A new homeowner is seeking help unlocking a mystery that lay uncovered in the depths of a 1940s Oregon home that had belonged to a family of hoarders.
Katie, from Portland, and her husband, David, had some suspicions about the state of the property that they purchased back in 2020. “We would take long walks through our neighborhood, and this house would stand out like crazy, not just because of the incredible brickwork but also because of the state of the home,” Katie told Newsweek.
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The house was in a state of disrepair and, in an area of pristine homes, that meant it caught Katie’s eye each and every time they went past.
Katie and David have a pretty good track record when it comes to fixing up property, though. “In 2021, we fixed up a house up in Washington and, in 2022, one on the Oregon coast,” she said.
That, along with countless letters to the previous owners, helped them eventually get approval for a “fix and flip loan” to renovate the house.
“We have six months from closing to empty, clean and fix it up to a bare minimum of livability, using the loan in order to get an appraisal and refinance into a real mortgage,” Katie said. “At that point, we will move in and begin our larger restoration projects!”
Yet, for all their experience, the amount hoarded inside the property took them by surprise. “It was built in 1942, and the previous owner bought the house I believe in the 60s, and she got married and her husband moved in after that sometime with his children.” Katie said.
“The house was always clean, but just full of stuff as they both had hoarding tendencies,” she added. “The wife passed away about 15 years ago, and the husband lived there with one of his adult children, until he was moved into a facility in 2020 with the start of Covid, where he passed.”
Though Katie is not sure about the specifics, she said that, when they moved in, it seemed the property had been “really neglected since at least 2020.” Yet the amount of stuff found inside it was still on an unimaginable scale.
“The son took a lot of things from the house, and cleared out four dumpsters before we saw it, and it was still full of stuff,” Katie said. “We worked with a hoarder clean-out company to clear four or five full-sized box trucks, and that’s not including all of the appliances that the scrappers hauled away for us in a huge trailer!”
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Almost everything inside was “damaged by either water, pets, or general neglect,” while the smell was unbearable, unless several windows and doors were left open. Some people even flat-out refused to go in on account of the stench.
“There were vines growing in through the windows of the basement, and broken appliances everywhere,” Katie said. “The husband was an engineer, and he had tons of inventions around the house, and dozens of broken appliances. We found at least seven water heaters, multiple washer/drier sets, two refrigerators, and two full sheds that were completely concealed by blackberry bushes.”
Removing all of it may have been an arduous process, but it was also a fascinating one. “The house just keeps revealing more and more,” Katie said, “including the safe.”
This was located in the floor of a basement closet that Katie “did not even know existed” from their many visits to the house. The safe was buried under car parts and appliances and built into the concrete floor.
The safe was locked with two small keys and featured a third additional slot. At first, the couple suspected it had something to do with the oil or septic tank on the property, but its position makes that an impossibility. In need of answers, Katie turned to TikTok, posting a video of their discovery under the handle @wolford_dreamhouse.
Viewers were quick to weigh in with suggestions. “It’s a safe!! My great grandfather had one in his house,” one user wrote. “I worked at a car wash with one of these that we kept the money in,” a second added.
A third, meanwhile, posted that it was “built after the Great depression” and homeowners “used to keep their money in there because people didn’t trust Banks back then.” The slot was supposedly used for putting coins and bills down.
Despite many viewers imploring Katie to hire a locksmith, the couple have formulated a different plan. “We called a few locksmiths, and they would just come and drill out the lock, but it was quite a bit more money than we were wanting to spend,” Katie said. “So we ordered one of those little scopes you connect to your phone to see if it’s empty or worth having a locksmith come!”
Hoarders, individuals who obsessively collect, are all around us; we just don’t always know it. A study published in Behavior Research and Therapy that involved 742 participants found that 5.3 percent could be categorized as hoarders.
The study said that hoarding was more common in older groups and more prevalent in men. Researchers also discovered that it was mostly inversely related to household income.
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