My bedroom did not have boxes or items on the floor however it was no healthy place to be. First of all, it was a circuit for the mice to go through to get to the rest of the house. Mice typically get around  in a house by running along the baseboards or the edges of a room. I noticed that they came up from the basement through a hole in the linen closet then proceeded into the adjacent bedroom along the baseboards. Soon, on their journey they disappeared behind the dresser. Once they were behind the dresser, they were out of mind. If I could not see them, they did not exist. This could be considered denial but frankly the sight of them was overwhelming and my mental capacity froze.

Most of my clothes were hung in the bedroom closet but the few I wore were recycled from wear to washing to piled on the bed.   After a while my wardrobe widdled down to just a couple pairs of pants and a couple of tops. This simplified my morning routine because I washed what I was going to wear every morning to freshen my clothes. I was told by my boss that I smelled. My clothes took on the odour of my house.

Eventually I just kept my two ensembles in my living quarter, the cave I hoarded around. This left the mattress clear of clothes but it took on a whole new purpose. My dogs started using it as a litter box and over time their feces piled up.  The mice regularity reminded me that I shared my house with them as one day I noticed that the dog feces on the mattress had been chowed down on. Half of each feces had disappeared and there was fine brown powdered residue surrounding each poo.  I want to cry now thinking about this. writing about it and putting it out there to share with you makes it real but cathartic. I was so good at ignoring the conditions I was living it. Keep in mind, it took years to get this way. Each day I accepted a little bit more of the deterioration which over time and collectively resulted in a serious medical condition for me and condemnation of the house by the city public health department.

I need to tell you that admitting to this makes me a lot of shame. You will understand why I lived in these conditions as soon as I finish describing my house conditions. Next and finally I need to describe my living room. That is where I spent all my time.

 One bedroom off the hallway was converted into an office. This room was filled with boxes of craft items, art supplies,  scrap booking supplies and photos. My computer sat on a desk but it was hard to reach due to the boxes. This was the room where many things were thrown in to be organized later. Included in the quagmire of items was a photo album given to my family by my grandmother. It included all the photos of us that we had given to her since we were kids. The album was organized by person, each of my four siblings and myself. There was school pictures of all of my four brothers and sisters and myself. The album was to.be passed around to all of my family.

At that time digital photos was new technology. Cameras held digital photos on a memory card and a hard copy of a photo could be scanned and stored in a computer.  I was given the album and I wanted to scan all the photos so that I would have all of them. As well, I started a project to give my parents for Christmas. The project was to do a pencil sketch of oll off us siblings from our grade one pictures and frame them. I got three of them done and they were in the office somewhere but if I was asked, I would not know where to start looking for them.  The sketches turned out really well and I was very satisfied with them.

I am an advid photographer and I had many photos stored on my computer.  As well, included in the boxes of photos in the office were ones I had taken since I was 16 years old. They were a record of many of the trips I had taken, any significant events of myself, my family and friends. They were photos that were imaged on film. The film was taken to a photo printing store and you would wait up to a week to get them printed. Of course that changed to one hour printing which was a great advancement. I loved my photos. When I looked at them I felt blessed. I had done many things and had many friends.

The hallway was a square space which led to two bedrooms a bathroom and the living room. Boxes were piled against the walls but there was  space to move through the hallway to get to any of the rooms. . The hallway had a linen closet.  The back wall of the linen closet was shared with the bathtub facet plumbing. I could not close the closet door  because I had to take out the shelves to try and get to the bathtub  plumbing  because the tub facet was continuously running water. Contents of the closet layer on the floor of the closet and hallway.  I try to fix the running water problem myself with no success and I sure wasn't going to let anybody into my house to do the job. I solved the tub running water problem by shutting off the water  by a valve I found in the closet. To bathe  I would take a pail of hot water from the kitchen sink to the bathtub, step in the bathtub and give myself a rub down and then pour the water from the pail over myself. I washed my hair the same way however the whole procedure took two trips to the kitchen sink to get hot water and I didn't bathe often because I saw it as too much trouble.

Other than the fact that the tub had no running water,  the bathroom was not too bad.   It was small and nothing was piled on the bathroom floor.  One night, however  before I turned the water off to the bathtub, in a drunken stupor I fell asleep for the whole night while the water in the tub kept running. By morning the bathroom, hallway and some of the bedroom floors were drenched with water which seeped through the floor boards and through the ceiling tiles in the basement. To determine the damage I  pulled up the rug in the hallway to find beautiful hardwood floor underneath however  the hardwood was so drenched with water that it swelled and bubbled up.

The water that dripped through the floor soaked a dresser where I stored hundreds of dollars worth of fabric. This fabric I had purched at one time. I loved the fabric and had plans for every piece but now my hoard of fabric was completely drenched.  As well the water had dripped down a wall and I could see the ridge seperating the wet from the dry wall which extended almost to the floor. I did nothing about the damage of of the flood so eventually mold had formed and spread. The fabric eventually rotted and added to the amount of mold in the house .



Why not do anything abou conditions

The dining room table and all four chairs were loaded with boxes. There was not a square inch on the table to place a plate with a meal nor anywhere to sit. In my effort to cook ( remember I did not have a stove),   I bought a cooking device which consisted of a dome that covered an element.  The infomercial promised  it would  cook things increadable well, in fact I don't know why everyone wouldn't have this cooking device it is so good.  This cooking device was one of the things that found a permanent home on the table. Inside this cooker was a layer of solidified fat that had been rendered from a buffalo roast. The Buffalo roast was not a special cut of beef but in fact meat from a buffalo. I was told by the owner of the buffalo farm that it was the leanest meat that a person could buy. Cooking this roast with my new cooking device however resulted in a hard as a rock roast along with the one inch layer of solidified fat relating on the bottom.  That sat on my dining table for years.

The dining room floor was covered with boxes except for a cleared path that lead from the kitchen to the hallway.  As I walked through this pathway past the boxes, mice would jump from box to box like a water fountain that squirted water from bowl to bowl.  Along the wall  was an ironing board that could not not be used because it was covered with items. Even if I cleared the surface of the ironing board, it was dirty and would leave stains on my clothes where pressed with an iron.

So now on to the hallway wich lead to two bedrooms, the bathroom and the living room.