Woman Buys Ex-Hoarder’s Home With All Of Their Belongings, Spends 4 Years Cleaning When Relatives Start Demanding Heirlooms They Didn’t Want
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Buying an apartment or a house to live in is quite a challenge. Being able to find a perfect place in a great location, looking out for some undisclosed problems, and having to check all of the documentation takes a lot of time, money, and effort. But no matter the struggle, the minute you step into your dream home, it all seems to be worth it. It’s just that for some, this moment comes later rather than sooner. Reddit user @u/throwaway5638134 decided to share her story of buying a house, adding some unexpected twists and asking strangers online for their opinions on the matter. The woman asked others whether she was unreasonable for keeping a wedding dress that she found after buying a hoarder’s house and getting a request from the owner’s granddaughter to get the dress back.
More Info: Reddit
Buying your own place to live is a very exciting yet challenging moment in one’s life
Image credits: Jason Faulkner (not an actual photo)
A 26-year-old woman started her story by stating that in 2018, she bought a big house with 6 bedrooms. The main issue about the house was that it was a hoarder’s house that was filled with various belongings of the previous owner. After the original owner’s death, their relatives sold the house and everything that was in it because, according to the original poster, they couldn’t handle “the stench and literal mountain of junk and waste.” Most people who have heard of hoarding associate it with an excessive collection of various items that may or may not be needed in the future. However, hoarding, which is first recognized as a disorder, hides much deeper problems and very often affects those around the person who suffers from it.
This woman decided to share her journey of getting a hoarded house that she bought into shape and the situation she got involved in after finding some valuables in it
Image credits: u/throwaway5638134
It’s important to remember that hoarding is not similar to collecting, as the latter means that the things collected are arranged and kept in an organized matter, keeping the spaces tidy. Hoarded places are filled with various things that oftentimes look like piles of trash, creating chaos from one corner of the room to the other. Even after cleaning a hoarded place, it takes some time and money to fix it as because of this clutter, the place gets damaged over time. Because of this reason, it took 4 years for the woman, who shared her story online, to finally be done with cleaning and fixing the house.
After an extensive decluttering, the woman found a beautiful wedding dress that she decided to keep for her special day
Image credits: Sian Burkitt (not an actual photo)
The woman also found some personal photos and artwork that she thought would be a good idea to give back to the previous owner’s relatives, so because of this reason, she had some of these people on her Facebook friends list
Image credits: u/throwaway5638134
Despite this being hard and nasty work, the new owner took her time and made an effort to check everything the previous owner had before just tossing it all out. It seems that it paid off as she found some photos and precious memories that she gave back to the relatives who sold the house. But these heartwarming memories weren’t the only thing the woman was lucky to find. Besides this, she also discovered “a stunning ’40s-style, lace-covered wedding dress” and some jewelry. She revealed that despite some minor damages that were quickly repaired, the woman decided to keep the dress and will maybe even wear it on her special day.
The new owner of the house and now the dress was very happy with her findings, so she posted it on Facebook and soon was contacted by the granddaughter of the previous house owner who demanded that she give the dress back
Image credits: u/throwaway5638134
The new owner was so happy with her findings that she shared it on Facebook, forgetting that she still had a granddaughter of the previous house owner on her friends’ list. It didn’t take long for her to see the picture and ask for the dress and heirlooms back. The woman stood her ground and refused because, according to their agreement, the minute she bought the house, she also acquired everything that was in it. However, now the new owner is hesitant about whether she did the right thing by keeping the dress.
The original poster shared that she refused to give the dress back but now is second-guessing her decision. People online were quick to support her idea to keep the finding as it now legally belongs to her
Image credits: chumlee10 (not an actual photo)
A lot of people online expressed their support, stating that she has every right to keep the dress and everything else, as per agreement. Some of the commentators were quick to say that the woman took a significant risk buying a house in such condition and that whatever valuable she found serves as a reward for her hard work. They also tried to explain the granddaughter’s behavior in this situation, as she was already given something back that she didn’t expect. So maybe, she thought that the dress could be another thing that is a memory of her grandmother. What is your take on this situation? Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments down below!
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NTA. It took my family two years and a considerable amount of money to clean out my parents' house. This woman deserves whatever she found, especially given the fact that the relatives wanted nothing to do with the house and its contents until AFTER all the work was done.
I'm already stressed because there are precious, sentimental things that I want from my parents' home but how I will find any of it in their hoarder house I don't know.
are your parents still living? talk to them, hire someone to come with skip bins and protective gear and at least clean out some of the worst areas. Just even taking stuff out and organizing it into boxes with labels will really help. You don't have to throw everything away, just the rotting stuff. Do one room at a time, buy a prebuilt shed for storage.
Ask any therapist who works with hoarders if this is a good idea and the answer will be an emphatic ‘no’.
Isn't that exactly what they did in that hoarders show? They had professionals organizing it, didn't they? there were public health and safety violations in those homes; the alternative is the city condemning the house and forcing the owners to leave and boarding the place up.
Why?
Maybe you can ask your parents to give some of the items you want. In the last couple of years of my mother’s life if anybody mentioned they like something she would give it to that person.
You can hire people to clean the house for you after they die. Hopefully you don’t have siblings to fight with over these things. And also hopefully there is a good, legal will that leaves the house to you. Be sure the will is kept out of the house.
Simple hire a company Don't p**n it off to someone else and then demand something when it's found
Go help them clean up
Yes. And she even said that she would've been willing to sell things back to them if they had offered. They wanted it back for free after she had paid for it and done all of the work to clean and restore it.
