Good for you. My suggestion would be that if you can afford it to rent a dumpster... it makes it SO much easier to get rid of stuff.. when you can easily dump things it realy goes fast! I have been taking first steps at getting our sunroom/sewing room cleaned out. Dh bought a treadmill (head smack) this past weekend and we have to have some place for it. We had been using the room as a dumping ground for all of the construction stuff in the house and boy oh boy is it a mess. I did take time to do a small project that I will post about later.

Keep the spirit!

Maddiemom

Good job. It takes time.

I'm curious about the old stove though. I bought a 1950 stove in Cal. and had it shipped to Alaska. Got a pic of the stove?

Gloria

Foxy,

You have a path now, that's HUGE progress!!! Congratulations!

P.S. Very clever of you to use your sick-time to organize photos. Hope you're feeling better!

Maddiemom, unfortunately getting a dumpster up this old country driveway is out of the question. Even when the house was renovated after the fire, they couldn't use a dumpster. Most of the debri had to be hauled out of here in pick-up truck loads. The one time they used a dump truck it caved in the septic tank pipe. I can sympathize with the dumping ground room. Our SK was used as a dumping ground during the renovation. This on top of previous residents junk and who knows what else has made for quite the mess.

Gloria, I would be happy to get a picture of the stove for you, but it isn't anything special. It seems to be from the 1980's (maybe early 90's) and looks like a genaric appartment grade piece of junk.

Thank you, Julie! I'm feeling much better now:)

I'm hoping that next week I will get a chance to make a trip to the rescue mission (our version of the good will) and unload some of the usefull items that are sitting in there. Then with the removal of the stove and refridgerator it will really look like there has been progress. If only I could figure out what to do with the old window unit AC's. I doubt they work and I'm sure the dump will want to charge a fortune to take them. Then there are the sheets of ruined drywall. Due to the broken windows some of the drywall got wet. I wonder if drywall will burn.

Just think when I get this room done I have another one behind it to clean out, yikes!

Foxy.

i like your progress!

Well you can sure tell *I* live in the suburbs! Does the dump charge to dump stuff? I guess I always figured it was like a salvage yard. If I put an A/C unit out on the curb, the scrap metal collectors (or whoever they are) would be by to collect it before the garbage trucks arrived.

Maybe the rescue mission would take them?

Oh, gosh, Julie. We could never put anything like that on the curb. Three bags only, none weighing more than 70 pounds. And NO ONE curb shops.

There's isn't any type of scrap recycling up here, so people don't nab stuff like that.

Our dump charges extra for drywall. Haven't figured that one out. Drywall will burn, but it ignites very slowing and doesn't burn well. Most of it has something like a one hour fire rating thing, to try and keep the house from burning so quickly. It would be easier to bury it and let nature do the work of making it into mush.

Do you have a freecycle list in your neck of the woods? I still see lots of stuff that could be useful to people. If I lived within 30 miles of you I'd come get those bushel baskets.

Gloria

Gloria,
THREE BAGS?? I would have to buy bigger bags! LOL None of ours are ever that heavy--that's too much for me to carry.

Our only limits to what we can put out are (1) no paint or chemicals (2) yard waste has to be separate (3) recylables have to be separate (4) construction debris needs a dumpster and (5) kitchen appliances have to have the doors taken off so kids don't crawl inside.

My inlaws live a suburb over and once brought a sofa over to leave on our curb (someone picked it up before the trucks came). They only have furniture pick up once or twice a year in their city. We can put out big stuff every week (but our property taxes are much higher). We always put out non-bagged trash the night before to give it a chance to be recycled by someone else.

Julie, is trash a city service? Ours is a private company, although it is a monopoly. A small time guy with a pick-up can't charge to haul away trash for three or four people. I can't lift 70 pounds, so I know if I can lift it, I'm under the limit. They will just leave it on the curb if it is too heavy. The good deal is that every extra bag only adds a dollar to the bill, so if I've been doing a bunch of crap reduction, it's cheaper than making a trip to the dump. I compost, so I never have yard wastes.

Stuff like appliances is a problem since it has to go to one of the receiving stations. We are so far from any processing plants that there isn't any incentive for people to gut and reuse parts from stuff like that. Our dump will take a certain amount of hazzardous stuff for free and then charges by the pound over that amount.

Gloria

I have lived in several different states. I have lived in small towns, out in the woods, in the suburbs and in the country. Yes, I have moved a lot.lol What I have found is trash removal all depends on the individual county. Example- You can live in Baltimore county out in the country and you get to enjoy free trash pick up, just like in the city, and unload all the junk you want at the dump for free. It is all covered by property taxes. If you move to the next county over, Carrol Co. you have to pay for trash removal and you have to pay by the pound at the local dump. Needless to say you need a local drivers liscense at the Baltimore dump to prove you are a resident of that county. Where I live now our trash removal is not covered by taxes, but it is not too bad. Our trash removal costs are $50 per quarter and those guys will take way more then the 4 bags that the contract says. We also have to pay to use the dump a whopping $4 per 100 lbs, BUT items like dehumidifiers cost $35 to unload. We also have a scrap metal recycling center who will pay you by the pound. When I lived in another state (that shall remain nameless) garbage removal cost were well over $100 per quarter and you didn't dare put out more then 3 bags or they would try to double charge you for the service! As for a dump, HA, that must have been closed to the public or a carefully guarded secret that only the govener was aloud to know about.lol

