For the second time in a couple of months, our family has said goodbye to a home. The first time was in late July, when we left our home in London after five-and-a-half years there. The second time was this week, when we packed up our stuff from a home we own in Charlotte, North Carolina, and sent it on its way to our new home in New Jersey.
We lived in the Charlotte home for a bit more than 3.5 years, before fate and opportunity took us across the seas to the UK. Our original plan was to return to the Charlotte home, so rather than have it sit empty, we rented it out to produce a little income. But fate (again), COVID, and opportunity (again) changed our plans, meaning we wouldn’t be returning to Charlotte. The final tenants finally moved out at the end of September, and now we needed to get our stuff and prep it for sale.
I have been in Charlotte over the past week doing various moving chores, with the rest of the family hopping over on the weekend to sort through the things we left behind. My two sisters and brothers-in-law showed up to help as well (thanks!), so it was also a good family reunion.
We haven’t lived in the Charlotte home in nearly six years. Our daughters were wee ones when we left, and are now 14 and 11. It was an exciting and surreal experience for them, seeing the home they spent a few of their younger years in, and probably have only foggy memories of.
The home was mostly empty of furniture when we arrived this time around because the tenants cleared a lot of our stuff out – more on that later – but there were quite a lot of books, small items, and keepsakes to sort through.
We packed up just about all of the books – boxes and boxes worth. We packed up many of the keepsakes, but left many behind. At some point you have to ask yourself whether the keepsakes that are already boxed up will ever emerge from those boxes.
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For me, this meant deciding whether to keep stuff that dates back many decades, and which I have been carting around for many decades. Much of it was stored in our dusty, unfinished basement in Charlotte. Much of it got damaged or defaced either by heat, cold, damp, insects, or some combination of the above. Frankly, it was a relief seeing it damaged because it saved me the mental gymnastics of having to decide whether to keep it.
But really, I had come to a decision that I was simply not going to keep carting around things that stay hidden away in storage containers. So, goodbye to childhood schoolwork and souvenirs from way back when. Goodbye to old school yearbooks. Goodbye to knick-knacks and keepsakes and assorted other junk. Goodbye to dusty, scratchy old record albums I know I will never listen to again, and that have no conceivable resale value.
It will all end up in a landfill, left to rot. But, it had a good run. It got put into storage containers 40 or 50 years ago – and stayed in those containers like good soldiers the entire while, ready to serve when needed.
I feel bad in a way. I feel free in a hundred other ways.
On a positive note, I did take one last look at my old childhood keepsakes, and found the diary my maternal grandfather kept while serving in France during World War I (that’s right – World War One). I grabbed it and immediately stored it in a safe place. So thank God for that….
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We decided not to ship any heavy furniture to our new home. It just didn’t seem worth the cost, considering much of our furniture has begun to age and fray. My original plan was to rent a truck and haul the stuff we did keep back up north. But the rental truck company managed to foul things up, so that idea crashed and burned.
This put me in a bit of a panic coming up with Plan B. We wanted and needed to get the house cleared out as soon as possible to get it ready to sell. I needed to get back up to New Jersey after several days away.
My brother-in-law and I went looking for other truck rental options, but those fell through because it was a busy Saturday and everything was rented out. So, I madly googled “short-notice moving companies” – those that can take on interstate moving jobs on short notice – and against all odds found one right there on the spot.
Long story short: The movers showed up today (Monday), loaded up our boxes and other stuff, and will deliver it to our NJ home on Wednesday.
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There wasn’t a lot of heavy furniture to move anyway, because our tenants helped themselves to it. Just took it for themselves. We suspected this might happen.
A few years ago, when a new group of tenants was deciding whether to sign a lease, they requested that they be able to take furniture with them when they leave. This was relayed to us by the management company that handles the leases and maintenance work. We were silent owners, just there to collect the rent money, pay for repairs (and there were a lot), pay the various management fees (and there were a lot), and not be actively involved.
My wife and I thought this a strange request, asking to keep someone else’s furniture. But we needed the income, and figured their rent money would help pay for new furniture somewhere along the line. So we said fine, you can take the furniture – but nothing else.
