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).

Put your Marigolds on, clear through the box in case something non sex toy related is in there, then fling the stuff in a black bin bag (preferably double bagged). Take to the tip though, not the normal bin collection to avoid a fox related incident!

Every kink is someone else's normal.

Something to ponder though, what age should we bin sex toys to avoid posthumous embarrassment?

Edit...re the Brothers on the Front, one said
''This is my THIRD Christmas here'' underlined several times.

Poor lads.

I googled just now, and Christmas 1916/17 was extremely cold and snowy in Flanders.

Maybe she was invited to an Anne Summers Party.

A friend was apparently Anne Summers' Number 1 saleswoman at one point. Apparently the parties were run on the same lines as Tupperware or Pippa Dee parties? (My only experience is of Pippa Dee parties. For the youngsters here, it was a clothing line. I think that I still have a Pippa Dee blouse in my wardrobe.)

The friend no longer works for the company in spite of her success. The only time she had a problem, she told me, was when she was taking her suitcase of samples on the bus and the bus went over a bump. This triggered a talking apparatus in her suitcase...

Brilliant! I wonder what the talking toy said?!

I've just drafted a letter to a relative on my late husband's side of the family. I've come across a postcard sent from the front, WW1.

It was written by my MIL's cousin. He didn't make it back home. The family already has all his service medals and his "Dead Man's Penny". I now need to send them the postcard.

I am reliably informed that it simply said "Oh yes!" and groaned quite a lot.

I've no idea whether the family will want it, but I can't put it out and if I don't send it now, someone on my side of the family will just throw it out when I die. I would gladly hang onto it until I shuffle off this mortal coil, but sending it now is the only way of ensuring that it gets their safely.

My husband's folk are still at the same address, but they didn't acknowledge the other items that they got. (I know that they got there safely, however.)

I am in touch with another branch of DH's family, but they're not in touch with the branch of the family related to the cousin. (It's complicated, as they say.)

My mum's neighbour found a stash of illegal porn in the loft when they moved in, half the loft full, it took a weekend to burn it all as they couldn't put it in the skip they had hired. Previous neighbour always acted as a devout Catholic, attended church regularly, didn't look to be that kind of person but we found out later families across the gardens had complained about him watching teenage daughters getting undressed through his binoculars.

Yeuch!

Need more of this story, fascinating

Did they meet the twins???

My grandfather suffered with severe stomach ulcers but wouldnt have them treated as it meant that my grandmother would be left without him for a couple of days, maybe a week.

They ruptured and he almost died of haemorrage (sp?) and he was in hospital for 6 weeks. We rallied round and grandmother was fine, but in that time my mother and aunt decided to do what is now known as a "deep clean" on the house, as it had got away from him a bit.

In his bedside cabinet was a stash of porn (us grandkids had found it years before) and they decided to bin it. A man who had no sex life due to his wifes disability had his stash thrown away by his prudish daughters in law (more my mother than my aunt I suspect).

Ironically, he was probably more in the mood for a bit of self satisfaction after he came home than he had been for years before that.

The grandkids do sometimes mention "grandfathers porn stash" when we are together and we all feel sorry for him. This was v pre internet days.

Same but with my close friend

She will empty out my bottom bedroom draw before my parents see /find

And I will do the same for her

Like I said, I didn’t ask. My brother is a bit fussy about security, and he also wanted to destroy banking records and personal documents as well, so probably yucky rather than illegal.

So poignant. Too many men were slaughtered {and are being} slaughtered in Wars.
Ukraine/Russia War is alarmingly similar to WW1 in some respects- trench warfare in bitterly cold conditions.

A group I follow on You Tube excavates {or did before recent War} WW1 and 2 battlefields on the Eastern Front, and puts the recovered skeletons in Bags to be buried in proper War Cemeteries, appropriate to the Nationality of the Soldier. {ID tags often remain}

What was eerie, one of the young Ukrainian volunteers found a German Helmet from a burial and placed it on his own head in a joking way....and the person videoing said that the young man is now dead from the Russian /Ukraine War.

I've got to ask - how many toys? What sort of size of box?

Hoarders gonna hoard. It might be that this person once cleared out another dead / sick person's house, and that's where it all came from. And they didn't know how to dispose of it, or else just couldn't overcome the hoarding thing, so it just stayed there untouched.

I volunteered at a place where one of the clients said her boyfriend found a case of dumped sex toys -and brought them home!
I was horrified by this, but the client said they were put to good use.!

My initial reaction to that was "Awwwww ❤️"

But now I'm questioning my sanity...

Do you still have their details? I’ve sometimes found it’s possible to pull records up online with quite sparse info — there’s even more out there than, say, five years ago. More records are being digitised all the time. It could be worth trying again to find out what became of them all 😔

Poor soul.

My husband has a relative abroad who's being looking at the family tree. She asked whether I could get more info on DH's granny's stepson - he just disappeared.

I found him on a census, but then nothing. Found his birth certificate...and discovered that he was actually the granny's own son, born to her second husband 6 or 7 months after the wedding. (She'd been widowed very young when her first two were just babies.)

I eventually discovered that the lad had been killed at Ypres. Only 18. No one in the family knew that he existed.

His name was quite a common one for his area, but there's no doubt that it's him - I found his will online and it gave the name and address of his next of kin, my husband's step-grandfather.

I've already sent all the details to the family abroad and the branch of the family that's still in touch with me. I'll also send a copy of everything to the other branch of the family.

At the moment, the lad's only memorial is his name on the Menin Gate. I'm hoping that if the CGC ever find him that a family member will be able to give them DNA to confirm his identity. I just find it sad that we didn't know about him.

Three brothers went off to the war, but only two came back.

It's somehow reminding me of the "headless man" scandal before my time. I've forgotten the name of the aristo...Wasn't she supposedly wearing a cape?

There should be a post watershed Antiques Roadshow for this stuff.

The grumpy old bloke who lived next door kept a gay porn stash in the garage behind some foam panelling he put on the wall to stop the car door hitting the bricks. There were also some dildos and an anal flesh light hidden in empty paint tins in the garage. Married to his wife of 60 years, no wonder he was so grumpy.

I had my dad’s love letters to my mum that he wrote to her during WWII - she kept them in a bundle tied up with a ribbon.
I’ve never read them - I couldn’t.
When she died I thought I’d bury them with her, then what with the emotional toll and planning the funeral, I completely forgot.
Now every time I think about it, it makes me heartsick.
I’ve no idea what to do with them now.

It's easier to find info about servicemen who came from Scotland, I've found. There's a lot of info on the Scotland's People website, including images of wills.

There's also the British Newspaper Archive online - that's how we found out how my FIL won his Military Medal. (He would never tell my husband.)

My cousin still has his dad's letters to his mum from WW2. He has the same quandary. He might pass them to his daughters - I'm not sure.

Aw the idea of putting them in frocks and a taxi would have been brilliant. what a missed opportunity for the laugh of a lifetime. can you imagine the cousins face when they arrived at his door and then subsequent chilli pepper fun time!