How Much Stuff Can a 90 Year Old Lady Have?

There never seems to be a dull moment in my life or with my family lately. Apparently Mom and Dad have decided to sell Grandma's house. Which mean I can have the Dining room set I want, Yahoo! But it comes at a price. For the next few weekends, maybe even months, I will be helping my Mom clean out my grandmothers house. You're thinking, "doesn't sound too bad, how much stuff can a 90 year old woman have?" to that I say HA! the short and skinny version is she has 90 years worth of stuff. And not just stuff like you and I have laying around the house, this lady has "stuff".

Let's give you a little bit of a back story shall we? My Grandmother is 90 years old that means she was born in November of 1917 so that means when the Great Depression hit in October of 1929 my Gram was just about 12 years old. Which in those times meant she was already working at the family dairy and taking care of her 3 brothers and 2 sisters (give or take a sibling or two), helping her Mother with meals, shopping, chores etc. So she saw first hand how the depression affected her family. She saw her mother saving everything she could to possible use it later for something else. Everything that could be re purposed after use was and everything that couldn't be was collected. Very few things were throw out for fear that it might be needed at some point. So at this very young age my Grandmother was learning to become, we call today, a Pack Rat.

Fast forward to the 1940's my Grandmother and Grandfather get married and move into their new house together that was a wedding present from my Grandfathers family, I believe. The house was ginormous by any day's means but especially for the 1940's.

The main house consisted of 5 floors:

1.) Dirt Floor basement with 3 rooms - one for laundry other 2 were storage

2.) Street level of the house was the family Business a Bar my Grandfather ran until the day he died in 1995.
(also had 2 storage rooms and a storage area for the Bar's Beer)

3.) Living Level of the house 3 Bedrooms, a living room/dining room, kitchen, bathroom and HUGE storage room that was possible a bedroom at some point.

4.) Upstairs which my family referred to as Mazlers because Mr. Mazler lived there until he died. Then this area all 5 rooms plus crawl spaces, became storage.

5.) the Attic, which went over Kochis' and Mazlers and was also the creepiest place in the world, this consisted of 3 rooms and was only accessible through a ladder from Mazlers closet area, and again became storage area.

Plus there was another 2 Floor Duplex attached to my Grandparents home which they also owned, this was called Kochis' probably because my Grandmother's maiden name is Kochis and i believe a brother or two may have lived there for a while:

1.) 3 rooms used primarily as a Garage like area for my Grandfather's tools and outdoor furniture.

2.) 4 rooms all Storage for Holiday decorations, etc. this attached to Mazlers and you could actually get from one side to the other through a door but for some reason you could never open the door from Mazlers only from Kochis', weird.

Ok, so after Mr Mazler died and the Kochis' moved out, (maybe mid 1960's), my Gram became the pack rat of the Century filling each of the rooms in Mazlers and Kochis' to the CEILING with "stuff". What kind of stuff you ask? Well here's a sample of what we found in Mazlers: the fabric room in Mazlers was a living room that was filled floor to ceiling wall to wall with piles and piles and bags and bags of fabric. The room was approximately 11x12 and there was a one foot wide path that went through the middle of the room and that was it. I'm surprised that room never collapsed under the weight of all that fabric. There was another room in Mazlers that was all old rinsed out vegetable cans there had to be thousands of them, there were the foam plates that meat and chicken come on all washed and stacked in neat piles about 10 feet high there were at least 5 piles of those, there were boxes of clothes and shoes from all 3 of my Grandmother's kids that they had out grown, all of Mr Mazlers things were there since he had no family so when he died his stuff stayed there (why not!?!?! add it to the collection!), all kinds of bar signs and promo items my Grandfather received for the bar, also things he got from people in the town since he was Mayor for over 25 years people gave him a lot of "stuff" too, and anything else my Grandmother could get up there, stayed there.

On the Kochis' side was the garage area which was 2 rooms (equivalent to a kitchen area and bathroom), then all the outdoor furniture was in the next room over and in that room was a stair case that lead to the next floor, that floor was 4 rooms of floor to ceiling piles of Christmas and Easter decorations for my Grandparents house and the church they belonged too. Fast Forward again to 1995, my Grandfather dies and my Grandmother can no longer take care of this huge house and the bar so my Mom helps her sell it to move into a smaller house. We find a buyer for the house, who happens to be a Local from the Bar who wants to preserve my Grandfathers place and fondly keeps the name "Jack's". He's willing to buy the house but has a limited time to do so and wants the place "cleaned out" before the sale is made. No problem, give us a few months and couple dozens people and we'll have it done in no time! Nope, sorry you get 6 weeks and just me and my Mom and my boyfriend at the time to clean it out. WTF?!?! That's just cruel!! I think the first few days were just me and my Mom sitting in between piles of "stuff" crying and wondering how we were gonna get this all done. We managed to get it done in about 5 1/2 weeks, with frequent trips to the Auction to sell what we could, old roll tops desks (3), claw foot bath tubs (2), boxes of clothes and hats (dozens), miscellaneous furniture (dozens of pieces), Old time Coca-Cola signs and Bar memorabilia etc. anything to make a couple extra bucks.

Mom and I finish cleaning it out and Gram keeps the things she just cant bear to part with and we move her into the newer SMALLER house. So the stuff that Gram couldn't part with is now in the Basement of her new house, an unfinished room about 25 X 16 with a cubby-hole of an additional 10 x 10 space. Also down there is a floor to ceiling metal rack that takes up one of the 16 foot walls that is all canned goods and pots and pans. So as you can imagine most of this room is just narrow walk ways between huge piles of "stuff" Gram couldn't part with from the other house and "stuff" she's collected since 1996 when she moved there.

So to answer your original questions of how much stuff can a 90 year old woman have? A lot! Especially if she's a pack rat like my Gram! So, back to my original point, I think I had one anyways, is I will be spending many a weekend in the coming months with my Mom cleaning out my Gram's house so we can sell it. Hopefully this one will just take us a few weekends instead of a few months!