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Years ago we moved into a home that had been occupied by the last remaining elderly daughters of the original builder. They left a lot behind, including a set of "The Book of Knowledge" circa 1940, a 10 volume set of nursery rhymes and fairy tales,some original Nancy Drew books and copies of Treasure Island, Robinson Caruso . I spent the next 10 years reading through 3 bookcases full of books. For a nerd it was nirvana.
In college I found a whole bottle of Oxycontin on the floor of the pantry it was unlabeled bottle and you best believe I was on pillfinder.com in a matter of seconds...I can imagine my eyes were as big as saucers when I saw what they were.
The washing machine in the kitchen was a nice touch
Ah, memories. The house my parents bought new in the 1950s had space for a washing machine in the kitchen, as did every other house in our tract. There were no provisions for clothes dryers. They were modest homes, and I guess the builders didn't want to pay to run hot & cold plumbing all the way into the utility rooms, which were pretty tiny anyway. Since I grew up with it, I never thought it was weird having a clothes washer in the kitchen, but it's funny to think about today. Fortunately, my mom never cooked and washed our dirty clothes at the same time.
Since I grew up with it, I never thought it was weird having a clothes washer in the kitchen, but it's funny to think about today.
in the last few years i have seen in a couple of homes that my sons have been in as renters, the stacked-on-top-of-each-other washer and dryer in the bathroom. I really like that, actually, because wet towels and dirty clothes can go right into the washer; and when the dryer is running it helps keep the bathroom warm, and if someone wants to have warm dry fluffed towels for when they step out of the shower....voila!
My current 1927 house still has an old water heater in the attic, as well as one of the original 5-paneled doors. I can't get them down the pull-down stairs. I guess the water heater was put there before the back porch was converted to a utility room in the 50's or later (thank heavens), although it's still a stupid place to put it. I've found intact 1920's chinaware in the yard as well as old bottles, an old Noxzema jar, and a folded metal tobacco tin. The original garage had window sash weights, a boat propeller, one canoe paddle, and a lot of old tools and tins of old house repair preparations. My back yard also still has the original oyster shell sidewalk installed by the waterman/ship's carpenter builder.
like unwashed dishes or magazines , anything you didnt expect to find in the house when you moved in.
We found hundreds of clean (fortunately) milk jugs under the basement stairs. It was stuffed with them.
Later we found R rated pictures of one of the previous owners kids' and their SO that had been stored behind a bathroom shower stall in the basement when we remodeled.
In military housing at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, the year 2001:
There was a problem with flies constantly storming our covered outdoor entranceway. I eventually picked up on a constant foul odor there.
One day I was in a mood to do some landscaping, and on either side of the sidewalk that led to our front door were dirt plots with potential for gardening. So I got busy clearing out rocks, pebbles, and unfertile dirt...and in one spot the dirt was looser than anywhere else, it was in a perfect square shape, directly nestled against the house.
So I kept clearing dirt, and as I dug a few inches down, a plastic white trash bag appeared. The foul smell intensified...oh my god, a previous tennant must have buried something there.
I stopped what I was doing and tried to find an authority to call...I decided to not let my imagination go too wild although I was thinking "possibly a dead baby!" and instead assumed someone had buried a deceased housepet, so I decided to call the base animal control (not sure why I chose that, but it was the only animal-related on-base service I could find. In retrospect I should've erred on the side of any possible scenario and called the police.)
The person who answered the phone at animal control didn't seem to care about what I was telling him, and I never heard back from them. I had other stressful things in my life going on at the time, and ended up moving out of that house a few weeks later, so I never did find out who buried what there. But it smelled so bad, and the flies, omg!
I had to remove and fix the control knob in the bathtub and found string wrapped around and around where an O-ring should have been.
I also have a cement platform in the basement (in the utility room) where the washer and dryer should be. I don't understand this. I had to put the washer directly on the floor (because I'm short and NEVER would have been able to reach in if it was on the platform). The dryer is up on the platform, so that I can reach right in to get the clothes. I can only figure that this platform would be handy for front-loaders, but I think that it was installed long before front-loaders were popular. (The house is about 70 years old.)
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It was stuffed with them. 
