The four story Victorian home had been built in the 1890s for one of the first professors at Washington State College. He raised his family there and stored everything that came into the house, including advertising “junk mail” from the early 1900s.
His son also became a professor at WSC and raised his family in the home. He, too, was a compulsive saver, and the house was nearing it capacity to store things. He passed away in the 1970s and his wife continued to live in the home until she had to move to assisted living in 1992.
At this point, the house was completely full of everything dating back to its original occupants in the 1800s…..
SO WHAT DID THEY DO?
The remaining family members were reluctant to sell the family home, so they came to town (from 300 miles away) and rented a large U-Haul truck. Everything on the main two floors except the original Victorian furniture was hauled to the landfill, and the furniture was hauled to the Goodwill in Lewiston, ID (35 miles away).
Now the two main floors were ready to be rented! However, the family felt so bad that the attic and the basement were still completely full (of the oldest of the things in the house) that they rented the home for $400 per month (instead of the $1200 per month the could have received for four bedrooms on the WSU campus).
The home went through 12 years of successive renters (who diligently dug through and stole anything they thought might be of value in the attic and basement. In 2004 the family tired of the headaches associated with owning a rental property 300 miles from where they lived and decided to put the house up for sale.
They came to town and met with a local Realtor, who advised them to empty the remaining clutter from the attic and basement to make the house more salable. To assist them in this process she had them rent a large dumpster and suggested that they contact the local moving company (so they could pay trained professionals $30 per hour to throw things in the dumpster).
Thank goodness a neighbor happened to give them my name and suggested that they call me instead. After assessing the situation, I took over the contract for the dumpster and paid them $500 for the remaining contents. This price included completely emptying and cleaning the home, right down to scrubbing the toilets.
I was able to pay this amount, plus the cost of labor and dump fees, because the renters who had stolen virtually everything else had not bothered to take the paper items (old magazines, letters, postcards, advertising, etc.). My heart was broken when I came across the fragments of a full-color lithographed poster advertising a marionette troop that had visited campus in the 1890s. It had been totally destroyed by the renters digging through things looking for something to steal (what do you think that would be worth in good condition today?).