What's the weirdest thing you've found when moving in to a new home? Talk to MoneySuperMarket and you could win a £300 Love2Shop voucher NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

We've been asked by the team at MoneySuperMarket to find out about the weirdest things Mumsnetters have found when moving in to a new home, which the previous owners or tenants left behind.

MoneySuperMarket say "We know moving home can be a stressful experience and sometimes it can be accompanied a few unexpected and 'interesting' surprises at the other end! Whether you've recently moved home or not, we'd love to hear your stories on the thread below.

Also - for those of you in the process of moving right now, don't forget to check out our Home Mover's hub, where you'll find a wealth of articles, videos and tools designed to get you to your own personal 'Happily Ever After' just that little bit quicker..."

So, what weird or wonderful things have you found when moving? Maybe the previous owner of your house left behind a particularly impressive stamp collection? Or perhaps you found a stack of old diaries? Or maybe you found a wig hidden in the back of the wardrobe?

Whatever you've found, MoneySuperMarket would love to hear about it!

Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw* where one winner will receive a £300 Love2Shop voucher from Mumsnet.

Please note your comments may be included on MoneySuperMarket's social media channels, and possibly elsewhere, so please only post if you're comfortable with this.

Thanks and good luck,
MNHQ

*Money Supermarket are not affiliated to the prize draw and accept no liability in respect of the prize draw.
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Oh Rachel that reminds me, when we moved here for some reason the light switches were upside down and the taps had the hot and cold round the wrong way (red was cold and blue was hot).

Actually the bath and shower are still round the wrong way.

I usually find old newspapers - it's always entertaining reading the stories that occupied the news at that time! The house I lived in as a child gave us some proper 'treasures' though, dug up in the garden - a gas mask from WW2 and bayonet sword (that would have slotted in a rifle) from WW1! We also dug up some old city tram plates, which would have dated from the beginning of the 20th century!

A birds nest in the loft

One rental property we moved into was previously lived in by the landlord. We found a laptop in a drawer which had naked photos of his girlfriend on it cringe

I found a massive dark iron shaped stain on the bedroom carpet, along with loads of other stains in the lounge which had been strategically covered with things whenever I had viewed the house.

They left their pet cat as they couldn't find him the day they moved, they left a note and asked we ring them if he came back. I went to bed one night and was woken up with their pet cat meowing in my face, it was literally 3 inches from my face. He was very friendly though, we managed to get him in a cat box and they came to collect him :)

A carrier bag full of empty codeine bottles, buried in the flower bed.

We found an old screwdriver jammed into the garage door. Made more sense when we realised the door was broken and the screwdriver was holding it in place. I'll check the garage door by opening it on viewing the next house I buy!
We also found a 1950's newspaper from a town many counties away under a carpet.

A downstairs loo not actually connected to any waste. We did not learn this until after DH had first used it, unfortunately.

My MIL bought a flat which had an elaborate pink padded panel on the back of one bedroom door .The agent told me the flat had once been owned by a rich local businessman and lived in by his 'lady friend' .Nudge nudge ,wink wink . MIL thought it was probably for insulation, bless her

in the 80s we moved house and the couple left an amazing huge wardrobe in the room that was to be our sons, he didnt like the room and not the wardrobe. so out it come, but behind it was the most amazing painted spiderman in the corner it was just jaw dropping, needless to say when we moved the lad was crushed

The walk-in pantry painted entirely black - walls, ceilings and concrete floor, as well as the glass of the small window. Also painted to the walls was the vast amount of dog hair that they hadn't bothered to wipe off before 'decorating'. A little unnerving, and took many, many coats of paint and much cursing from me to fix!

All we found were dodgy electrics and mysterious plumbing! Nothing of any interest whatsoever.

This was more what my brother left behind when he left home. He would have sneaky cigs out of his bedroom window and then put the butt in the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers (ew). Being a manky boy he never once cleaned this drawer out. When he somehow got a girlfriend and left home he completely forgot about said drawer and is now too embarrassed to bring up the subject with our poor mum who obviously had to deal with it.

a giant sofa which woúldn't fit through the door, we ended up sawing it to get rid

A blocked up window. Not properly blocked up, oh no. Just covered over with a bit of fence panel and then plaster-boarded over.

This was good, though, because it meant I couldn't be surprised when the builders told me that pretty much everything done to the house in the 60s (nothing had been done since the 70s AT ALL) was a bodge - there wasn't an RSJ where the wall was removed between the two main reception rooms, there wasn't an RSJ where they'd moved the door in the back reception room, there wasn't an RSJ on the door to the kitchen. The wiring was "suicidal" (60s patched onto 30s patched onto original stuff) and he wasn't sure how the heating system worked because there were bits that weren't attached where they should've been and bits that were that shouldn't.

Slightly nicer, though, when we ripped up the carpet in the hallway we found newspaper from pretty much that exact day in 1911.

nothing as yet........

It was about 10 inches long, 2 inch diameter, made of black plastic,, probably came from somewhere even seedier than Anne Summers, and the battery had run out.

I'm sure we can all guess what that was - ewwwwwww.

When I moved into a house with my student friends - we found the secret booze cupboard of the previous occupants - cheers!!

nothing as yet...

A vintage Polaroid camera! It was hidden in a tiny door in the loft, next to it a heart with 'Elizabeth 1979' was drawn onto the wall.
To my absolute amazement when I tried to use it it worked :) so I took one of myself and put it all back and wrote my name next to Elizabeth.

Tbh I should have eBayed it but it felt like the right thing to do. Hope it is still there :)

We found a bundle of love letters under the floorboards in our back bedroom, they dated back to the war years! Would have loved to reunite them with their owner, but the people we bought the house from had only been there 20-odd years and had no clue who they could belong to!

We bought our house from an elderly man whose wife had died in the house.

He left everything - furniture, cutlery, crockery, bedlinen - you name it. The weirdest things were that he'd also left his wife's medicines, hairbrush (with her hair still in it), and her false teeth.

We later discovered that he'd moved in with his ladyfriend into her fully furnished house so didn't need to move anything into hers!

I found a dirty bra tied around a diary that covered in love hearts and smiley faces, however the diary was in language which I don't read so I never did find out what it said! :( :(

An actual skeleton in the closet! We bought our house from a retired scientist.