No one seems to be mentioning that the family SOLD the home, so they already made money from it. The OP should’ve just put all the pictures in a box with a note saying “Look what I found! Thought you might like to have it”, mailed it to one of the relatives, and left it at that. Nothing on Facebook, and ffs, do NOT add one of the hoarder’s relatives as a Facebook “friend” . So much grief comes from oversharing. You want only specific people to see a picture of you in the wedding dress you found and restored? Email it to them, or send hard copies in the snail mail. Leave it off social media—-especially since Facebook has done upgrades that erased people’s privacy settings in the past, and they ALL end up having data breaches—-and the number of hassles over it will decrease, rapidly and significantly.
I think you meant the fb hassles will only INcrease. 😅 Agreed! All it does is turn people into egomaniacs or creepers. No thanks!
NTA. They didn't want the "heirlooms" badly enough to look for them. Tough.
If she was a hoarder for many years, they probably didn't know the heirlooms existed, or once knew but hadn't seen them in decades. But no, they have no claim on anything from the house.
You are entitled legally and morally to the house and it's contents. Do not engage with the "family" any further. And especially on any social media !
That's not necessarily true...I feel like something like a WEDDING DRESS is something you'd remember, no matter what.
Have you ever been in a hoarder’s home?
Not relative though. They could have cleaned the house. You are correct.
Yep. The comments about the stench and mess also suggest they didnt love the dead woman much when she was alive and probably hadnt bothered to visit her in many years.
Hoarders are a strange lot, and there are many who were fine for decades and decades before they became hoarders, but these are a different type of people, who may have pushed and pushed back hard against a bunch of folks telling them to clean up their messed up piles and piles of stuff. You never know unless you've known them for many, many years.
It can be really exhausting organizing and cleaning a space. It can also be very rewarding. Telling your relatives whom you might inherit from what you are NOT interested in having, and if you can, helping them resolve what to do with it can be very helpful for people who over collect or are trying to transition to a smaller footprint (even my MIL, who is one of the most organized people I know, occasionally wants help with this). I don't know if that helps actual hoarders but if this sort of thing isn't helping and there is still a problem then maybe some insight that it's become a serious medical condition is past due.
NTA. It took my family two years and a considerable amount of money to clean out my parents' house. This woman deserves whatever she found, especially given the fact that the relatives wanted nothing to do with the house and its contents until AFTER all the work was done.
I'm already stressed because there are precious, sentimental things that I want from my parents' home but how I will find any of it in their hoarder house I don't know.
are your parents still living? talk to them, hire someone to come with skip bins and protective gear and at least clean out some of the worst areas. Just even taking stuff out and organizing it into boxes with labels will really help. You don't have to throw everything away, just the rotting stuff. Do one room at a time, buy a prebuilt shed for storage.
Ask any therapist who works with hoarders if this is a good idea and the answer will be an emphatic ‘no’.
Isn't that exactly what they did in that hoarders show? They had professionals organizing it, didn't they? there were public health and safety violations in those homes; the alternative is the city condemning the house and forcing the owners to leave and boarding the place up.
Why?
Maybe you can ask your parents to give some of the items you want. In the last couple of years of my mother’s life if anybody mentioned they like something she would give it to that person.
You can hire people to clean the house for you after they die. Hopefully you don’t have siblings to fight with over these things. And also hopefully there is a good, legal will that leaves the house to you. Be sure the will is kept out of the house.
Simple hire a company Don't p**n it off to someone else and then demand something when it's found
Go help them clean up
Yes. And she even said that she would've been willing to sell things back to them if they had offered. They wanted it back for free after she had paid for it and done all of the work to clean and restore it.
No one seems to be mentioning that the family SOLD the home, so they already made money from it. The OP should’ve just put all the pictures in a box with a note saying “Look what I found! Thought you might like to have it”, mailed it to one of the relatives, and left it at that. Nothing on Facebook, and ffs, do NOT add one of the hoarder’s relatives as a Facebook “friend” . So much grief comes from oversharing. You want only specific people to see a picture of you in the wedding dress you found and restored? Email it to them, or send hard copies in the snail mail. Leave it off social media—-especially since Facebook has done upgrades that erased people’s privacy settings in the past, and they ALL end up having data breaches—-and the number of hassles over it will decrease, rapidly and significantly.
I think you meant the fb hassles will only INcrease. 😅 Agreed! All it does is turn people into egomaniacs or creepers. No thanks!
NTA. They didn't want the "heirlooms" badly enough to look for them. Tough.
If she was a hoarder for many years, they probably didn't know the heirlooms existed, or once knew but hadn't seen them in decades. But no, they have no claim on anything from the house.
You are entitled legally and morally to the house and it's contents. Do not engage with the "family" any further. And especially on any social media !
That's not necessarily true...I feel like something like a WEDDING DRESS is something you'd remember, no matter what.
Have you ever been in a hoarder’s home?
Not relative though. They could have cleaned the house. You are correct.
Yep. The comments about the stench and mess also suggest they didnt love the dead woman much when she was alive and probably hadnt bothered to visit her in many years.
Hoarders are a strange lot, and there are many who were fine for decades and decades before they became hoarders, but these are a different type of people, who may have pushed and pushed back hard against a bunch of folks telling them to clean up their messed up piles and piles of stuff. You never know unless you've known them for many, many years.
It can be really exhausting organizing and cleaning a space. It can also be very rewarding. Telling your relatives whom you might inherit from what you are NOT interested in having, and if you can, helping them resolve what to do with it can be very helpful for people who over collect or are trying to transition to a smaller footprint (even my MIL, who is one of the most organized people I know, occasionally wants help with this). I don't know if that helps actual hoarders but if this sort of thing isn't helping and there is still a problem then maybe some insight that it's become a serious medical condition is past due.