A stream-of-consciousness post

This may seem a bit rambling, but bear with me. There's a point to this article.

I was shocked to read a report in the Daily Mail about a house in Grimsby, England, containing over 100 tons of garbage.

Every room in the three - storey terraced house was filled from floor to ceiling with mouldering junk. It was even piled up in the hall. Both front and back gardens were also a mess.

After years of complaints from neighbours, council officials finally moved in to empty the building in Grimsby, filling skip after skip.




The extraordinary array of bric-a-brac had been collected over decades by the 73-year-old, including old rifles, ammunition and swords, along with hundreds of more ordinary items, such as dolls, electrical equipment, toys, pictures, books and ornaments.

As well as all the junk, there was a great deal of household rubbish. Windows were broken, pigeons had moved into the loft and bait traps had to be laid for the rats.

Mr Jones claimed: 'I wanted to clear it myself. I was trying to get it done.'

The pensioner was put up in a hotel while his house was emptied over three weeks. North-East Lincolnshire Council intends to reclaim the cost of the operation from him.




Residents regarded the property as a blight on their neighbourhood. Alyson Thomson, 58, a sales manager, said: 'It is hard to imagine how he did it, but I believe he was living in the house. It has been complete hell being next door to him.'

She said that, as well as the weapons, council officials found propane gas and chemicals and had to stop work while the fire brigade was called in to deal with them. She also claimed six dog skeletons were found in the rubbish. 'On the day they started clearing he challenged me in the street, saying "what have you been saying about me?".

'I told him what I honestly thought and the police cautioned me,' Mrs Thomson added.

Council officials are believed to be investigating other addresses owned by Mr Jones.

A warrant for the house clearance was granted at Grimsby Magistrates' Court under the 1936 Public Health Act, which allows authorities to take control of 'filthy and verminous properties'.

Sounds pretty grim, doesn't it? I've never understood those who can live surrounded by filth of their own making. This isn't the only case I've come across. A while ago, Holy Taco posted pictures of a Houston, TX apartment which was almost as bad.

We had a resident who had an outstanding balance for over a month and no one could get ahold of her. The Bookkeeper went inside after so many tries to leave a note and this is what we found.




The pictures do NO justice. There is suppose to be 2 cats living here but we cant find them (we think they're dead somewhere inside the apartment-we contacted the SPCA). The place REEKS to say the least, i gagged non stop.

There are many more pictures at the link - not that you'll want to view them!

So, I was looking at the Daily Mail article, feeling rather nauseated . . . and it occurred to me that whilst this is an example of particularly egregious mess and waste (to put it mildly!), in a sense, many families today are guilty of hoarding junk and unnecessary 'stuff' in almost the same way. They may not keep trash in the house, but they certainly keep many things that are completely unnecessary, unwanted, and merely taking up space.

I learned this about my own lifestyle after my recent house fire. In the process of packing most of my belongings to move them into storage, so that repairs could be carried out, I was forced to confront the accumulation of many years. I was astonished to find out how much 'stuff' I owned that I really didn't use, didn't need, and should have disposed of years ago. Some of it, such as books, I can find a reason to keep, because I only hang on to books I re-read or find useful as references: but that still gives me a personal library of over 3,000 volumes. Methinks I may be making excuses for myself! As for other things . . . why do I still have clothes that fit me ten years ago, but not for the last five?

As a result, I've been having a gigantic chuck-out operation. As I unpack boxes of belongings and restore them to their places, I'm examining everything and asking myself, "Do I really need this? Is there a meaningful reason to keep it?" If not, it's going out. I've already made three trips to the local Goodwill store, and I daresay there are several more in my immediate future.

I was down there today, talking with the manager of the store. I asked him how many people had come to him after an experience like mine, looking to pass on a whole houseful of 'stuff'. He said that it happens now and again, but his biggest problem is people attempting to 'donate' things that are so worn, or dirty, or abused, that they're worthless. It's almost as if they view Goodwill as an alternative to the garbage dump! He was almost embarrassingly grateful that my contributions were clean and in good order.

Driving back from the Goodwill store, I counted the self-storage units I passed along the way. I was startled to realize that there are five of them in the few miles between there and my home. Three of them are brand-new, having been built in the past year or so. US and European readers will be familiar with such enterprises, but for the benefit of other readers who may not have them in their neighborhoods, here's a picture of a typical self-storage building.




