dissatisfactionurbex / messy, lost history

messy, lost history

march 2023 · Canada

gear

shot on Galaxy S21 Ultrawith main

01 / 55

index

A pale vinyl-sided farmhouse half hidden behind spruce branches, snow drifted against its walls and a ladder still leaning on the siding. The first look at a house that has been left to the trees. — 01 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

01 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A peeling hand-painted firewood sign propped among snow, dead grass and junk: a folding chair, a toy walker, buckets. The yard is already filling with the household's overflow. — 02 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

02 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A clearing in the pines stacked with snow-covered pallets, coolers and blue recycling bins, a white wire chair set out in front as if someone meant to sit and watch the pile. — 03 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

03 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A rust-streaked steel-clad barn behind bare saplings, with a sagging wooden lean-to and rickety steps on its side. The farm's outbuildings are giving way along with the house. — 04 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

04 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

The long side of the bank barn: a concrete lower level with broken openings and a stepladder, steel siding and a gambrel roof above, fronted by an unbroken field of snow. — 05 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

05 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A leaning weathered shed of grey boards and rusted sheet metal, its doorway crammed with old windows and scrap. Even the smallest building on the property is full. — 06 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

06 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

An old blue pickup and a white refrigerated box truck sinking into a snowy field, a barn roof behind them. The vehicles were left where they last stopped. — 07 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

07 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

The back of the white box truck beside a blue flatbed pickup heaped with scrap metal, both sinking into a snowy field under a broken sky. The truck's rear doors still open onto whatever was stored inside. — 08 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

08 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Side view of the white box truck, its body streaked black with mould and its wheels buried in snow and weeds. A delivery vehicle turned into another storage unit. — 09 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

09 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Inside the house the ceiling has collapsed onto waist-high piles of boxes, food containers and rubbish, light coming through a curtained window past a red painting and an old toaster. — 10 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

10 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

The same room from closer in: a scarecrow doll, a white teddy bear, a broom and picture frames heaped against a wall with a cartoon print of a log cabin. Decades of belongings piled to the ceiling. — 11 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

11 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Looking down into a narrow corner where a fallen cabinet and a wooden counter lie across a drift of boxes, bottles and coffee jars. Nothing here has been cleared in years. — 12 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

12 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A kitchen counter buried under empty containers and packaging beneath a cobweb-draped window. Food is still in the open cupboard, as if the owner simply stopped. — 13 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

13 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A pantry cupboard still stocked with jars, sauces and cans, some rotting in place. Everyday groceries frozen at the moment the house was left. — 14 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

14 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A wood-panelled dining room wall unit with open cabinets of glassware and liquor bottles, an overturned table and chairs piled in front. The room has been half dismantled but never emptied. — 15 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

15 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Close-up of an open cabinet holding an iridescent green punch bowl set, mugs and old vodka bottles. Carefully kept tableware left behind in the dust. — 16 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

16 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A dark liquor cabinet crowded with rows of empty vodka bottles, a vintage wine and an ice bucket under shelves of glasses. Decades of collected bottles never thrown away. — 17 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

17 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A panelled room filled waist-deep with suitcases, boxes and bins, doorways opening onto more clutter beyond. It shows the full scale of the hoard. — 18 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

18 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Looking down into a heap of luggage, boxes, a sombrero and recycling bins where the floor has given way near the wall. The weight of the hoard is breaking the house apart. — 19 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

19 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A hand-painted porcelain fish decanter standing on a chair among stacked furniture. A small ornament that survived the chaos intact. — 20 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

20 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A small blue-and-white painted dish of a tree-and-mountain landscape set into a dirty door frame. A delicate detail amid grime and cobwebs. — 21 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

21 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A wooden spice rack of empty glass jars and pepper mills hanging on a bare kitchen wall, draped in cobwebs, beside a woven hanging. Domestic order left to gather dust. — 22 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

22 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A gloved hand holds up a domed frame of dried flowers dusted with snow, panelled rooms blurred behind. Snow indoors shows how open to the weather the house has become. — 23 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

23 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A dusty novelty figurine of a grandfather holding a teddy bear on a cabinet shelf. A family keepsake left behind with everything else. — 24 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

24 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Seashells, a dried starfish, a carved owl and small folk dolls gather dust on a dark wooden shelf, keepsakes left exactly where they were set down. — 25 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

25 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Shrink-wrapped cases of old glass Fanta bottles sit unopened beneath a rough wooden basement staircase against a whitewashed stone wall. — 26 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