The tenants must have forgotten the “but nothing else” part, because they grabbed the artwork off the walls and helped themselves to it, some of which were original photos taken by my wife. They took my stereo system. They took every possible kitchen item – small appliances, cookware, plates, glasses, silverware, the whole thing.
I cannot imagine the kind of spoiled, self-centered, entitled, dipshit fuck-all brain that could conceive of doing this – just marching off with things that are not yours. It would never occur to most normal human beings. Maybe it’s a millennial thing, I don’t know. Maybe in this sharing economy, they figure we should all share everything with everyone.
Nah – they’re just assholes.
And they are not gonna get a dime of their deposit money back if I have any say in the matter, which I do and will and have.
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Anyway….
I allowed myself a couple moments of sentimentality before locking up the Charlotte house for the final time today. It was a good home, in a cool area, and we had many fine moments there as a family.
It didn’t have the Life Impact of the first home we owned, in nearby Huntersville, because that was the first home my wife and I ever bought, and it’s where our two daughters were born and spent their early years. We still own that home, too, and rent it out, and don’t plan to sell it anytime soon.
The Charlotte home didn’t have the Life Impact of the London home, either, because London was simply an amazing experience we will all carry with us the rest of our days.
But the Charlotte home was a good little home, and we wish it well. It was built about 100 years ago, in 1924, and has probably seen scores of residents come and go. I’m sure the next owners will enjoy it.
Vance Cariaga 
Quite a collection of homes you had there, Vance 😉
I would find it very difficult to even rent our home out as an Airbnb, unless we cleared it all out. The thought of strangers in our home is weird enough, let alone leaving our personal things there.
That said, it’s crazy that people would help themselves to so much beyond what was agreed.
But I find it odd that you’d rent the place out with your stuff still there. Is that a norm in the US? Or was it just impossible to move the stuff of value?
And on a related note, do Americans still just leave unwanted furniture out on the street for others to pick up? (Saw it in Boston once, and heard it was a norm.)
As for the purge, it is a feat to have kept school-era stuff that long. My parents had kept my stuff – even from Grade 1 – but sadly most of it was lost in one of my wife’s Spring cleanings.
I keep my kids’ stuff now, though…just out of her sight. They, too, have a habit of hoarding, so I guess it must be genetic. But I suppose most personal relics are of value only to the one who owned them, and – nostalgia aside – it becomes impractical to keep them indefinitely.
Eventually, we have to let most of it go.
That World War 1 diary is quite a find, though. Maybe, one day, our pandemic-era diaries will be looked on with such value too…I suppose that’s the closest we’ve come to such a global event.
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Hi Yacoob, yeah, there’s a reason we kept both homes. The first one we tried to sell during a down market and since we did not want to lose money on it, we decided it was financially wiser to keep it and rent it out. Its value has more than doubled since then because it’s in one of the hottest markets in the U.S., so that turned out to be a brilliant decision. 🙂
As for the other house: We had planned to return to it after London, which is why we kept it and rented it out. Its value has also skyrocketed. Timing and luck…
In terms of furnished rental homes — you can get either in the U.S. One of the homes we rent out is totally unfurnished. The only reason we rented the other one furnished is because we planned to return to it after a couple of years in London and did not want to go to the bother of putting our furniture in storage (which is costly) and then getting it out of storage when we returned. It just so happened that our London stay was much longer than we originally anticipated.
I was a renter for 25 years before we bought our first house. I rented furnished and unfurnished places. It never occurred to me to take anything, or even think about taking anything. That’s the case with the vast majority of renters I bet, or at least used to be. So I like to believe (or pretend) that the a-holes who took our stuff are the outliers. Who knows anymore?
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Just today, Mrs. Chess and I drove by a house I lived in with my still-married parents back in the early 70’s and there was a sign there it is now for rent. While we don’t have a need for a rental home, seeing it was for rent did make me think of the furnished rooms in that home, and how few of the furnishings were still within our family’s possession. I do have some curiosity as to what it looks like in there after all this time, but then again, perhaps it is best remembered for when it was in its fairly-new condition. It has seen better days based on what I could see from the outside.
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