Good morning blog friends! Brian and I spent the weekend painting with my second mother (my mom’s best friend who just taught me how to paint a room). She and I also made our way downtown to a very depressing Bears game. And then back for more painting.
So as I’m writing this (Sunday night), I’m covered in paint, in dire need of a shower (don’t ask how long it’s been), and beat to hell (is it nap time yet?).
But I really wanted to share this little gem of a story with you. Because I think it’s amusing.
The sellers of our house left us lots of helpful things to get started with our first homeownership adventure. I know that they were thinking of us when they left these things, because they sent a message through the attorneys asking if we wanted them to leave paint and extra fixture-type thingies. (Someone please tell me why EVERYTHING has to go through attorneys and real estate agents instead of just people to people? Because the games of Telephone that we had to play in this whole house-buying process was a giant pain in the ass.) We said “sure.”
Not that we wanted the extra paint in the rooms we would be painting over as soon as possible. But you never know.
So they left cans of paint and stain for the cedar siding. They left light bulbs and extra sticky tiles from the 80’s/90’s. They left bubble wrap and packing boxes. They left a bunch of normal, helpful stuff.
And then they left a whole bunch of random.
Like the brand new, unused skylight flashing dated back to 2004, which would have been PRETTY useful under the skylight that we have to get fixed because it has no flashing and was instead sealed with roofing tar and leaked into our attic/master bathroom (before we bought the house-we knew about it…no money pit here, yet). You know…useful stuff.
Or the insulation paper, which conveniently made the perfect tarp for painting.
Or the strange yarn/belt/beady thing that I have no idea what it is.
Or the magical mystery Ocen Spray cranberry juice bottle filled with some creepy, unlabeled brown liquid.
Which I assume is some sort of stain due to the close proximity of other stains and paint.
Which is mostly strange because they labeled fucking everything else. (This was one of Brian’s favorite features of the house. Labeled duct work.)
They also left the piece de resistance next to the bubble wrap in the basement…
Can you spot it?
Don’t worry, I took a close up. Of the tighty whities. Which I can only assume/hope are clean and were used as a cleaning rag of some sort. Brian and I are fighting over who has to remove them from the basement. I feel like they’re going to stay forever with the current standstill…
Of course, as people move out, they choose to take things with them.
Our sellers took the avocado green clothes dryer (and the washer) – we knew they were taking those. And the shower curtain rod. And the canned goods from the bathroom closet.
And the confederate flag.
26 Responses
They had canned goods in their bathroom? That is one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard.
Yep. I know! They just turned the bathroom into a pantry. I’m sorry, but my cannes soup isn’t going in the room where I poop.
Exactly!! That’s just weird.
Well, now it houses cleaning supplies. And toilet paper. And maybe some like towels or something.
See, that makes sense.
I may make zero sense in a lot of things, but I’m nothing if not sensical when it comes to organization…I blame OCD.
It’s not always a bad thing.
Okay, I never do this because it’s typically in bad form to stop by someone’s blog and leave a comment like “great blog post, check out one I did… LINK” and I’m not an asshole. HOWEVER, since we are friends in real life I have to share a post I did when we were buying our current house because it was a total WTF moment of what they thought we might want them to leave us: http://www.pocketfulofjoules.com/chug-chug-chugging-along
But again, congrats on your new house!!! YAY! And don’t drink that juice.
Lol. But don’t you wish you had all those things?
That yarn thingy is a macramé plant hanger! I made those when I was a kid LOL. My grandma still makes them
Ohhhhh. I knew someone would figure it out for me!
You have your self a plant hanger there! And don’t drink the stuff in the ocean spray bottle. I think that would be a bad idea.
Hahaha. I think so too. The plant habger sounds like a bad idea with my luck.
they mystery brown liquid – ewwwwwww! The undies?? I ahve moved a lot, but have never found such odd things left behind! This was hilarious!
Yeah, they left us some real gems. The underwear haven’t moved, but they’re REALLY going to need to…they’re on my game shelves!
I second the identification as the rope beady thing as a macrame plant hanger. My mom had one when I was a kid and to my horror, had a hanging Spider plant in it. I HATED IT. But it’s very late 70s/early 80s
I love spider plants! Katie had one named Charlotte in college and I have one of her babies and her great grand babies and so on and so forth…
Ok spiders freak me out so spider plants? I kept thinking the babies would fall off the plant and land on me. No joke. I’m a wimp. But if you have a spider plant, the macrame could work for you because when they hang they do look cool in a creepy kinda way.
That makes sense.
I still think that shit would fall out of that thing.
I’m trying to remember if we were left anything weird. Just paint and stuff, I think. Oh, and the undisclosed water problem in the basement (grumble grumble.) That was an expensive lesson. Sigh.
Yeah. No expensive lessons yet…
When we moved into our apartment we were able to secure a discount on the first months rent if we cleaned out the stuff left behind by the previous tenant. Among the random clutter and half-empty bottles of soap, we scored a great desk and a couple older TVs. However, the downsides were all the food in the fridge/cupboards and the pieces of a dead squirrel that I found in the kitchen. Fun times! I know so much about someone I’ve never met, just based on the junk they decided to leave behind!
A dead squirrel!? That’s ridiculous!
Right? It was almost enough to have me rethinking our move!
I’m glad other people knew what the plant hanger thing was. I knew it looked familiar, but the only thing I could think was it looked like something to flog yourself with as some sort of ritual penance… but I knew that couldn’t be right.
Hahahahahahahahaha! That. Allllll of that.