Weirdest thing (or things!) you found when moving house

[Arlanymor]

After four long days I am fully moved into my new place - while my back may be aching, my wallet is happy as I did it all myself! But in the process of going into the nooks and crannies of my old place I came across two interesting things (nothing exciting like witch bottles sorry, both buildings are only about 40-50 years old).

The first was when I was checking down the back of the old sofa which came with the old flat and which I frankly never sat on as it was far too uncomfortable - just a force of habit really, there wouldn't be any of my spare change down there! And wedged between the frame and cushions was a set of car keys with bleeper (am sure that's the technical name!) and - I kid you not - 12 DOOR KEYS! All different sizes/shapes for different doors, it was like a jailer's set!

The second was when checking under the fridge and I came across what USED to be a grape, but was now a perfect raisin with a stalk and everything! Must have dehydrated itself in a nice cold space. I now consider myself an amateur winemaker (right?!) Honestly though, if I had taken off the stalk and put it in a packet of raisins you wouldn't have known the difference - fascinating!

Maybe not all that exciting (probably not) but it's made me nosy for what other people might have found on their travels. Also I don't have proper internet yet - this is all phone data - so I don't have any TV. Although I did find a box with my mum's old DVD player that she gave to me because she had no use of it and suggested I put it on eBay... clearly I never managed to, nor the DVDs she gave me with it... so at least I am now watching Knives Out! Was so weird being in a house without any background noise... this is definitely helping it feel like home!

How lovely.

I lost an engagement ring in a previous house
So hopefully somebody found that, sold it & it gave them happiness. Sigh.

When my grandad died, me & my mum cleared his house & found 2 necklaces (only cheap ones but pretty, sparkly heart shapes) in 2 of those little like velvet mini drawstring bags. We took one each & I wore mine with love until it discoloured. I still have it. My mum has no idea where they came from.

I've not found anything myself whilst moving house, despite moving house 10 times as an adult!

(There was once a MASSIVE spider, dead across the plughole in a rented house I went to view, & I refused to move in until somebody had removed it)

I found quite a nice hoodie in a cupboard and some other little kids craft thing so messaged the seller to say I’ve got a couple of bits of yours for you to pick up. He was dropping off some tiles for the house also so it was no bother. He never answered me and I saw him sheepishly dropping off the tiles. They had trouble getting out on time on the moving day so I assumed it was down to this.
Weeks maybe months later we found a teddy and a pile of photos - a mix of wedding day and incredibly explicit photos of the owner and a partner. Also a framed picture of his …

Bit grim but a fleshlight in the loft - everything else was clear up there so found it odd that was the only thing they decided to leave behind!

When we moved in we kept finding an elderly Bengali woman.

When we had ridiculous conifers removed a few years ago in our own place, a previous owner had obviously used the space between the trees and next door’s fence as a dumping ground. We found coil springs from a car, knives (cutlery, not weapons), breeze blocks-enough for a small extension, broken cups, kilos of branches that they’d just dumped, fence posts, empty builders’ type bags-cement, old council fence concrete posts, etc. At one point, we cleared a ground covering creeping plant to extend the lawn and hit something solid. It was a beach ball size lump of concrete. We reckon they’d mixed up too much then just dumped it into a hole they’d dug in the original lawn. Took 2 skips.

When we stripped the wallpaper we found signatures of the family who lived here in 1889!

Oh and a ceramic toilet behind the shed!

Very old house. Fascinating!

Oops posted without the explanation. She collected her grandchildren from the school in the next street and still had a key so would pop in for a sit down if she was too early. We were going in after work to decorate and only realised when DP took a few days off work and she kept turning up.

There was a guitar left behind in my student house. We told the landlord but nobody ever came back for it. I took it with me when we moved out, and still have it 14 years later!

Flimsy mirrors shaped like saxophonists stuck all around the kitchen. So odd.

Previous owner of our cottage sold costume jewellery for a living. Our quirky and much extended property has 2 lofts. The little loft had a bag of 80s necklaces. Didn't want them sent on.

