Summer Arrives / Helping Move A Hoarder
Wow, I can't remember the last time I went longer than four entire weeks to make a journal entry. I'm slipping! Either that or it's been a quiet month. I'll go with it being a quiet month.
Summer has shown up in Portland. Through a series of awesome deals, we managed to trade-up to a much nicer portable air conditioner than the one we bought last summer. The problems we had with the old low end AC unit was that it would gurgle water and it didn't work all that well. I remember days Nicole and I would have it going in an enclosed room of about 150 square feet and only a corner of it would be comfortable. This year, as luck would have it, my buddy Bryan was selling his mother's unit as they were upgrading to central air and gave us pretty much half off. We've had the new unit running only a couple times so far and it's amazing. Truly wonderful. You really do get what you pay for with these portable air conditioners. Now we can comfortably enjoy air conditioning day and night. Bring summer on!
We've already had one heat-wave a few weeks ago where we had a string of about four days in a row of above-90-degree temperatures. Last summer was incredibly hot through July and August and although our new AC is sweet, it'll still be a pain. A bunch of people and coworkers I know are all ecstatic about the hot hot hot weather and I'm just so not. Ohh well...
Speaking of coworkers, for several weeks now on my weekends, I've been helping a coworker of mine move. They're being evicted from their rather nice suburban neighborhood because of some bank nonsense (I don't know the whole story because I'm not one to pry and I don't need to know) and they only have a month or so to get out. Unfortunately, the guy and his family are kind of in a mild hoarding situation. Years of acquiring random stuff have left the house in quite a mess. I mean, it's not really a mess; that's kind of a harsh word to describe the situation. It's more of a pop culture items collection taken to extremes. Everywhere you look or step in their house is one such item. The heartbreaking thing is that most of this stuff is all new in the box but because of pets and improper storage and the sheer weight of other items, most of it has been damaged.
If you've seen those documentary television shows about hoarding, you have a basic idea of what's happening here. The first week I was out there, I helped clean the garage. Well, we didn't get very far into actually cleaning it once and for all because there was so much stuff, but we did carve out some walking paths to get from one end to the other. There was that much stuff. The second week I was there, we tackled the lower level which is completely inundated with wall-to-wall stuff. To make matters worse, my coworker is having a hard time finding people to help him in his hour of need. I've now become the only one who reliably shows up every week. They simply need more manpower if they plan on being out in a few weeks. It seems daunting to say the least.
I think helping a hoarding family move has affected me somehow. When I get home from one of these days where I'm helping out, I immediately being to see everything around my apartment as being expendable. Well, not everything, but a lot. If there's a stack of crap in a corner or a piece of furniture that's even mildly in the way, I desire to get rid of it. In the past, I've been content to sell things that I don't need, but now I don't mind donating things away and receiving nothing for it. To be both rid of an item and rid of the chore of selling it is awesome. I think it's become a project between Nicole and me where we lie in bed and look around and just come up with plans to get rid of it all. Now we--much like my coworker--just need to follow through.
Summer has shown up in Portland. Through a series of awesome deals, we managed to trade-up to a much nicer portable air conditioner than the one we bought last summer. The problems we had with the old low end AC unit was that it would gurgle water and it didn't work all that well. I remember days Nicole and I would have it going in an enclosed room of about 150 square feet and only a corner of it would be comfortable. This year, as luck would have it, my buddy Bryan was selling his mother's unit as they were upgrading to central air and gave us pretty much half off. We've had the new unit running only a couple times so far and it's amazing. Truly wonderful. You really do get what you pay for with these portable air conditioners. Now we can comfortably enjoy air conditioning day and night. Bring summer on!
We've already had one heat-wave a few weeks ago where we had a string of about four days in a row of above-90-degree temperatures. Last summer was incredibly hot through July and August and although our new AC is sweet, it'll still be a pain. A bunch of people and coworkers I know are all ecstatic about the hot hot hot weather and I'm just so not. Ohh well...
Speaking of coworkers, for several weeks now on my weekends, I've been helping a coworker of mine move. They're being evicted from their rather nice suburban neighborhood because of some bank nonsense (I don't know the whole story because I'm not one to pry and I don't need to know) and they only have a month or so to get out. Unfortunately, the guy and his family are kind of in a mild hoarding situation. Years of acquiring random stuff have left the house in quite a mess. I mean, it's not really a mess; that's kind of a harsh word to describe the situation. It's more of a pop culture items collection taken to extremes. Everywhere you look or step in their house is one such item. The heartbreaking thing is that most of this stuff is all new in the box but because of pets and improper storage and the sheer weight of other items, most of it has been damaged.
If you've seen those documentary television shows about hoarding, you have a basic idea of what's happening here. The first week I was out there, I helped clean the garage. Well, we didn't get very far into actually cleaning it once and for all because there was so much stuff, but we did carve out some walking paths to get from one end to the other. There was that much stuff. The second week I was there, we tackled the lower level which is completely inundated with wall-to-wall stuff. To make matters worse, my coworker is having a hard time finding people to help him in his hour of need. I've now become the only one who reliably shows up every week. They simply need more manpower if they plan on being out in a few weeks. It seems daunting to say the least.
I think helping a hoarding family move has affected me somehow. When I get home from one of these days where I'm helping out, I immediately being to see everything around my apartment as being expendable. Well, not everything, but a lot. If there's a stack of crap in a corner or a piece of furniture that's even mildly in the way, I desire to get rid of it. In the past, I've been content to sell things that I don't need, but now I don't mind donating things away and receiving nothing for it. To be both rid of an item and rid of the chore of selling it is awesome. I think it's become a project between Nicole and me where we lie in bed and look around and just come up with plans to get rid of it all. Now we--much like my coworker--just need to follow through.