14 ms·

Can someone please explain how this works? Is the younger Mrs. B is paying them to remove everything? Why? Do they just throw it all away?

javert 12y ago
If you have a house absolutely full of junk, it has to get cleaned out sometime. Either before the hoarder dies, if someone is trying to help them get their life straight, or after the hoarder dies, because the heir of the property will want to get some value and you can't sell a house that is full of stuff. Based on the article, no, they don't throw away what they can sell or salvage. He talks about this. Whatever isn't valuable, I'm sure they throw away.
blatherard 12y ago
There's plenty of details left out but it sounded like Mrs. B was paying the bills, but wasn't happy about it. There was a hint that Mrs. B was "sick" so perhaps she was under doctor's orders to remove the mold/animal feces/garbage/vermin/etc that may be present in her home. Alternatively, sometimes people are ordered by home inspectors to clear out their homes enough to bring them up to code or face condemnation. The actual process is, by and large, taking everything to the dump. There do exist some hoarders who keep clean homes and for whom an estate sale could make sense, but many/most have homes that are pretty much garbage pits. Source: a close relative of mine was a hoarder, and I've watched way too many hoarding shows.
- mmcwilliams 12y ago
  The risk of sickness, in these cases, can be a serious concern. My next door neighbor was a hoarder, or so the neighborhood found out upon his death. He was allowing wild animals to live in his house; along with a dog that was located in the mess almost a week after he died. His nephew, who ended up taking care of the cleaning and refinishing, told me he contracted Toxoplasmosis from the accumulated animal feces. I accidentally let that fact slip to the first cleaning crew that was working in the house (without masks) and I didn't see them return after that.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I expect every situation is slightly different. A couple of blocks from here a woman died and her son paid to have the house cleaned out. (it was eventually condemned) My wife helped her uncle move into an apartment and helped clean out his house so that he could rent it out (additional income to cover his costs). There was an interesting truth in there. The longer you wait to get rid of something, the more it will cost you. I'm sure it would make for an excellent priceonomics story to look at things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose. Some don't quite hit zero, but a lot of the stuff in her uncle's house had gone past it into the region of pay someone to haul it away territory.
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
  things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose I'm a part of the hobby machinist community and this comes up quite a lot because many retirees have (literally) tons of heavy machinery in basements and garages. When your 5,000lb manual lathe that cost $50,000 brand new is now only worth its weight in scrap iron (about $500?) but it will cost $2,000 to call a rigger to take it away, that's a problem for whomever you leave behind when you die. It's bad enough when it's just one or two items, but I've seen hoarder symptoms in many hobby machinists/machine collectors and I feel quite sorry for the wives and children of some of these guys that will be left to deal with the aftermath.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    You sell it on ebay for a dollar, and let the enterprising person who wants it figure it out. That's how I got my 42U server rack!
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      This is key, and at least in the bay area there are enough folks who are crazy enough to rescue a "free" Hardinge lathe for the cost of hauling it out. But you also need an aging machinist, who probably paid top dollar for it, and it still has all the capability it had when they paid for it, and so it is just as "valuable" to let it go for nothing. The flip side is that the "kids" who are clearing out Dad's basement don't realize that a machine tool is a machine tool is a machine tool and so they sell it for scrap rather than post an ad on Craigslist or something. An old bridgeport can look worthless and still be a quite useful, especially with tooling included.

javert 12y ago

If you have a house absolutely full of junk, it has to get cleaned out sometime. Either before the hoarder dies, if someone is trying to help them get their life straight, or after the hoarder dies, because the heir of the property will want to get some value and you can't sell a house that is full of stuff. Based on the article, no, they don't throw away what they can sell or salvage. He talks about this. Whatever isn't valuable, I'm sure they throw away.

blatherard 12y ago

There's plenty of details left out but it sounded like Mrs. B was paying the bills, but wasn't happy about it. There was a hint that Mrs. B was "sick" so perhaps she was under doctor's orders to remove the mold/animal feces/garbage/vermin/etc that may be present in her home. Alternatively, sometimes people are ordered by home inspectors to clear out their homes enough to bring them up to code or face condemnation. The actual process is, by and large, taking everything to the dump. There do exist some hoarders who keep clean homes and for whom an estate sale could make sense, but many/most have homes that are pretty much garbage pits. Source: a close relative of mine was a hoarder, and I've watched way too many hoarding shows.

mmcwilliams 12y ago
The risk of sickness, in these cases, can be a serious concern. My next door neighbor was a hoarder, or so the neighborhood found out upon his death. He was allowing wild animals to live in his house; along with a dog that was located in the mess almost a week after he died. His nephew, who ended up taking care of the cleaning and refinishing, told me he contracted Toxoplasmosis from the accumulated animal feces. I accidentally let that fact slip to the first cleaning crew that was working in the house (without masks) and I didn't see them return after that.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I expect every situation is slightly different. A couple of blocks from here a woman died and her son paid to have the house cleaned out. (it was eventually condemned) My wife helped her uncle move into an apartment and helped clean out his house so that he could rent it out (additional income to cover his costs). There was an interesting truth in there. The longer you wait to get rid of something, the more it will cost you. I'm sure it would make for an excellent priceonomics story to look at things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose. Some don't quite hit zero, but a lot of the stuff in her uncle's house had gone past it into the region of pay someone to haul it away territory.

HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose I'm a part of the hobby machinist community and this comes up quite a lot because many retirees have (literally) tons of heavy machinery in basements and garages. When your 5,000lb manual lathe that cost $50,000 brand new is now only worth its weight in scrap iron (about $500?) but it will cost $2,000 to call a rigger to take it away, that's a problem for whomever you leave behind when you die. It's bad enough when it's just one or two items, but I've seen hoarder symptoms in many hobby machinists/machine collectors and I feel quite sorry for the wives and children of some of these guys that will be left to deal with the aftermath.
- XorNot 12y ago
  You sell it on ebay for a dollar, and let the enterprising person who wants it figure it out. That's how I got my 42U server rack!
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    This is key, and at least in the bay area there are enough folks who are crazy enough to rescue a "free" Hardinge lathe for the cost of hauling it out. But you also need an aging machinist, who probably paid top dollar for it, and it still has all the capability it had when they paid for it, and so it is just as "valuable" to let it go for nothing. The flip side is that the "kids" who are clearing out Dad's basement don't realize that a machine tool is a machine tool is a machine tool and so they sell it for scrap rather than post an ad on Craigslist or something. An old bridgeport can look worthless and still be a quite useful, especially with tooling included.