Julie, I can't dump the old AC's on the rescue mission. They look awful and ten to one they don't work. I'm going to check with the scrap metal place to see if they will take them(thanks for the idea). If worse comes to worse I will try them to see if they work and if they do you can bet the first heat wave we get I'm putting them by the road with a "free take me, I work" sign on them.lol

Gloria, anything useful you see in those pictures is stuff we actually use.lol Like the baskets are for when we sell produce and the weed wacker is a must around here. The concret is for the sidewalks we have been redoing so come spring that should be gone. Now I would give the storm door to the first taker, but chances are slim that anyone would have a use for a door that is only about 2' wide...don't ask, I have no idea why.lol

DH says that tomorrow he is going to get the stove and refridg out of there so the guy can come pick them up on Wednesday, yeah:)

Foxy.

Gloria,
Yes, trash, recyclables, and yard waste pickup (the city composts it) are all city services included in our taxes. My inlaws live in the same county, but one city over, and they have trash limits (we also get our residential streets snow-plowed in the winter, and they don't). Our property taxes are probably double theirs.

Foxy,
Have you checked out the Gardenweb forums? That 2' wide storm door could get a second life as a trellis or something!

Juulie

Wow, after reading about all the different trash removal arrangments, I'm grateful that ours is a town service! We just started being charged for large-item (sofas, mattresses, appliances) removal. Up until this past autumn, if you called a week in advance, the town would pick up pretty much anything you wanted to get rid of for free.

We also have an extensive network of "trash shoppers" who will more than likely make whatever you put at the curb vanish before morning. Weird noises woke us up one night and we discovered a guy taking our trashed grill apart -- evidently he just wanted the metal, which was fine with us. We also had someone take two twin-sized 30+ yr-old mattresses that we'd put curbside, and I shudder to think where those icky things wound up!

Latest up date........
The stove and refrigerator are out of the SK and ready to be picked up! Also there was a crudley constructed shelving unit (for lack of a better description) that is now out of there and in the burn pile along with some other pieces of messed up scrap wood. It looks much worse in there right now.lol On the bright side the mess that was made during the removal of these items is going to be easier to deal with then working around those bulky pieces. In other news..... I discovered we have three closets in there. I had thought there were only two. Hmm...I wonder what else I'm going to find hidden in there. The holy grail perhaps.lol

My goal for tomorrow is to venture in there and fill up one or two garbage bags and, weather permitting, burn the burn pile.

Foxy.

Way to go, Foxy! Gee...an extra closet is quite a reward for your progress. Anything in it?

That is a good question. I have no clue what is in the closet. I'm sure I couldn't possibly get off so easy as to have it be empty. When I get enough stuff cleared away from it I will be scoping out the inside of the new found closet.

Foxy.

What an interesting place to live, discovering closet space?! I am jealous!

Glad to hear you are making progress even with your garbage collection limitations. Keep us posted on your progress!

Foxy,

What fun!!! You'll be invigorated again just having the bulky stuff out of there.

And hurry and find out what "treasures" are in the hidden closet! LOL We're all curious....

Emmhip, don't get too jealous too quick.lol This is not the kind of closet space that could be used for clothes or anything like that. It is all in a structure that is seperate from the house. Plus with this being a farm I guarentee mice visit those closets... a lot of mice.

The bulky stuff being out of my way is bringing back my energy and drive to work on that place. As for the closet, ummm...that is more like curisoty mixed with fear. You can bet I will have a clear path to the door and be armed with a shovel when I open that.lol

I must admit I didn't reach my goal today. I spent most of my day stalking my mailman for a package.lol It turned out that he didn't bring it with him so then I had to have the post office search for it. After all of that I had to run to the PO to retrieve my package. I did however work on the burn pile while watching for the postman. As luck would have it the minute I was getting it to start burning the sleet and rain started. Needless to say most of the junk is still sitting there unburned. Okay, tomorrow is another day. I will dig out at least one bag of junk out of the SK, no excuses.

Foxy.

I would be so totally ticked having to deal with stuff left behind. It's not like I ever find some kind of treasure just trash, trash and used paint to deal with.

When we moved out of our last house we had one last crud load to deal with and the new owner said to just leave it. I told the DH absolutely not! I have ended up with old paints and poisons everywhere we've been and I wasn't going to be grumbled about even if he did say leave it. I knew the wife was the one who would never know he said that to us.

Gloria

I have to have some sympathy for the last people who lived in this house. Their life was in shambles when they left here. The house had been gutted by a fire and they lost everything. To top it all off the owner of the house insurance company was suing these people because the fire was caused by their mistake( a short in an extesion cord they were using). They did at least remove all their burnt belongings and hauled them to the dump. I also have a feeling these people were not responsible for all of the mess in the SK.

Well, I got in there and bagged up another large bag of trash. I was able to peek into the new mystery closet. From what I can see it contains a Coleman cooler, old windows and some bright green plastic thing that I can't even begin to figure out what it is. I'll be able to get a better look when I clear more stuff away from that door. This closet looks like it will be the perfect storage place for rakes, shovels, the weedwacker and other yard related items.

Foxy.

Foxy,

Great plan for the mystery closet! Congratulations on getting another big bag of trash out of there.

And somewhere in the world, someone is still saying, "Whatever happened to our old Coleman cooler?" LOL