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2 years ago we installed new cast iron baseboard in a vacant house where all the radiatiors had frozen and burst (owner left for the winter and turned off the heat because it was too expensive). Every room was stacked 3-5 feet tall with stuff. Not trash, just stuff. Nothing rotting etc. Every floor was uneven, with some floors 4-6 inches higher on one wall then the other. I knew it was bad when I disconnected the pipes from a 300 LB cast iron radiator, pried it loose from the dents it had formed in the hardwood floor and it slid all the way across the room and slammed into the other wall.

eventually it started getting hot so I thought I would head up to the 3rd floor/attic to open some windows for ventilation. What do I find? Two pallets of bricks...In the attic. WTF. No wonder the house was collapsing.

interesting.....

when i first started out i did installations, a family of four(husband, wife, two daughters) wanted a unico system with new boiler that fed a hot water coil and had a UV light/media filter combo. alot of money of course. i never saw the husband at the house.

we put in the diffusers first. when i go to the basement to start placing the main supply trunk line, the basement must have been filled with every item that this family had ever bought in their entire lives!!!! and the house itself was cluttered with toys and clothes to begin with! i had to build a multiple mountains to make room for the equipment making the job take twice as long to get done. their were dead mice everywhere + spiders all over the place. i'm thinking "why bother putting the high efficiency air cleaner in? they must think they'll never have to clean this place now". and the wife actually had the nerve to tell me to not break or damage anything as if it were in some kind of safe logical order!?!

then one late day i finally see the husband come home from work. he walks in, grabs a beer, sits in front of the tv and puts the phillies game on while looking at the other scores on his laptop. he barely acknowledged his wife or kids. the wife talks to him about a bunch of different crap that happened during the day and i don't remember him saying a thing to her. he couldn't have been bothered to look at this super expensive system he just had installed in his house, as if it wasn't even his!

guess his wife replaced him with items and then made a garbage kingdom! strange.....

I've fired a few as customers...they tend to be unsanitary homes and I don't expect the techs to work in a house that I wouldn't.

And as a side note, I have been accused of having OCD in regards to clutter and cluttered areas...I absolutely hate it.

I have a couple of tenants that are like that, One little old lady has a path to each room, took her 3 hrs to widen the path to her kitchen so I could replace her stove, then she still had the oven and bottom drawer full of canned foods. Sometimes when I open up furnace room doors they are crammed full, I just tell them to call when it's cleared out or leave a note to clear it out. When I worked at John Deere in parts dept. If we didn't sell it in a years time don't stock it, I've adopted that thinking at home to, now that we moved to an apartment it's even shorter.

I love my messy dirty house. It's so great when you're done eating to just toss the dirty plate on the floor. You guys should try it sometime. It gives you much more time to sit and watch tv.

I tend to be the opposite, if I havent touched an item in over a year i'll throw it away, sometimes i'll try and sell it but I'd rather not deal with the hassle. Monday the garbage company is coming for a free large item pick up this weekend I'm going to be going through the house looking for something I dont use anymore.

A clean house is a happy house. I dont want to piss my house off, it'll do things to me that I dare not want to think about.

had a customer whos kids came home and asked why there mom cleaned the garage out...messed up thing was there was still no way to get to the fau took us an hour to move all the crap

Originally Posted by spotts

I'm the dead opposite! Drives my wife crazy! If I look at sumpthin for too long..... it becomes trash.

ha I am the same I hate clutter. Everytime my wife goes out of town she wonders how mnuch crap will be missing when she gets home. The lady at the dump knows mne by name now. I am there almost every weekend

Originally Posted by jweig20

It really makes me want to quit my job somedays.just to see how some people live.I had a customer yesterday that said .I think my thermostat has a bug in it.i laughed and took the stat off the wall, and as soon as i took the subbase off three roaches came out of the wall.wtf

LMAO...ya there is a difference between a hoarder and a hog.

It really makes me want to quit my job somedays.just to see how some people live.I had a customer yesterday that said .I think my thermostat has a bug in it.i laughed and took the stat off the wall, and as soon as i took the subbase off three roaches came out of the wall.wtf

Originally Posted by Mr Chesapeake

In addition to some of the cat ladies we have under contract, we have a few hoarders too. There's one lady who comes to mind who seems to have every newspaper ever printed in her house. From the front door there's a path lined with newspapers to everywhere in the house. If they ever fell on you while you were navigating the trail, you'd be dead.

Yea, ya gotta love the goat paths back to the funace......don't drop a tool....it will disappear FOREVER.

We have Hoarder about every thirty residential calls. Some are wealthy and some are dirt poor. We just hold our nose and do the repair.

Several years ago, I had a friend pass away unexpectedly. He was a pastor and lived in the church's parsonage. My kids and I volunteered to help his wife and son move their stuff out. The church gave them 6 months to move and we thought that was great. 8 months later, we were opening the house up on the weekends and letting people come in and get what they wanted. We moved truck and trailer loads of stuff out of that house and you name it, we moved at least three of them.. lol. I had never seen so much stuff in all my life. He still had ever pill bottle he had ever used in his life. When he saw something he liked on sale like shaving creme or something, he bought them all. I think we counted over 700 neckties. And it wasn't just him, it took us two weeks to clean all the dresses and shoes out of the attic.

I have one customer in mind. The woman has enough food to feed an ARMY in her basement. Just shelves of canned goods. Cases of salad dressing. Cases of cake mixes......it's insane. All that food and there are only three people living in the house. You know the stuff goes out of date before she can use it..... I'm sure she doesn't even know what all she has because it's just way too much.

I've been in a couple styles of horders houses.

1st style is the kind who just never use the garbage... rotten food everywhere, soda cans all over, litter box's that weren't used for years because the cat wouldn't even step foot in them.
Those are the worst by far.

the 2nd style is the people who keep "stuff", it's not really junk, but they sure don't need it. You know, 2-3 microwaves, a dozen toasters, all work, or can be fixed but never do get fixed. Those aren't as bad, I can stand clutter better than rotten stuff.

I go in phases. Sometimes I hang onto stuff with intentions of fixing it or giving it to someone who needs it... but other times you'd better hang onto the clothes you're wearing because that's liable to go in the garbage if you're not careful.

I can not stand a dirty home. It's disgusting.

In addition to some of the cat ladies we have under contract, we have a few hoarders too. There's one lady who comes to mind who seems to have every newspaper ever printed in her house. From the front door there's a path lined with newspapers to everywhere in the house. If they ever fell on you while you were navigating the trail, you'd be dead.

my father-in -law was that way. He was a welder. I am still hauling scrap metal off. Used lawn mower blades, bed rails, window unjts, about 30 cars, old welding tanks, propane tanks, aluminum framed windows, old tools, 2 buses, chainsaws, old trailers, boats, about 30 boat motors and lots more. I inherited an iron mine. At least its got some value.

My brothers somewhat that way. And I have a good friend that he and his wife are that way. Last time I visited them I had to sleep on the living room couch because every single room is filled with stuff they collect. Every single room!

Back in DC I use to run into tenants that were hoarders. Especially the older folks who live alone. I think it is there way of hanging on to the past. No rotten food or that kind of stuff....just tons and tons of stuff.

I've know a guy in Settle, come to think of it, that is the same way. He wanted to buy a house but didn't have the money for the down payment. His new wife made him go through all his boxes inside and outside of his present house and he found $10,000 in cash that he forget he had. So he purchased a new house.

I'm the dead opposite! Drives my wife crazy! If I look at sumpthin for too long..... it becomes trash.