This Danish Viking was one of the items I was able to spare. There was a Scottish clansman and a British bobby but those had been completely ruined by rodents.
I will spare you the dirty details of what it took to get my parents stuff back from the fly-by-night moving company my dad hired. Let's just say it was a really bad combination of trying to save money, underestimating how much stuff they had and casually leaving the details up to us kids when it got complicated. Thank goodness my brother had the foresight to put Apple tags in a couple of boxes and for a brother-in-law who is an attorney, or we never would have gotten it back without paying thousands and thousands of dollars. But it was a fight, for sure and a messy one that I hope to never relive. We still had to pay using money orders (which can't be traced)- could this place have been any more shady?
Brent scouted storage places near us and everything was moved in, mostly by us. Brent wasn't planning to be away from work so he had to step away for critical meetings while I dragged boxes and furniture from the hallway where the moving guys dropped it. The one in charge insisted they only had to take a certain number of steps and then they would do no more. Eventually they moved the truck to a closer door but it was just awful start to finish.
I never did get a photo of the storage unit completely full. A combination of exhaustion and just wanting so desperately to be DONE, I'm sure, but believe me it was chock full from floor to ceiling. We had a hard time closing the pull-down garage style door. My parents assisted living expenses aren't cheap and it was painfully clear they would never live on their own again. We needed to address all the stuff before we were paying thousands just to store it all. Once we actually had everything, it was time for the siblings to rally and go through it all. Have you heard of Swedish Death Cleaning? Well we are Danish and so we did some Danish Death Cleaning.
Day 1 was dealing with the big, heavy furniture. I took some of it but there were mattresses (which cannot be donated or resold) and old couches that should have been tossed long ago. Reagan and I loaded up the truck and strapped it down to the best of our ability. Which is to day not very well at all.
After that we made another attempt to strap down mattresses- which we had to redo when Doug said the whole thing was liable to fall over into the road once we started driving. So we headed to the dump site with just a couple of them, figuring we would take several trip as we dug further and further into the storage unit. Whelp, turns out every trip would cost us money. The kind lady at the dump station told us we could leave the mattresses and come back with anything else we could fit and then we'd just be charge for one dump fee instead of several. As we drove away and thought about how much was left in the storage unit, Reagan and I knew it wouldn't be enough.
The movers never completely emptied the first storage units in Iowa and Logan would be coming with what remained in those. We quickly formulated a plan and headed to U-Haul to rent a truck. This all took time, but the progress we made from this point on escalated so quickly. We found Joey and Lisa working hard when we made it back to the storage unit which helped tremendously. As big pieces of furniture were moved out, we had more and more space to get into everything. I called U-Haul to see if we could get another day and they told us the truck had already been rented- all of them had- as there were a lot of kids headed off to college. We had just 1 day to get it done.
Slicked in sweat and grime, we loaded that U-Haul in a frenzy to prepare for our 1 dump before the place closed. Did I mention it's closed on the weekends? If we missed the window, we were screwed. Making matters worse was a woman Katrina befriended who suddenly volunteered to take much of the furniture. What we weren't going to dump, we were planning to donate but she suddenly was shopping and soon furniture lined the hallways we were trying to move in and out of. She was even looking at items on the truck- hoping we'd unload it so she could get a good look at it and decide if she wanted it. Ugh she was the worst and had absolutely no sensitivity about the situation! With time ticking, we had to take what we had to the dump station.
There was something cathartic about tossing the obviously broken furniture and garbage. Truly, there was straight up garbage. As Mom's Alzheimer's worsened, she stopped cleaning and organizing and it showed. If you've never been to a dump station- they absolutely reek. There were mystery pools of fluid we had no choice but to step in and then our shoes reeked too.
I'm grateful for siblings with a sense of humor who kept up spirits. Dressed like one of the Village People, we had to get a YMCA photo. The sweet lady at the dump station had become worried when we didn't come back right away. She was so wonderful in a desperate time of need and she even gave us a discounted rate. This took a load off- mentally, physically, emotionally. We still had a lot of work ahead of us, but it was doable now.
We all grabbed some much-needed lunch while Katrina helped her new friend (who had just rented another storage unit for all her new finds) move the stuff she wanted. We still had the U-Haul through the end of the day so we kept working to sort donate, garbage, keep. There were little wins- Whitney really wanted this shortbread tool and if it hadn't been lost, I was determined to find it for her! I cheered when we came across it.
