To Mt Beauty and Back Again
In the early weeks of November the
Canards crew took on a very big job all the out in Mt Beauty. A man
had passed away leaving behind a house he had re-purposed into a
workshop for a variety of different hobbies. Model planes, model
boats, radios, early computer tech, the odd satellite antenna array
and the oddest considering the list, ski’s. Never has the Canards
crew come across a house where quite literally every nook and cranny
had been stuffed. This man was no hoarder, he simply had the mindset
that everything serves a purpose.
After he had passed away
his children combed the the house for months, trying their best to
organize their fathers clutter. But as each month passed they found
it increasingly difficult to know how to deal with the accumulated
clutter. This is when they contacted Canards. With a team of five and
two thirty meter skips we arrived at the property to tackle the
clutter. The son lead us around the house which consisted of its own
custom wiring running out and sprawling across the living room and
extending its reach to the furthest parts of the house. Drawers and
shelves filled with empty boxes that used to contain old model plane
motors, plane wings, customizable paints and little pilots. In the
shed it was more of the same, fully constructed planes, tools,
buckets and jars of assorted nails, screws and bolts which funnily
enough were far more organized than the living space. I like to think
that he spent most of his time in the garage and every other room was
subsequent to storage. Lastly the son showed us the room under the
veranda. This room held an unbelievable treasure trove of old tech,
radios, skis, spears, fishing gear, typewriters, tubing, copper rods,
copper coils and the list goes on. Its only accurate to describe this
man as a jack of all trades. It was interesting to see that while
this house was messy it did not lack organization, everything oddly
had a spot and as you went around you could almost see the projection
of the late owners mind in the rooms he lived in.
Needless to say this job appeared
daunting for a 3 day endeavor. Not only did we have to get this house
cleared out, but we also had to carefully go through and categorize
what had value, what had sentimental value and what we had to chuck.
This was hard on us given that we cant value sentiment and we had
strict restraints on how much we could throw out. Yes we had two
thirty meter skips but to the size of the house and volume of stuff
it definitely delivered an element of stress. Regardless the Canards
crew took it on head first, starting with the garage and leaving it
spotless. The planes were transported that very day for sale and we
took the momentum from that straight to the toughest looking room of
the job, the basement under the house. It took our crew the rest of
the day forming a conveyor belt of hands to lug out the contents,
finding that not only were the floor and shelves filled with things
but the very rafters in the ceiling contained poles and parts for
various projects. As it hit the end of a long day we realised that
while we had made good headway, we had only cleared two rooms in
total and the house itself was much larger and nearly, if not more
cluttered.
Day 2 saw the Canards crew in a physically tired
state, however an eagerness to get this done right overwrote this
physical fatigue. We marched into the house and then sent two men
right back out to get pies for the rest of us, while eagerness is
good it serves as fumes when it comes to fuel. After they got back
and we had a hearty meal and the crew was back to 100%, getting right
back onto it. We formed a table for photo albums, medals and
childhood artwork, things that were later taken by the children as
reminders that their father loved them and always would. With a truck
parked out front we loaded all the salable furniture and stuff for
donation and it was filling up fast! Across the road emerged a
saviour, an elderly woman who volunteered at the local Mt Beauty op
shop. She was able to take some excess donation items which really
helped us out. As we worked our way into the personal rooms of the
house we found ourselves slowing down, not due to fatigue but pure
interest. The items in this mans possession had become far too
interesting and we ended up putting a lot aside to sell.
To the crews surprise they came to 5
o’clock and the rooms were empty. In a single day we had filled 2
skips and a trucks worth of stuff! We searched around thinking
“surely theres something we missed”, but instead we found
nothing, the place was spotless and we had turned a 3 day job into
2.
The son thanked us for the effort and gave a physical sigh
of relief that the burden of this job had been taken out of his
hands. His fathers planes and other oddities sold for a decent price
seeing to him a reimbursement of around 700 dollars for the model
planes alone.