I got these out of a house in 2003. Here's the original blog post talking about where I got them from June 28th, 2003:

The most hilarious thing to ever happen to me occured yesterday.

Adam's dad, as I may have mentioned, is a private detective. He also does other things aside from watch people--such as, watch houses. He was hired to watch a house on the north side. An 86-year-old woman had lived there up until her death. She left no heirs, and the bank doesn't want anyone tampering with it while it's being sold. She deemed all of her valuables to be auctioned off and her house sold, the proceeds going to a cat charity.


Before it could even be considered sellable, they had to clean it out. Apparently, this woman was a total packrat--she merely had tunnels to walk through her house because stuff was piled up so high. The bank sent someone through earlier this week to weed out any valuables they could auction off. They left behind everything else that wasn't really worth too much to them.


So, Adam's dad was given the keys to check in on the house--and permission that if he sees anything in the house that he wants, he can simply take it. The bank is through with it, and they're sending a cleanup guy through to literally sweep everything into a pile and haul it all out to a dumpster.


Adam and I *jumped* at this chance to explore someone's house and dig through old stuff. He wasn't really into this until he met me, but now he's caught the bug. We went through the house on Thursday evening with his dad to simply scope it out. There was a first floor, an attic, and a basement. I thought the woman had been dead some time, but she apparently just lived that way--the kitchen was pretty gross, and she had a major mouse infestation. Every surface was covered with mouse droppings. I think the sense of adventure toned down the gross factor, because it never even phased me.


We vowed to go back Friday and clean out the house of everything we wanted. Adam and I went there early Friday morning with my parent's big van--I actually drove it on the expressway, which was pretty interesting. Nothing bad happened. We sorted through a bunch of cool stuff in the attic. Adam's dad was out for money... he said to pick up anything you could sell on EBay and then take whatever we wanted. Well, I wanted everything! When I see something interesting that's old and unique, I want it for myself. Why would I want to make some huge profit?


I found an old box full of old medicine bottles with hand-made labels like "Dose-1 teaspoon" and a bunch of old makeup from the 30s and 40s that still had stuff inside. Beauty cream called "chatterbox", old lipsticks, everything. I got a whole stack of Life magazines from '46-'48 in mint condition. Those are things I want to *keep*. Adam found tampons that were REALLY old, which I found interesting and decided to keep also. When I was going through a drawer, I found these itsy bitsy cardboard boxes... I couldn't think of what they were. They said "prophylactics" but it just wasn't clicking. So I say to Adam, "What's a prohylactic?" and he goes "Rachel. It's a condom."


I tossed the box away from me instantly and started laughing. They were really old condoms, probably from the 60s. I took a little box that was still shrink-wrapped. They were little individual cardboard boxes with three condoms apiece, and the package said "meant only to prevent disease". Lovely. Anyway... so the basic theme is, if it's everyday interesting, I enjoy it. Adam and I went to an antiques mall on Monday, and I commented that when I have my own house, I want it to be like stepping back in time--a functioning museum that you can actually touch. After all of my finds yesterday, I said we should have a special half bath set aside with all the "correct" things in it from the period, including the tampons and the condoms. :o)


On to the funniest, most embarassing moment of my life (thus far). Adam and I were on the back porch. There was a cute tiny dresser covered with some pieces of countertop. We decided we liked the dresser, so we took all the pieces of countertop off of it. I decided I would be the one to empty out the drawers. At one point the drawers were filled with pieces of paper but are now shredded to confetti by miscellaneous rodents. I was just dumping out the paper onto the ground.


The first drawer went okay. The second drawer was the doozy. Adam was standing right behind me as I tipped the drawer and shook out the paper. The next thing we knew, we were listening to the most horrible sound. Kind of like a cat meowing, but in horrible, utter pain, and a moan... it was just disgusting. It freaked me out, so I simply dropped the drawer. My plan was to then turn and leave the room, quickly, and head to the front of the house.


Adam had other plans.


He took off running with the most comically terrifed expression I have ever seen. Howeve

40" square glass top coffee table with four drawers. $200



ITEMS PICTURED MAY HAVE ALREADY BEEN SOLD. NEW ITEMS ARIVE DAILY.