Worn out.

This chair was abandoned in a garage workshop. It was sturdy enough to receive a couple of custom coats of paint along the way, but in the end it was not deemed valuable enough to take along to the next residence.

The immediate surroundings.

I’m not sure what it was used for, though. Perhaps it sat at the edge of a dinner table decades ago, but I didn’t find any companion chairs. Nor could I discern any regular use for any of the items in this garage. It just seemed to be a storehouse for all things broken or obsolete.

The bigger picture.

I can picture a crafty new homeowner turning this into a garage/workshop: it’d be a sweet place to work on your hotrod while somewhat shielded from the elements. There’s even a heater. And now it’s completely clean.

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The freshest part of the house.

Cats had taken over this home. The litter box had been abandoned long ago, and the cats made their foul mark in every room. The previous owner smoked indoors. Garbage festered in ripped bags. Rancid food slowly decayed on the counters.

And yet, through it all, a curiously strong undercurrent of mint tickled my olfactory bulb, leading me like a ghostly finger into the basement. There, on a ledge in the living room, this tin of Altoids sent its wintergreen signal in an effort to combat the myriad stenches all around. Thank you, Altoids, for freshening up an otherwise stinky job.

Foreboding or inviting?

While exploring Guatemala’s La Recoleccion church a few weeks ago, I came across this locked passage. Closed doors have always held for me an allure of the unknown, an the addition of a skull and crossbones adds to the intrigue. This doorway, park officials told me, leads to the church’s catacombs, as well as an underground tunnel that is said to reach Antigua’s central plaza.

I didn’t go in. Instead, I imagined the burial ceremonies held there for the clergy, the hurried footsteps late in the night of tardy residents heading home, the resonant echo of solemn marches.

There would be very little to see here anyway. The church has been officially abandoned since 1773, and just about all artifacts left behind have been collected, hoarded, or repurposed. Two-hundred and forty years is a long time to do a trashout. We get most of ours done in less than a day.

Two excellent ways to travel Minnesota: by bus, and by boat.

While the precipitation decides whether to express itself as a solid or a liquid, our thoughts turn to the weeks ahead. Once sub-freezing temperatures head north for the summer, we can fire up the RV, dewinterize the boat, pack the car, and explore the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Well, actually, there are 11,842 lakes over 10 acres in size (for our metric system-oriented friends, that’s 40,000 square meters). We found this bus/boat super tour combo in the backyard of an old house set amid a newer suburban development.

La Recoleccion Church, Antigua, Guatemala.

My musing about inhabitants past began here. During a backpacking trip some twelve years ago, I passed through the city of Antigua, in Guatemala. The city is a spectacular collection of Spanish colonial buildings, replete with cool internal courtyards, terra cotta tiles on the roofs, and shady plazas. These photos are from a recent trip, but could be from any time in the last couple of centuries.

In the monastery.

On the western edge of town, the ruins of the La Recoleccion church are remarkably intact. I wandered out there on a sunny afternoon and found myself struck by the silence of what was once an important local landmark.

A small fountain, perhaps?

There are still original tiles at La Recoleccion, and one can see how they have been worn down by nearly 400 years of feet passing over them. The church hasn’t been in use since a devastating earthquake in 1773 toppled the edifice and led to moving the capitol city from Antigua to its current place, Guatemala City. Many of the colors, adornments, and furniture have been removed in the intervening 240 years of fallowness. Still, details remain, and offer a glimpse into life in colonial Central America.

Thick wooden beams once rested here.

There was indoor plumbing.

Original plumbing.

In the monastery, details on the walls remain, even after centuries of pillaging.

A crumbling plaster wall.

It was here, then, amid these crumbling walls, that I became interested in what was, and who was there. Foreclosed homes, then, are just a natural extension of this curiosity. They are modern-day ruins that have yet to be pillaged. They are old sanctuaries that I am privileged to be able to explore.

The difference being, of course, is that La Recoleccion will never hold mass again, while our homes are generally transformed and reoccupied within 90 days.

New color next to old masonry.

The cat has been thinking out-of-the-box.

Cat houses are some of the stinkiest ones we service. There is an ammoniac odor left behind by cat urine. And there are few biological weapons with greater gross-out power than cat feces.

This house was covered in all of kitty’s physiological doings, forming a sticky coating on nearly everything inside. When disturb the coating, the stench comes alive, like a scratch-and-sniff sticker. Hmm… would anyone be interested in buying a trashout-themed scratch-and-sniff book?

Looking in from the parlor.

I find myself drawn to hidden corners. Here, a large cabinet blocks direct access to the piano. From the side, though, I see the row of ivory keys, a century old, highlighted by a window at the end of the hall – a hall that never was finished. Having a piano speaks of discipline and organization to me, and maybe at one time those characteristics ruled in this home. Lately, as you can see, chaos had crept in.

A row of dusty tomes sat heavily on the makeshift shelf.

I don’t know how long it had been since these books had been touched, but I would guess at least 20 years. The shelf bowed under their weight, and a tangle of cobwebs seemed to hold the books in place, suspending them in time.

Another perspective.

Didn’t take out the recycling.

Bags of crushed beer cans, empty wine bottles, and sticky mixers waited in the living room of this home. With current prices for recycled aluminum cans at around $0.52 a pound, there isn’t a fortune in these bags, but still enough to get a couple more cases of beer.

Grounded.

Atop the filing cabinets, an old flight log sat. The last entries are from the late 1970s, and other than this single book, there were no other evident indicators that this was a flying household.