26 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A gloved hand dangles one of the vintage Fanta bottles, its orange soda still sealed, in front of the basement stairs and stone foundation. — 27 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

27 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A dusty jug of cat litter wedged under a sagging shelf in a water-stained wooden shed, one of many signs that a cat once lived here. — 28 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

28 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A half-gutted back room with exposed joists and insulation, a cinder-block chimney, plywood sheets and a workbench scattered with nails and crates. — 29 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

29 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Looking down a narrow wood-panelled staircase strewn with adult DVDs and trash toward a cluttered landing below. — 30 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

30 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

An upstairs hallway in wood panelling buried knee-deep in boxes, DVDs, an old wall calendar and bags, with closed doors waiting at the end. — 31 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

31 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A bookcase packed with decades of reading: boys mystery series, school maths textbooks, an old almanac and nature books, with a fruit basket and stone ornaments on the shelf. — 32 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

32 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A cardboard box stacked with fetish DVD cases, spines facing up, one of many such boxes found through the house. — 33 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

33 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Four explicit adult DVD covers laid out on a snow-covered window sill, dusted with snow and dead leaves. Contains nudity. — 34 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

34 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

An attic bedroom in knotty pine panelling submerged under crates, boxes, clothes and scattered DVDs, a mirror on the far wall catching the window light. — 35 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

35 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

An attic bedroom under sloped pine panelling, its floor buried knee-deep in newspapers, DVDs, crates and boxes. The sheer volume of hoarded paper sets the scale of the house's collapse. — 36 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

36 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A bathroom wall stacked high with empty juice and smoothie cartons above a lidless toilet tank, with a light fitting torn off its box. Even the bathroom was given over to the hoard. — 37 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

37 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A small attic room with mould-streaked panelling, packed with coolers, boxed electronics, laundry baskets and an upturned chair beneath a curtained window. Light from the single window shows how far the clutter reaches. — 38 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

38 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A mould-bleached sloping ceiling over a bedroom crowded with a bed, an old tube TV, lamps and a mattress stood on end. The bed is still made underneath the piles. — 39 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

39 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

The same attic bedroom seen toward its bright window, where a dead hanging plant still hangs over boxes, a fan and sheets of clear plastic. The window is the only open space left in the room. — 40 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

40 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Close-up of a weekend newspaper front page dated December 2017 with a Black Friday advert. It is the most recent thing found in the house, marking roughly when it was left. — 41 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

41 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A free city weekly with a film star on the cover, lying on a brown blanket among cartons and tins. Old magazines like this help date when life in the house stopped. — 42 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

42 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Six old family photos laid out on a wooden table: a young man in several eras, school portraits and a group of boy scouts. The owner's life story, left behind in the house. — 43 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

43 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A framed, hand-tinted school portrait of a blond teenager in a suit, resting on handwritten exercise notes. One of many personal keepsakes abandoned with the house. — 44 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

44 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

An old studio portrait of a smiling baby holding a toy, in a folding card mount beside a window with dried plants. Likely the owner as an infant, kept for decades and left behind. — 45 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

45 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Vintage colour snapshots of a family on holiday, by a ferry, feeding a deer and leaning on an old car, spread over a pile of old letters. A family history scattered through the house. — 46 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

46 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A framed colour class photograph from the late 1960s: four rows of teenagers in suits, sweaters and bright dresses with their teacher, found among the owner's keepsakes. — 47 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

47 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

An old family snapshot of three generations crowded around a couch with wrapped presents, lying on a sheet of handwritten physiotherapy exercises. — 48 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

48 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Two faded 1970s snapshots of a family posing outdoors under a tree, laid on a dark wooden table beside a bundle of photo envelopes. — 49 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

49 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

Yellow photo-lab envelopes dated from the early 1960s and a spill of black-and-white prints stacked on top of an old console television, with boxes of kitchenware behind. — 50 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

50 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A Christmas card with a yawning tiger on the front, opened to a handwritten thank-you note from 2009 that was never opened by its recipient. — 51 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

51 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

An ornate school certificate of honour for years of good attendance, signed and stamped year after year through the 1960s. — 52 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

52 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A 1968-69 high-school report card on perforated computer paper, with middling marks and a note allowing the student to move up a grade. — 53 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

53 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A low basement under hand-hewn log beams, choked with collapsed plywood, crates, doors and wire shelving, snow drifted in through the gaps. — 54 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

54 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

A dust-covered riding mower and an old road bike buried among boards and pallets against a crumbling stone foundation wall. — 55 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

55 / 55shot on Galaxy S21 Ultra

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