Apartment Picking

Once upon a time, I had a horrible neighbor. I’m not going to go into details, but suffice to say that when she was finally evicted (after something like six months of not paying rent!), we were more than a little excited. She called the landlord a few days after moving out and said the place just needed a quick clean and anything she left behind could be tossed/given away, she didn’t really care.

The landlord decided the best course of action was to let the neighbors go through the apartment and see if there was anything they wanted. Before I go any further, let my clarify by saying that there were only five apartments. We lived up above an old store.

So one day he comes over and unlocks the door. The BF and I went over and Oh. My. God. First of all, imagine a hoarder living in a two bedroom apartment and you’ll have some idea of what this place looked like. Every single room was stacked with piles of stuff: piles of clothes, piles of dishes, piles of beauty products and just random piles. Before moving out, she sold her couch, bedroom set and some other things, so she and her child were sleeping on the floor in carved out little nooks.

Then we had to deal with out neighbors. This was like an estate sale gone wild, but with free junk. Two people (a man and a woman) in particular were grabbing stuff and just throwing it in bags. It didn’t even matter if it was stuff they needed or wanted. The BF is kind of skinny and these two were decidedly…not. They kept grabbing clothes that he liked and throwing it in garbage bags of their own, but only when he commented on something.

I can kind of understand the kids clothes because they take care of a little boy and he could probably use the clothes. But come on, taking a size Medium/Large jacket, when the guy is….nowhere near a size Medium/Large? We decided to leave the bedrooms and just see what else was there.

I saw this really cool DVD rack that had I known she had, I would have offered to buy it from her earlier. I started to grab it and another neighbor popped up. “I already told my ex-girlfriend she could have that.” I reached for something else and then another thing and another…all were hers. Of course she hadn’t actually seen any of this stuff, but she wanted it for some reason.

We then ventured into the kitchen and found a Coleman cooler in really good shape that’s bigger than ours. We go camping fairly frequently in the summer and ours just isn’t big enough. Started to grab that, only to have yet another person turn up and claim it. Turns out that it was a guy who used to live in the building and one of the neighbors told him about the “free sale” so he just randomly showed up and started grabbing things. I explained why we needed it and he claimed that he needed it just as bad. The kicker came later when I found the lid in the dumpster downstairs! Yeah, he never came back and got it.

Once the neighbors left with their junk, we had the chance to do a little digging and find some stuff for ourselves. The BF found a lot of guy’s clothes buried, still with new tags and hats with the tags attached. We grabbed a cute little black wood shelf that needs a LOT of work and a huge plastic bookshelf for the pantry. Plus a shelf for over the toilet (just like one I lost pieces from during my last move) and for some reason, the BF grabbed a set of mismatched plates, even though I have enough for a small army.

The last thing we grabbed was this chippy bookshelf you see below. She had this stuck in her daughter’s room and I kind of liked it. The BF needed to put a nail in the bottom where the side was pulling away, but it’s heavy and in good shape. You can see way too much crap shoved on there right now, mainly because I haven’t set up shelves in any of our other rooms yet.

The funny thing is that we ended up moving into that apartment for almost a year after she moved out. The landlord asked us to move the bookshelf into our apartment because it was taking up too much room. The day after we moved it in, he asked us when we were moving into the other apartment. We ended up moving it into one apartment on one day and then moving it back two days later. Trust me, this one is heavier than it looks!

Our New Chair

“There’s a bunch of stuff sitting outside on the side of the road,” the BF said casually the other night. “What do you mean, stuff?” I asked back. He looked confused for a minute, then kind of shrugged and said, “Stuff.”

When he opened the front door and pointed, the first thing that caught my eye was this chair. I told him I liked it and he asked if he should go over and get. I kind of hemmed and hawed for a minute and with a deep sigh, he took off across the street. A few minutes later he was back, carting the chair over his head. It was probably a good thing too because that was right about the time it started raining!

I’m not sure if the people moved out, were evicted or what happened. I can’t remember the last time I even saw anyone living there, but apparently someone decided to clean out the house a little because this and a whole other pile of trash was just sitting there.

We weren’t the only ones interested in the trash either! Some random guy drove up, parked in the middle of the street and started digging through the piles. He casually walked back to his truck when the BF ran over and pretended like he was leaving. As soon as he was gone, he ran back to the trash.

I asked the BF if anything else looked good and he said it seemed like a lot of old electronic stuff. I probably should have checked it out myself, but it was raining and getting dark. We ended up going to the store later and I almost smacked him when we drove by. Still left in the trash was a leather covered desk chair and an old fireplace mantle.

We’re renting an older house right now that has two (non-working) fireplaces: one in the living room and one in the kitchen. The one in the kitchen has a mantle, but the living room doesn’t have a mantle. He promised to go back in the morning and grab both if they were still there, but we both forgot that trash day was this morning and everything was gone.

Oddly enough, the guy we saw digging through the trash came back later in the night! We heard a truck drive down the road around 1 am and heard it idling. Opened the door and he was a block away, still grabbing stuff and sticking it in his truck. That takes some serious dedication.

As for the chair, I have no clue what we’ll do with it. I figured out how to get the padding/fabric off the frame and I’m thinking about reupholstering it. I kind of like the shape, but I strongly detest the hospital/doctor’s office fabric on it right now. For now I guess it’s best as a cat chair!

As soon as he brought it into the house, the two cats started sniffing it. The girl got bored, but the little boy is obsessed with it. Every time we turn around, he’s either laying on the top or sitting on the seat. Maybe we just found a free bed for him!

*Ignore the date on the photos. The BF can’t figure out how to adjust the date/time, so all of his photos are around three months behind!