In the South part of town I answered a request to look at a job designing and constructing a new storage building for someone I didn’t know.
It is always interesting to get cold calls about a job. When driving to see it for the first time your senses are heightened and your brain races with ideas and insecurities. Scoping out the neighborhood on your way to the site is helpful in how you present, but also can create comical bias. For me it is funny to drive in planned neighborhoods because I know the stories behind the identical doors. People are weird, but generally kind.
This job was on a quiet street in a neighborhood of planned development. I don’t think they had CCNR’s but people kept it up as if they did. Middle America.
Past the manicured front lawn, the entry quickly became congested and the house was a series of “box” canyons, literally. Almost floor to ceiling packed claustrophobia. There was access to kitchen stuff and a small dining area. Through a box-tube from there a sliding glass door went outside to a covered patio, also full, and a yard.
In one back corner of the yard he thought that maybe his house full of crap would all squeeze into a 10×20 shed.
I presume that they must have had a place to sleep down one of the tunnels in their house. I would say hallways, but what they had were basically tubes of space formed from the stuff of life. Too much trash.
We made our way back to the front yard and a sane world of air and sunshine. The homeowner paused and said “Oh, I almost forgot, we need enough storage for this too…”
He fumbled with his keys and found the one that opens the snout-house garage door. As it rose and revealed the capstone of insanity I was sure that I had to run, not walk from this one.
Not enough room to stow a determined prison escapee, the two car garage was full of full. It could not be more full. Old me would have used a crass analogy involving a sorority girl and a runny nose, but oops I just did. Sorry.
In front of me was the equivalent of two storage buildings of the scale he proposed to build. That is with no room to get in and out of it.
I was speechless. He was not. He looked at me in earnest and said:
“I know, we need to get rid of a few things.”
I wished him luck and went home to my own hoarding problem, feeling marginally better about myself, but knowing that I have this problem too.
Perhaps I can put the brakes on it before it owns me too. My problem is slightly different. It has to do with perceived value based on energy. I think that guys problem is simple over-consumption, and love of money.
I am judging. Bad me.
