of them all. I’m sure you don’t want to poke through garbage, but what is in them all? Is it really “garbage” (by which I mean, old food, tissues, etc.), or is it old clothes and maybe other things he was trying to sort? Seriously, I’m sure it smells terrible, but it doesn’t look chaotic.</p>
<p>And that’s great news about the car. It could have been a much, much worse situation.</p>
<p>MORE TRASH</p>
<p>The living room is the only area where there is neatly stacked trash bags. The top of almost all of the trash bags has ‘paper tissues’. We did not dig through any of them but it looks like he shopped at the little local grocery store (probably had to walk there??) and used each paper trash bag to hold his tissues and paper trash. If he lived in there, he would definitely have had respiratory and allergy issues.</p>
<p>I have now loaded the pictures as we travel through to the dining room and the kitchen. From appearances, he sat at the dining room table during the day and listened to the radio. The dining table was somewhat clear and looked like that is where he spent his days reading the newspaper, etc. </p>
<p>I cannot imagine that he ever walked into the kitchen. But the funny thing is that the inside of the refrigerator is nice and neat and has food neatly stacked. One of the reasons that it doesn’t smell so bad in here is that the refrigerator has been plugged in this whole time, so the food has not completely rotted with mold.</p>
<p>Start at the photo of the shopping bag pyramid and work up </p>
<p>OMG.</p>
<p>Yowie.</p>
<p>You’re right; it’s all very tidy in the fridge. How odd, when compared to the rest of the house. </p>
<p>The poor fellow. I suspect that, because his city trash bin was locked in the garage, he didn’t know how to get the city to take his trash. So he didn’t know what to do with it and just had it pile up in the house. I assume he was relatively frail and wasn’t about to walk a few blocks to toss the trash. Nor did he have any relatives to keep track of this. </p>
<p>cb, have you met the fellow?</p>
<p>Wah I can’t find the flicker link anymore (only the remodel project)…anyone remember the post number? (I scrolled several pages)</p>
<p>Try this:</p>
<p><a href=“Flickr: The CC Flip Project 3 Pool”>https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/groups/2710004@N21/</a></p>
<p>Interesting carving on the back of that door! There is a low, green piece on the shelves in one of the pictures that has some chance of being collectible American art pottery. The kind of thing that regular people bought back in the day that now can be very valuable. I found one in the dirt basement of our church that we ultimately sold for $1300 at auction with someone who is a regular on Antiques Roadshow, and it was about that size. Of course, it is unlikely that even if it is art pottery that it would be worth that much, but don’t just chuck stuff like that. 
At the least, give it to the Goodwill so that someone who collects such things can find it. </p>
<p>That house is going to be cute! (link worked!) Some cool details. </p>
<p>I bet the neighbors are a goggle. is it today he is going back to visit?</p>
<p>Consolation, good catch on the carving on the back of the front door. I hadn’t noticed it. It does look interesting, and the rest of the door seems like it could be easily restored. </p>
<p>I also can’t find link.</p>
<p>@mom60, what happens when you click on the link in post #226?</p>
<p>MORE PHOTOS</p>
<p>Photos have been loaded traveling along the fireplace behind the mountain of trash towards the back hallway to the bedrooms and bathroom. </p>
<p>In one day we are now down to furniture and personal belongings under that trash. I don’t want the guys to touch anything personal or possibly of value so I had to spend the whole morning going through the desk, drawers and dining table. I found many many personal things that I felt were very important. I found 15 photo scrapbooks, boxes of personal photos, high school yearbooks, his social security papers, military discharge papers, etc. I carefully boxed everything up.</p>
<p>The Fiduciary’s Assistant came at 10am to wait for Neptune Society because they have to give a permit and sign paperwork to release the ashes that are on top of the old piano. I carried everything to her car and asked her to make sure that Walter gets these items. If he wants to throw them away, fine. But I felt it was important to return his personal memory items to him.</p>
<p>And… my lead always jokes about this… He claims that he is going to find gold coins in one of these houses. I didn’t find gold coins but I found a 50 States Quarter collection (probably worth less than $100). I gave it to him as a gift. One of the other workers wanted a manual juicer from the kitchen - are you kidding me? What a generous person I am… “of course you can have that juicer, please wash it before you use it”. Another guy wanted all of the socks - ewwww gross! And I brought home a really good pair of binoculars that my husband wanted.</p>
<p>We are still going through everything. I’m going to take some pictures on Thursday morning of some of the items and maybe all the amateur sleuths can help me determine whether I should try to sell it. We are definitely going to have an Estate Sale in 2 weeks (if we can find a place to store all this stuff). I just need more days to process everything. I believe that my competitors would have just had it all in the dumpster by now.</p>
<p>There are lots and lots of clothes in this house. I just don’t know if I should try to organize it all and put it in the Estate Sale, or just bag it and donate to Goodwill or a Thrift Store. I think maybe it might be smarter just to have the big, important pieces for our Estate Sale.</p>
<p>That bathtub – yikes.</p>
<p>Love the orangy browny shag carpet!</p>
<p>I am so glad there is a responsible fiduciary agent here. These photos show that this gentleman is clearly in need of looking after. It’s sad to think of someone living in that situation. You are earning a star in your crown, coralbrook, by sorting through his things so carefully to preserve his pictures & papers.</p>
<p>Ew,Ew, ew, ew, ew…I thought I could do this. Probably not. Best to you and thanks for sharing .</p>
<p>Hmm, depending on the details, that white fruit bowl could be milk glass, which is fairly collectible. If the clothing is vintage, it sometimes goes for some money (think 50’s or older, bowling shirts, etc). The Fiduciary Agent is lucky to have you, Coralbrook. It was kind of you to be sure those photos, etc were returned to the gentleman. He clearly is in need of assistance.</p>
<p>At least you didn’t find any cat mummies.</p>
<p>That pair of shoes on the bed look nice… what size are they? :D</p>
<p>The trick with garage or estate sales is to actually make enough that you make more than minimum wage. Unless there’s a gem hidden in there…</p>
<p>A friend of mine bought a hoarder house (although not as bad as CB’s, not so much stinky garbage and no cat litter.)… the elderly gentleman would go to the store and buy the same things over and over because he forgot he had just bought the same thing. So he found something like 3 dozen brand new maps, and cases of canned tomatoes.</p>
<p>And tons of clothes, most of which still had the tags on them. So he donated the clothes and took a large deduction on his taxes.</p>
<p>There are some interesting things in this house that I will take pictures and maybe one of you can help determine if there is value:</p>
<p>A large collection of original albums, a lot of them are jazz albums
Old stereo equipment
Weird piano
Glass figurines
Crystal glass set with thick gold rims
Two older style chairs that could be re-upholstered very nice
Desk
Dining table
Original oil paintings
Curio cabinets</p>
<p>Probably more that I haven’t found yet</p>
<p>Wow, I never even looked at the back of the front door, didn’t know it was carved. Honestly, when I was coming through the front door there was so much “eye shock” going on that I didn’t bother checking behind things.</p>
<p>Now I’m madly looking through my own photos trying to figure out where there is a white milky fruit bowl 
</p>