Life with a hoarder

I dated this guy; let’s just call him Jim2, for a couple years when we decided to move in together. We’d bought a seven-acre place with an old manufactured home (yeah, a trailer) as a supposed investment, but couldn’t score dependable renters worth a damn. So we decided to move in ourselves. The place was an eyesore but spacious enough for two people, the fine view of snowcapped Cascade mountain range, Bachelor to Hood, its saving grace.

Built in 1976, plastic was hot in the mfg home market. The bathrooms had plastic tub and shower surrounds, molded faux-marbled scallops; picture the scallop shell in Botticelli’s “Venus Rising” and you’ll get the visual. I kept expecting an appearance by King Neptune, trident in hand. It was also reminiscent of 1960s hedonistic San Francisco public baths scene, at least in my imagination. Manufactured in two parts, a connecting beam, covered in Naugahyde, ran the length which I promptly dubbed “fine Corinthian leather,” in keeping with the Grecian bath motif.

Jim was a hoarder, a fact I’d managed to overlook while maintaining separate residences. Of course I’d noticed that his house was jam packed with stuff, but I’d never considered the contents of the over-sized machine shop, outbuildings, and the school bus would also be moving. But they did, one pickup load, (and maybe a trailer,) at a time. Not always in one piece, however. The hot tub was reduced to kindling after it slid off the trailer at a treacherous corner. There were further road calamities but that was the funniest by far, to me anyway. Sometimes my sense of humor isn’t appreciated.

Loads kept arriving even after we got the house livable. Our lone outbuilding was stuffed, literally to the rafters, so Jim extended the roof and framed in two sides for additional storage for his “collections.” One of which, (garden tools,) leaned against the outside wall, a host of shovels, shovels, more shovels, metal rakes, grass rakes, hoes, picks, sledge hammers, post hole diggers, bark dust spreaders, etc. He built shelves under the new roof to house a mountain of plastic storage totes. I once searched the obsolete telephones collection, (separate tote for phone wires and cables) for a Princess phone for my daughter, but there were no cool phones in that collection.

There still wasn’t enough storage and overflow spilled into the garage, now lined with rows of storage shelves on three sides for camping equipment, luggage, etc. There were huge tool boxes, a table saw, and other (big) woodworking equipment in the center of the room, Jim added rollers to many items which really helped when navigating the narrow path to the door.

The living room door was blocked by the most massive television ever manufactured; a behemoth tall as me, a 3-ft aisle needed to access the back, snaked with cables connecting it to surround sound and various other electronic necessities. (The picture always seemed a bit distorted, it was great for animation but on regular TV the actors looked a trifle fat.)

There was no escaping using the garage entry. Resentment grew as I walked through. One day as I walked by the “George Foreman” cookware series of grills and rotisseries a sudden (and admittedly petty) inspiration to repurpose this collection of crap into oblivion came to mind. Which I did, one by one, week by week. On garbage day, I’d select one superfluous model, place it in the bottom of the empty garbage can, toss in a sack of kitchen trash (to discourage dumpster diving) and breathe easier.
We crashed and burned after eight months. It took longer than that to get rid of that to get rid of that ridiculous TV.