There was a Beano and a Jacky annual providing some sort of wall to radiator buffer.

My fave is how a previous owner modernised the Victorian door to the bathroom. It had a fake panel and was painted badly. Our decorator stripped it and discovered that the door furniture had been removed and the gap covered by part of a ruler.

Our neighbours took on a total renovation. One of the outbuildings - small brick shed - had loads of wage packets full of old money. Only surviving relatives lived in Australia, so they said keep it.

On Facebook there's an American woman who does reels of a house she bought with everything in it for 97 thousand dollars. Well worth watching

As well as old furniture, our loft was full of stuff, including a bag full of childhood teddies, and a bridesmaid dress. There was also glass serving bowls in a cupboard, one I still have, over twenty five years later.

I’ve told this story before…a human jawbone, with teeth & a piece of long bone. Found in two of those really sturdy small cardboard boxes that were used for electrical components. They were in the corner of the otherwise empty under stairs cupboard. The previous owner definitely knew they were left.

It was only days after we moved in and I was looking for the fuse board as everything had tripped.

Long story short police were informed & collected the boxes a few weeks(!) later. Coroner concluded that they were archaeological specimens.
Found out a long time after that the ex husband of the owner worked in a related area. But why leave human remains behind when you left??

A huge pile of dead wood lice, a dolls head in a glass, and a family tree from someone’s funeral, all in the same house

In clearing out under the stairs, about five years after we moved in, a small faded packet of soap powder from between the wars.

The previous owners pet snake and a spare room with 6 machetes embedded in it.

We moved a year to the day later!

Different sized screws in every hinge.

A leak from the pipe in the wall to the shower that had been going for many, many years.

Painted emulsion on top of gloss, really badly, on all window frames.

Any painting was one very thin badly applied coat only. I've never before or since seen such appalling walls.

Discovered the "metal" pole holding up a corner of a worktop in the kitchen was a broom handle painted silver.

There were a pair of louvre doors in one room, but one door was upside down so the slats were pointing in a different direction from the other door. Immediately jarring and took DH 15.mins to put right. I doubt they'd even noticed......

On viewing I asked them how often the shower trap needed clearing - they were mystified what I was talking about.

The previous owners pet snake and a spare room door with 6 machetes embedded in it.

We moved a year to the day later!

We found they had had a recent bonfire in the garden. In the ashes were the burnt broken remains of glass jars and lots of £1 coins totalling at least £100. Bizarre !

I did a mutual exchange a few years ago, the house was left in a mess and the grass in the front garden was quite long.. a few days after moving in the local window cleaners came round asking if I’d like them to clean the windows.. so me, my mum and nan(they were helping decorate) were stood in the front talking away to my new neighbour, when the window cleaner tripped on something in the grass. Which turned out to be a vibrator, poor lass must have been gutted when she realised she’d left it behind!

Hahaha I thought your original message was a joke! This is kind of sweet - what did he do? I think internally I would be uncomfortable with having a random stranger popping into my house, but my politeness would mean I'd offer her a cup of tea 😂

I found these and an invitation to an event in a handbag from 36 yrs ago

photo of Opal Fruits not loading

I had a good look through it to see if the couple we had bought off were in it ( quite normal looking, couple of under 5 kids ) - there were lots of pictures - but couldn’t see them

We moved into a house that used to be a shop in rural Ireland in 2008. It was halfway between two towns and served a large rural area for farming provisions up to the 1980s. We renovated the house and shop into one house. Whilst renovating we pulled out a fitted cupboard that had a false bottom. Inside the false bottom were two big brown envelopes stuffed full of something soft and taped closed. For the time it took to get a knife to open it all we could think off was it had to be cash from the shop hidden from the tax man. Just the denomination of the notes was the only question.
We opened them and didn't get instantly rich, but we did inherit some nice knitting patterns😂

A mummified furry body - probably a cat - in a plastic carrier bag.