wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

The house I grew up in (built late 1920s) had 15 steps between first and second floors, and 13 steps to the basement. The house I've lived in for the last 48 years is a single story, but has 13 steps to the basement. FWIW.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Last town I lived in, there was a farm. Before I moved to town, it was a dairy farm. The farmer got old and didn't want to wrestle cattle any more so he had switched to sheep by the time I moved to town. The family had been running the farm and living in the house for 200 years. They had an attic in the barn. Nobody ever moved out of the house except to go to the cemetery. The farmer I knew despaired of the attic and vowed to throw out a couple things from the attic every day. He was alive for 5 years after I moved to town and although he regularly threw things out, he didn't make much of a dent in the attic.

I bought a farm in town. It had a house and a barn. The house was not repairable and got torn down, leaving space for a parking lot for our farm stand. The barn was mildly repaired and reused. The farmers that preceded me never threw anything away. After all, they might find a use for it some day. Nails used to come in barrels. A barrel held about 100 lb of nails. The barn had 3 barrels full of rusty, bent, nails and screws. The farmers saved empty milk cartons. They would cut one in half, fill it with dirt, and start seeds. The farm had an orchard at one time. The barn walls were insulated with empty sacks of lime sulphur and lead arsenate. When the town had a hazardous waste clean up day, I took them 75 lb of DDT. Probably a century and a half ago there was a cottage industry of making shoes in town. The barn still had some of the lasts and leathers. Each family would make one size of shoe and sell them to the company. They had a device that fit on top of a barrel. When your fire burned out you threw the ashes in the device and turned the crank. The ashes fell into the barrel (where they were probably used to make soap) and the unburned wood came out a chute into another container so you could start another fire. The way of the farm was to use everything until there was nothing usable left.

I got pretty close to that way of life, but not quite. I used to pick up useful things on the side of the road when they were being thrown out. Eventually I had no more room in the barn and decided to throw some stuff away. I filled a 20 yard dumpster. I threw away 6 kitchen sinks. Kept only 4.

edrobinsonjr Loc: Boise, Idaho

TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

bamfordr Loc: Campbell CA

Or read the novel

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Can you say "Pack Rat", uh huh I thought you could! But back when you never knew what you might need in the future it was a way of life. One lady in the area opened an antique shop beside US 60 and her stock came from the town and farm families cleaning out stuff
With Grandma's family being there since 1791 there was fascinating old stuff all over the farm, the garage/tool shed had hand tools going back to when the family first moved there and maybe some even older from Virginia and Pennsylvania. Grandma was a Penn, her Dad was the oldest son to the oldest son descendant of William Penn's youngest son. Since the oldest inherited the land in PA, the youngest son had moved to Virginia and then his descendants and their in-laws moved to Kentucky to take up land grants given them in place of IOUs from the Revolution. About 2 dozen families in total and land grants for a total of about 30,000 acres. The farm at 100 acres was the last of it owned by any Penns as they had sold land, moved further west etc. When I was a child in the 50s, people changed from calling the farm "The Old Penn Place" to calling it "The Perkins Place". Only took them a bit over 30 years to do that after Granddad married Grandma and took over the farm.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I resemble that remark.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

😎😎😎

I am glad my computer has no camera, or you would see that I am in the running for "Pack Rat Poster Child".

fantom Loc: Colorado

Yes, the 39 Steps was a very good movie.

RodeoMan Loc: St Joseph, Missouri

Steven, it sounds more like you were taken to the woodshed rather than the attic.