Each building contains dozens of self-storage units, each with its own door. The local companies are all doing a brisk business, too. It seems that we're prone to accumulate too much 'stuff' for our homes to contain: but instead of disposing of it, we cling to it like pack-rats, and rent storage units in which to put it. It's an attitude that I can only sum up as just plain greedy.

I lived and worked in the Third World for many years. I always laugh sardonically when Americans speak of living 'below the poverty line'. In the main, Americans haven't the faintest idea what poverty means! Try living in a grass hut, on a dirt floor, with no running water, no sewage, no electricity, no roads except dirt tracks (usually with an open sewer flowing down the middle of them, the stench of raw sewage fouling everything in the neighborhood, including your food). You'll cook your food (if you're lucky enough to have some today) over a fire of twigs and wood, which you have to buy from a street vendor at relatively great expense (because every forest, tree and bush for miles around has been chopped down long ago by people like yourself). If they're lucky, a family of four or five may exist on as much as one US dollar per day - a relative fortune in some parts of the world.

Your nearest health care facility will be miles away, and you'll probably have to walk there because you can't afford the taxi fare. When you get there, odds are that there'll be very few drugs, fewer beds, and virtually no advanced diagnostic equipment like X-ray machines, laboratories, etc. Your kids will go to school in a mud hut if they're lucky, or under the nearest tree if they're not. They may have one textbook between two or three kids. They'll write notes on the back of scraps of paper, using the stubs of pencils discarded by those who can afford new ones. They'll study by candlelight (if you can afford candles), and every so often part (or all) of your shanty town will burn down because one of those candles has set fire to something.

For people in such circumstances, a trashed house or apartment such as those illustrated above, or a storage unit full of a family's excess belongings, would represent wealth beyond measure. I've worked in so-called 'slum' areas of Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. The poorest families there all had TV's, and beds, and chairs, and tables. They had plenty to eat, even if they chose their food poorly and existed on fast foods, popcorn and beer (to their consequent obesity, in many cases). Most had cars. To call that 'poverty', in relation to true poverty elsewhere, is a travesty.

What's more, people obsess about making more money, and owning more 'stuff', until they lose sight of the most important things in life. I've long since lost count of the number of marriage counseling sessions I've given where a couple's ignored each other, and their children, because both have been too busy working, earning more money, striving for 'success', maxing out their credit cards, living from paycheck to paycheck (and paying out most of them in interest charges). Their sex life is non-existent, their kids get to see them only in fleeting glimpses, they never have time to do anything together as a family. Now their relationship has hit the rocks - and they wonder why!

I'm afraid our so-called Western 'civilization' has blinded us to the realities of life in most of the world. I'm not some do-gooder holier-than-thou advocate for the Third World complaining that the West's affluence is impoverishing everyone else: but how I wish we could get a proper perspective on ourselves, and our relative wealth, and be more grateful for it! More than that, how I wish we'd use it wisely, buying, using and keeping what we need, but not accumulating so much 'stuff' that we can't use it, and have to pay good money every month to store it somewhere!

My friend Jenny wrote about something similar on her blog recently. I'd like to share an extract with you.

Here I am, a middling-to-do, everyday so-and-so in the early 21st century U.S.-of-God-Blessed-A. And like the rest of you reading this, I've been blessed with experiences and comforts beyond the imagination of the greatest kings and pharaohs of days past.

And some folks are trying to make me feel cheated because I don't live as high on the hog as a successful businessman or some fancy-pants Congressman? Sheesh! What does it take to feel satisfied today? Some folks would cry if their dog farted gold gumdrops, once they saw emeralds in the neighbor's goldfish bowl.

Ladies and gentlemen... "Thou Shalt Not Covet" made the Big Ten for a reason. That kind of stuff rots your soul out from the inside. We have it better than the vast majority of humanity could ever have imagined - to toss that aside like it's nothing - or to assume it will always be there, like it's some kind of birthright we deserve to have - is spitting in the face of those who sacrificed so much for us to have it.

We are the inheritors of both Providential blessings and a culture than has generated wealth on a scale unprecedented in human history.

That we don't get down on our knees each and every morning for the sheer wonder of it to thank Heaven - and our ancestors - for what we've had the good fortune to inherit is a testament to just how easy it is to get used to blessings.

Wow.

So thanks. Thanks all. For all our problems, life pretty well ROCKS today.

Go read the whole thing. It's worth it. Thanks, Jenny, for expressing it so well.

That's the stream of consciousness, folks. I hope the journey was worth it.

Peter