Disturbing finds in house clearance

[Lockedboxed]

Clearing a hoarder’s house is not fun at all but the most disturbing find was locked boxes of all manner of books and sex toys. You really would never have thought it. Never felt unsafe with the owner (until their diagnosis of dementia, but meds keep them calm now).

I can’t unsee it (and I’m trying to be open minded about consenting adults). I think it might help if anyone has solidarity from their own upsetting finds, to make me feel less alone. Please tell me this isn’t the only time this has happened.

(Regular poster but name changed for this as combined my posts would be outing).

@WearyAuldWumman you have certainly done enough and the house clearance has absolutely been aversion therapy for me. I’d never willingly take on another.

I’m getting through boxes and now know several auction houses and outlets but it is so time consuming. It is also exhausting when relatives cannot let go of stuff but they want you to keep/store it so it doesn’t go to waste/could be a memory for the person with dementia who now has one room.

She became really quite aggressive when I suggested that she needed to make a bit of space for herself. (She's already had a council officer talking about putting her into respite so that they can clear out the place.)

She's in complete denial. She tells me that her flat is "cosy". It's claustrophobic - and I'm speaking as someone with far too many things which I'm trying to clear.

One of my reasons for distancing myself was that she was starting to use me as an excuse to buy things. She demanded that I stay over at hers for last New Year - she had purchased an air mattress and kept referring to it as "your mattress" and tried to convince me that I'd agreed to her buying it.

She wanted me to sleep in the middle of her living room so that I could "bond with [her] cat". I admit that I agreed to take the cat if she predeceased it. That was a mistake... [I'll stop here before I derail the thread.]

Yes.

I have a cousin who's finally going through his mother's belongings, stored in his garage. He's been over a few times, trying to pass things to me.

I've made certain to pass certain family photographs and so on to my husband's side of the family. (Yes, they did want them.) There was no point in waiting. If they were to remain here and something were to happen to me first, they'd just be work for someone else.

What I did was preserve the privacy and dignity of the person with dementia as much as I possibly could. I posted on an anonymous online forum (with a name change) hoping people would tell me that while I was disturbed (by quantity and variety), it isn’t all that unusual to find these things.

@WearyAuldWumman I have no words 😱. She wants you to legitimise her hoarding. Can’t believe her plans for last New Year! This year, I prescribe a spa day instead of slumming it at this sadly deluded woman’s house.

Just with you saying it would be outing it suggested you had shared this private information irl but as you haven't, good.
People with dementia shouldn't be laughed at, nor anyone who is a hoarder. Perfectly normal to feel embarrassed and uncomfortable but that should be about it.

Oh, I'm finished with it. I really am.

I was able to tell her - truthfully - that I'd been invited to a friend's for Hogmanay, but she's now completely in the huff with me. Part of the problem is that she was sending me messages via her FB page (set to public) because she likes FB and doesn't know how to use Messenger. I'm still on the teaching register, so of course I couldn't have public posts with my info all over them.

I suspect that there's some dementia there. I'm sorry for her, but I couldn't take any more. As I said, I'll avoid derailing, but it was getting to be beyond a joke.

I fully expect to hear at some point that the council will have declared her flat a fire hazard.

@Cyclebabble love that story, seeing grandad in a whole new light!

I found my parents' porn stash when I was around 10 and was looking for one of my games which was kept under their bed. After DM died (in her 40s), my siblings and I helped clear out her wardrobe and found a copy of the Kamasutra, which caused much hilarity on an otherwise very sad afternoon.

😂😂😂😂I spat my tea laughing at this comment!!!

You know it's not just old men who are into kink right? And just because one is into pain (giving or receiving) does not make them a monster.

Many many people indulge in s&m consensually and will full awareness of risk. Just because you don't agree doesn't make it abuse

Awfully defensive @iccleicclemunchy why I wonder do you feel the need to promote it?

My DH never knew his Father. His DM never spoke about him and he didn’t ask. After his DM passes away, he discovered he was born as a result of her being raped 😞 she was only seventeen.

