House move discoveries

[Sharrilanda]

Awkward title 😳 but what I mean is have you come across any exciting things that have been left behind by previous owners of your house?

We've only found a couple of tea towels that have fallen down the back of the kitchen drawers and some (very handy!) work tools that were left in the garage.

In previous house a large cardboard box of hundreds of cards, birthdays Christmas etc in the attic. They were quite old fashioned, not very nice, not worth anything, so we left them up there and they were still there a decade later when we sold. Waiting for the new owners to find.

Our attic was absolutely full of motorcycle helmets 😂

My friend at school (50 years ago) had a very nice and rather valuable violin that they’d found in the attic when they moved into their house.

We found a cannon ball in the garden years ago. I can't remember what we did with it though.

Door stop? 😅

A black lacy thong in the garden!

Wrapping paper for us, nothing special

My best find was a brand new, very high quality wooden parasol in the shed. I’d never have splashed out on such an expensive one.

Our new neighbours thought that they'd found an unexploded WW2 bomb in their back garden not long after they moved in. Called the bomb disposal squad and everything and we were evacuated from the house. Turned out to be a saucepan lid 🙄

A fridge, it was integrated into one of the kitchen cabinets and we somehow didn’t notice it when we looked round twice and the landlord never mentioned it, when we told him he was surprised because he didn’t know it was there either! Only found it when cleaning out all the stuff the last tenants left in the cupboards, it was a very dramatic start to this house move culminating in the police standing in the house for the one hour they were allowed while they packed their stuff and left. I was emptying cupboards and one was harder to open, it was a fridge! Pretty clean and fully working, not like the integrated freezer on the other side that we did know about that had broken months before and just left full of water and mouldering food! That was removed and a nice tumble dryer replaced it.

Some very old postcards down the back of a few mantlepieces... In very spidery old fashioned writing.

A basement - covered by a bathroom carpet. It’s clean and usable!

The previous owner of our house left a full urine sample pot behind the toilet. I did not enjoy finding that!

We also found an unused Valentine’s card in a cupboard, which felt very sad given she was a widow.

The previous owner's extensive porn magazines from the late 1960s onwards. He had quite a collection stashed in the outhouse, garden room, attic etc

The poor builder said it was a first for him to have to clear that sort of stuff out - he used to say he needed to shower and have a large drink after a day working at the property

A basement - covered by a bathroom carpet. It’s clean and usable!

Wow - a real-life version of those dreams about finding extra rooms. I bet you were thrilled!

We once bought a house where the owners hadn't cleared out properly. There was loads of stuff left behind - lots of furniture, hundreds of books, plates, cups ... even 78 rpm records. I also found lots of personal family paperwork - letters, diaries, photos, a marriage certificate. I boxed all that up and sent it back to the family. Sadly, all this stuff was of very low quality, and there was hardly anything worth keeping.

We found a front door key to the neighbours house 👀 it was in an envelope and said what it was for on the front. Of course we gave it to the neighbour (who did seemed quite alarmed 😅)

A painting! It's on my wall now, my parents found it when we moved 30 years ago

One sombre and one hilarious.

The house itself was immaculate, nothing anywhere. However.... the garden shed while not full of stuff did have --- a temporary grave marker for the owner's deceased brother 😥I got a fright, it was spooky!

Also in the shed we got hours and hours of hilarity from the contents of a huge skip bag with 500 or so yellow rubber ducks. Yep! The family were members of a charitable organisation and they had duck runs in the little river in the park at the back of the house. All the ducks were numbered too.

We gave everything back of course, not sure they really wanted them though!

Bit unusual but moved into a house where the owners had died in a car accident in their 40s.

The house was cleared by a house clearance team as family lived abroad.

My dad went up into the loft and found it hadn't been emptied. The loft hatch was in an usual place (inside built in wardrobes) and we presumed they'd just missed it.

It wasn't full of junk though. It had the usual Christmas decorations and seasonal stuff and then there were boxes of girls clothes. One box per age range. From newborn to 6 years. Then no more. Also boxes of toys that stopped at same sort of age.

Turns out the family had a daughter who had died in an accident aged 6.
This was 25 years ago and the child had died around 5 years before we had moved in.

I found loads of Ann summers type underwear in the airing cupboard of my first flat

This is it

A signed, framed, photo of Danny Dyer. And an air rifle.

Our house had been repossessed and they left a load of junk in the garage. And a pile of books about Princess Di in the loft.

And a small cabinet, which is still used under my dd's desk.

We found a loo door from the local pub semi-hidden in the garden bushes.

Also every light bulb was either red or green

The garage was stuffed full of newspapers.

Funnily enough, they didn't want any of it back

That's so sad.