It's always a treat when you buy a house and the previous owners leave treasures behind for you to find. This house had more treasures than we could stand however. It was quite the adventure cleaning out Grandma's Attic...The garage held a lovely white sofa chair and a pile of trash left behind. Then if you took a little trek up the attic stairs, you found a set of four tires, collectible Easter eggs, 1950s iron, a pair of ice skates, a ceramic armadillo that I thought was taxidermied, a set of old golf clubs, gift bags, The Addams Family movie posters, empty boxes, sheets of glass, a canvas painting from back in the 80s, an old English baby carriage and the FIRST mobile phone complete with car adapter...Not to mention all the dirt, spider webs and creepy crawlies lurking about. 
Back to the phone for a second. Cody and I had so much fun laughing at the sight of this prehistoric cell phone. Cody put the phone to his ear and pretended to be Zack Morris from TV show Saved by the Bell (pictured above). Cody said,"Hey Slater. It's me, Zack." Hahahahaha! (Guess you had to be there.) The phone did have a missed call from Mr. Belding. Weird. Anyway we did keep the phone. My students will NOT believe that is how a cell phone used to be not so long ago. So my first task in our new home was to prep it for Move In Day. (By the way, we thought Move In Day was the 9th then 13th. We thought again it would be the 17th. Now it's May 24th.) I wanted the junk gone before we brought in our own junk! (Plus, it's kinda fun seeing what cool treasures you can find!) I enlisted the help of my mom since she's a junk guru. She crawled up in the attic to see what treasures were hidden up there. It was dark since electricity isn't run up there, so we had a few flashlights to help us see. It was also ridiculously hot up there. She was a trooper. I also prepped the walls for painting. Since the home has been vacant for nearly a year, lots of dirt, wasps and spiders have made the garage their home. I've never swept so much in my life. The pile of dirt was up to my ankles once all collected. No joke. It was a lot of dirt! We took an entire truckload of trash to the dump. The chair, stroller and a few odds and ends will be donated to charity or sold on Craig's List.
Then Day Two of Grandma's Attic was the converted attic space off the upstairs bedroom. This attic had way more goodies than the attic above the garage. And it took a lot longer to purge and clean. Mom, Noah and I got right to work early Saturday morning while it was still cool outside. (Did I mention the AC doesn't work in the house at all? Attics are hot especially without any escape to cool air.) Our strategy was to pull everything out into the bedroom just off the attic space. That way we wouldn't be stuck in a dark room that was blazing hot. You will not believe the amount of stuff that was left behind. Either it was too much for the previous owners or it was forgotten about. I'm very much in to donating good items to charity, so I wanted to sort through everything and donate what we could and trash what wasn't good. We took one truckload to Salvation Army and two truckloads of trash to the dump. We boxed up some memories for the previous owners such as pictures, sports jerseys, trophies and letters in hopes to make contact and get those items to them. Most of the treasures had been damaged due to longtime exposure to heat and a little fuzzy gray friend whose body I 'joyfully' found. Noah did walk away with a collection of Matchbox cars (43 to be exact) and over $7 in change! This house is already paying off! Now the spaces have been purged and cleaned. The garage is about to be painted a little Riviera Dune; ready for the Goodnights' junk!
Then Day Two of Grandma's Attic was the converted attic space off the upstairs bedroom. This attic had way more goodies than the attic above the garage. And it took a lot longer to purge and clean. Mom, Noah and I got right to work early Saturday morning while it was still cool outside. (Did I mention the AC doesn't work in the house at all? Attics are hot especially without any escape to cool air.) Our strategy was to pull everything out into the bedroom just off the attic space. That way we wouldn't be stuck in a dark room that was blazing hot. You will not believe the amount of stuff that was left behind. Either it was too much for the previous owners or it was forgotten about. I'm very much in to donating good items to charity, so I wanted to sort through everything and donate what we could and trash what wasn't good. We took one truckload to Salvation Army and two truckloads of trash to the dump. We boxed up some memories for the previous owners such as pictures, sports jerseys, trophies and letters in hopes to make contact and get those items to them. Most of the treasures had been damaged due to longtime exposure to heat and a little fuzzy gray friend whose body I 'joyfully' found. Noah did walk away with a collection of Matchbox cars (43 to be exact) and over $7 in change! This house is already paying off! Now the spaces have been purged and cleaned. The garage is about to be painted a little Riviera Dune; ready for the Goodnights' junk!