@Lockedboxed some years ago I was doing a post grad degree at the sane university as the younger brother of a school friend . Several hundred miles away from our home town.

The younger brother finished his degree and I volunteered to help him move his stuff back to our home town (he couldn't drive). This was mid 1990s. His (very straight laced) parents didn't know he was gay, until standing on their doorstep, the cardboard box I was holding collapsed and our came a gimp mask, some handcuffs, and all manner of gay sex toys, largely black and rubber.

I retreated back to the van rather quickly ...

Personally I wonder why you feel the need to judge?

I'm perfectly happy with both my kink and my sex life. Why would I not promote others indulging in consensual fun, whatever that looks like for them.

'Many lovely stories on this thread, but also some staggering naivety. OP has discretely used the phrase sex toys but these could include weapons/pain infliction or items for voyeurism as illustrated by other posters'

Surely items for voyeurism are illegal and therefore the op would've have said equipment for potentially illegal use (ditto weapons) rather than saying sex toys?

Sex toys including those for bdsm are fine, weapons and voyeurism stuff no.

I'm clearing my parents house. It is very triggering in so many ways. The things they deemed precious (which I can't sell, use, don't want and can't give away) going in a bin. Things which were special memories (a hand written note from me from the 70s)

But I too found items which led me to question my Dad's sexuality and a man he was very good friends with. I don't think too much about it but fully understand how it feels like you're rifling through their private life and this is not a side of them you knew or wanted to know about. It's not the person you remember. Most teenagers go ugh at the idea of parental sex and middle aged offspring probably feel the same way about their very aged parents.

I'm so sorry. That must have been very hard to come to terms with. I hope things improved for her.

Actually, we should totally question the attitudes towards women of men who like hurting women, whether or not the woman consents. There comes a point where she is at risk of real harm and a decent man wouldn't put her at risk of that, even if she was begging him to do so. Men are not slaves to women's consent and should refuse to strangle, cut, or hold knives to the throats of the women they fuck, yet too many men will do just that and claim "sex game gone wrong" in court.

Oh my god! 😂

And women who like to hurt men presumably?

Those who kill or maime their partners are not acting within the bounds of consent.

You cannot consent if you do not understand the risks, and part of a consensual s&m relationship is the sadist having a responsibility to know as much as possible to enable carrying out what is anknowledge to be a dangerous activity as safely as possible. That includes knowing when to say no.

Taking away peoples agency to consent to an activity just because you don't agree with it or some people may take advantage is one hell of a slippery slope

Quite common to hide money apparently. Inside the piano is another one.

I'll accept your point about women when women are in the dock claiming "sex game gone wrong" in front of their dead partners' families, or when women are making up more than 2% of defendants of sexual assault cases.

Taking away peoples agency to consent to an activity

It's not about telling women that they can't say "yes", but asking the right questions about the kind of men who don't say "no" to acts that are dangerous or degrading.

You might like, oh I dunno, having a cock rammed down your throat so hard that you vomit, but you aren't asking the right questions about the kind of man who wants to do that to you or any other woman. You aren't asking questions like "what kind of man gets a boner from hurting any woman that way?" and "what does his willingness to do this say about his attitude towards women generally, including his family and colleagues?"

Some acts are inherently abusive to women, no matter whether she wants them or not.

That's actually very sweet.

(1) Not me, but a friend clearing out his parents' house after they died found his adoption papers. He was 50 and they'd never told him he was adopted. (2) My mother's letters, discussing her affair with a man who turned out to be my father. She must have kept the letters as a way of telling me after she was gone...

@Belshels back around 2000 I worked in a fairly eccentric place. One office was rented to a lovely elderly photographer who died. His elegant widow had to go through his huge archive, various bits went to the National Portrait Gallery. We discretely helped her dispose of the pictures of their stunning flat and furniture which had been collaged with women, legs akimbo, from magazines.
I just felt it was an emotional load too far for her. It made the archive very stressful rather than joyous.