Every time I clean out an apartment...

[which_chick]

Regular readers may be aware that I am a landlord. Like, that's my real job and I don't have another, different real job. As such, I wind up cleaning out apartments of the things that are left behind by tenants and/or the tenants next of kin.



Every time I clean out an apartment I get to thinking that I have too much stuff. Hell, Americans as a whole have too much stuff. And, in particular, tenant Caesar and his wife Thelma (who died within a month of each other, leaving an entire two bedroom apartment full of pretty much everything they owned less a few easily portable items taken by the family) had too much stuff. And now I have too much stuff to clean out of the place.

I've taken out four pickup loads (about six contractor-sized trash bags per load -- it's a Ford Ranger with a toolbox on part of the bed, so not a ton of cargo capacity) OF CLOTHING AND FABRIC GOODS ONLY.

The apartment also contains...

Easily five pounds of assorted wheat pennies.

More than fifty arrowheads. (A nine year old boy I know is going to be getting these as stocking stuffers for the next ... ever.) I don't know if it's wrong to own arrowheads or buy arrowheads or whatever, but at the end of the day they are rocks shaped by humans, lost, and then picked up off the ground by other humans. I... feel kind of OK about the arrowheads. I would feel worse about throwing them away like they're worthless than I would feel about gifting them to a little boy who will appreciate them.

Lots of civil war bullets and metal bits (musket rings, buckles, etc) which, again, will be stocking stuffers for someone who isn't me but who WILL appreciate this stuff. I don't think having civil war era stuff is wrong. I'm kind of OK about that, as long as you're not also bopping around flying your patented ENSLAVERS AND LOSERS Stars N Bars flags while singing the song of the Lost Cause and blowing the dog whistles of States Rights and Heritage Not Hate to indicate your endorsement of chattel slavery to like-minded parties.

There's also a bunch of very ... racist stuff. Like, very racist. Like... wow, if I owned this stuff, people would think I dressed in white sheets with pointy hoods and set crosses on fire. (Caesar was a black man. This is his stuff.)

I am a bit conflicted about what to do with the racist stuff. I mean, this is clearly original vintage stuff (none of it is repro) and all of it is 100% a product of its era with legit historical value, I guess. It's all sellable on eBay for money. But wow, it's super racist. I wouldn't put this shit out at a yard sale because I'd be worried about what people might THINK ABOUT ME. I also wouldn't BUY it because, again, what people might think of me.

There's a Minstrel Show Board Game. It's a real thing and Caesar's apartment has one in it.

Labels and containers for brands with quite stereotypically-racist marketing personages (think Uncle-Ben/Aunt-Jemima but more so) on them.

Original Harper's cartoons that are, oof, if you as a modern child have no idea what a stereotpyical southern black child (there's a racist slur for this particular sort of child and I'm not using it ON PURPOSE) was presumed to look like, well, have I got the pen and ink cartoons for you, pages straight out the magazine, original AF but also racist AF.

Coin banks, knick-knacks, figurines...

You can call all of these things "vintage" or "memorabilia" or "Black Americana" or whatever, but it's still racist artifacts and I think owning this stuff would be kinda like... kinda like owning Nazi shit. It's not ILLEGAL to own Nazi shit, but I'd definitely... think twice about the kinds of people who wanted to own Nazi shit, y'know?

Aside from the "Black Americana" stuff, they had a truly ridiculous amount of Marketed Native American Themed Stuff as well. Like, "indian" collectible dolls, collectible plates, figurines, faux totem made of wood, puzzles, faux peace pipes, enough dream catchers to put one on every visible wall, all of it just... a lot, to the point where I felt odd and guilty about throwing away Yet Another Indian Doll (these things are huge, like 28" tall, many of them NIB condition except bedbugs and also I am not gonna eBay bedbuggy items) but I totally did.

I own all of this stuff, now. I have title to the contents of the apartment because I bought them from the heirs of Caesar and Thelma when they tendered keys to me with the apartment still full of stuff. But I'm not sure I want to own it and I don't think I want to try to sell it, either. Ugh.

I have a drop box ready and waiting to swallow all of my angst and questionable artifacts. That might well be what happens to most of this, if not all of it.

They DID leave me an entire apartment filled with (mostly) crap and also bedbugs and the bedbug protocol (strip outside, change into fresh clothing, do laundry IN HOT, IMMEDIATELY, EVERY DAY AFTER WORK) is getting a bit tiresome. I've bombed the place once (now that the fabric covered items are all gone and the carpets have been torn out) and will bomb it at least twice more before we're through. And I'm cleaning it out, bit by bit. But dang.

There's a lot of heavy lifting with this damn apartment cleanout.

Also, watch this space, there are TRULY vintage original sewing/crochet/kitting mags from the 1900's and shit, the which I will give a flip through and see about posting patterns or whatever from them if they are interesting enough.

Comments

[adafrog]

I wonder if there are any museums who would want that stuff. I mean, if he had it because he was black, I could contort my brain into thinking there was some hair of the dog type thing going on. ?

[which_chick]

Yeah, I'm not sure what was going on with the Black Americana stuff for Caesar, who was black. Mostly when I was there, I was there about the drippy faucet in the bathroom sink, not to do a deep dive into the whys and hows of his belongings.

There is at least one Museum All About Incredibly Racist Stuff.

[adafrog]

Interesting.

[firecat]

That sounds fascinating (both the contents of this apartment and the work of clearing out other people's stuff) and exhausting.

I might ask someone at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture about the racist memorabilia. https://nmaahc.si.edu/

[velvetchamber]

It must be simultaneously interesting and uncomfortable to get such a deep insight into people, that is oddly without context as well. Makes it very clear that so many of our notions about what we have learned from archaeological discoveries is bound to be off the mark.

Patterns sound very interesting! The internet is definitely where old patterns need to go!