We had made so much progress, but now we were deep in the weeds getting into those boxes. At one point, I grabbed something when I wasn't wearing gloves and my finger squished into poop. I'm not sure if it was human or animal, but the sadness of the whole situation hit me and I looked at Reagan. "What?" "I accidentally squished my hand into some poop" the tears were coming fast. Knowing immediately, she ushered me outside with Ireland to take a break. We loaded garbage into the U-Haul and along with Joey, we stopped by the church dumpster- which we filled to the brim. No really, we had to jump on top of the pile to get it all to fit! Then we filled the U-Haul with gas and returned it. Renting that thing really saved our skin.
Day 2 was marginally better. I got up really early and took the remaining garbage pile to the dumpster around the corner (which was technically for another business). Then I filled my car to the brim with the items we earmarked for Goodwill and cleared those away. It still seemed like just a drop in the bucket! There was just So. Much. Stuff. Logan met up with us and the remainder of Mom and Dad's belongings from Iowa. I luckily ran into the manager of the storage unit and he told me there was a huge garbage bin we could use since it was due to be collected the next day. At last all the siblings had arrive and it was time to really get down to business. We tore through boxes and made piles. At some point we stopped working on the storage unit and went through Logan's trailer so we could use it to load more furniture to be donated. Then it was back to the storage unit. We went from this:
To this:
To this, where everyone stopped what they were doing and we went through the Christmas decor. This was surprisingly the most sentimental part of it all and those ornaments were spread among everyone- a new home with some renewed hope.
In the end it came down to the tools and car parts. Joey and Logan separated Model A, Thunderbird and Mustang parts. They talked through the duplicate tools (many still in their packaging) and we loaded the last of the donations and sibling piles. Reagan decided to rent a car and drive home as many of the tools went to Doug who would put them to good use. Whitney prepared her items for shipping.
A friend of mine knew we were doing this and mentioned down the street her neighbors were doing renovation work on their house so they had a dumpster with some room. They'd told her she could use it and so she passed along the invitation to me. At this point we had used a U-Haul truck at a dump station, 2 dumpsters and a huge garbage bin but oh yes, we had more! We met her at her neighbor's dumpster and tossed the last of it. From there we made our last donation at Savers and then that was it. I swept out the unit, closed the door and told the manager we were done. It was over. We got through it without any major fights or hurt feelings and with a family this big, that's practically a miracle.
Rather than spend the night, Logan wanted to head home which was completely understandable. He had dealt with my parent's stuff multiple times at this point and he was just done. The rest of us cleaned up and prepared to celebrate Lisa's birthday at Maggiano's. Brent was finally home from BYU Education Week and he was planning to take the train home but since we had finished early, I was able to pick him up from O'Hare. I filled him in on all that had happened and we breathed a collective sigh of relief the cost of that storage unit was no longer hanging over our heads.
I cannot think of a worse way to spend a birthday but Lisa never complained once. She worked hard and kept a sense of humor about it all. In a way, I'm so grateful we were able to turn our attention to her after a couple of long, difficult days. My gosh I love her so much!
We have a tradition in our family where we go around the table and say "I like
birthday person because..." as well as "I remember when..." Everyone shared heartwarming stories about this sister from another mister and we managed to close this whole chapter on a high note. Lisa is Jewish and this was our Last Supper, so of course we had to get a photo!
Did I mention how happy I was to have Brent home again? It felt like he'd been gone for ages!
Sometimes I feel real sadness and guilt for these in-laws who married into all this mess. Brent found this and it absolutely brought me to tears.
Lessons Learned
1. If something is sentimental to someone, give it to them sooner rather than later. Much of this stuff just sat in my parents house, unused for decades and decades. Now it will be cherished like it should be.
2. When Brent and I approach retirement, we are going to scale down to a 1 bedroom apartment. We will offer the girls the big furniture and disperse it to them when they are young and can use it.
3. Watch your hobbies. You may love something like painting or fly-fishing but that doesn't mean any of your kids will. Reign it in and gift your stuff to someone who shares your interests and would use it.
4. Love your children enough not to burden them with your stuff. I hope to only leave my girls with stocks and cash. Easy peasy.
5. Keep records clean. The next day Reagan, Whitney and I made a study of every single piece of paper. I put a fire in the fireplace and burned what we didn't need which took a while.
It was another few weeks before I was able to go through the things we kept for ourselves and for our girls. The weekend we organized all the tools was a big one. Dad really had great tools, and a lot of them. Our stash was rather anemic and now we have a fully stocked toolchest, which I'm grateful for. More than anything, we will never have to go through this again!
