Boxes of vintage from an abandoned 1920s bungalow.
Recovering a woman's wardrobe stored away for 80 years.
It’s all been preserved through the pickling of grief. The 1920s Craftsman is the only unoccupied house on the street, it’s porch boards bent and weather worn, vines overtaking it. As I turn the corner for the side street it sits on, I pass a comparable home that bears a “for sale” sign from Sotheby’s Realty. Once a working class West Asheville neighborhood, now designated as luxury housing.
Boxes of trash and rusted out kitchen appliances sit by the door, with a nailed private property sign deterring those who may be curious of it’s contents. Today I have permission to enter by way of the home’s owner, the granddaughter of it’s last tenant, who moved there in the early 1960s from Texas.
I enter the dark living room, piled high with boxes and rotting furniture, the smell of damp in the air. Insulation drapes out of a large hole above the fireplace, falling on a mid century couch that has been torn apart by animals. The home has sat abandoned since 2002, when the grandmother passed away in her 90s.
A few steps later and I’m in the kitchen, everything is covered in two decades worth of neglect. I look around the room and see the curved edges of a 1960s fridge, with it’s magnets still displayed. To my left there is a note pad and a pencil tied to a string hanging from one of the cabinets. In perfect cursive it reads:
Sugar
Flour
Eggs
Butter
My guide directs me to a pile of clothing sitting in old dry cleaner bags on the kitchen table. I open one of the bags to reveal a sequined 1940s crepe gown. I was unsure what to expect from this trip, usually I assume I’ll walk away with nothing, so I’m pleasantly surprised. I take the whole pile.
She informs me that she recently had hired someone to help take out some of the unusable items in the home, like the torn up furniture, and instead he emptied out the closets — throwing away a good amount of her grandmother’s old clothing against her wishes.
Upon hearing this I feel an all too familiar gut punch, but it’s quickly remedied when she directs me to a pile of boxes sitting on the kitchen floor. The clothing that had been stored away in another closet had been spared!
As I open one of the boxes, I see several small bugs scurry down into the fabric’s depths — silverfish! Often attracted to old paper and cardboard, these little pests will also munch on fabric if given the opportunity. I briefly pick through the folded layers of each box, some containing fabric and others clothing, and note that 90% of it looks to be from the 1960s and prior. I decide to gamble and take all the boxes without giving them a thorough look over.
She leads me into a back bedroom, paint peels in thick layers off an old wooden dresser, leaving a camouflage of color. I take a few 1940s hat from a pile, and proceed to dig through a laundry basket that looks like it hadn’t been opened since the 70s. It smells strongly of cat piss, and I’m scared of spiders lurking in the folds. Still, I push past all the acrylic pants, finally reaching the bottom, and discover a pre 1960s sweatshirt and tee shirt.
In the second bedroom the emptied closet sits, with nothing but a chewed up 1940s tie left hanging, once belonging to the grandfather — a drunk who had died in the mid 1960s. Her grandmother worked at the Sears in downtown Asheville. She had a handful of items that were deadstock with tags, many marked as clearance, that I assume she was able to get for free. Most of the boxes that held her clothing were old shipping boxes from the junior misses department of the store.
My guide is an only child, who has recently lost her mother, and was now left with dealing with both her grandmother and mother’s estate on her own. Sadness surrounds her, the home is filled with memories and reminders of time lost. She points to the living room floor and remarks about how she used to play there as a child. As I go through what’s left of her grandmothers wardrobe, she provides little antidotes.
I remember her wearing that! That was her favorite sweater. She loved that dress…
If the grief wasn’t so present, all that filled this home would have been gone long ago. I walk a thin line of gratitude and reverence as I fill my trunk with my discoveries.
What, for the last two decades, has been a home for silverfish and rats will now be usable once more as I work my way through cleaning and restoring the garments I acquired from this pick, which date from the 1940s-1960s. In later letters I’ll walk you through my process on how I approach cleaning extreme filth, stains, and tackling repairs on abandoned vintage items, as well as a final tally on how much I spent and how many items I got!
As each of these pieces are made wearable again they will become available through future editions of Treasure Trove, my weekly vintage catalogue newsletter, so be sure to subscribe to follow along for the ride!
More tales…
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Kari, I love hearing about the rescues, the dirt, the animal/insect damage, and then the treasures discovered. I regret I wasn't able to get into either of my grandmothers' wardrobes after they died, and my mom's cleaned hers out decades ago. It makes me think I need to deal with some of my older things that I don't use, to gift them to my nieces or others who will use them and love them.
Excited to see your progress in the coming weeks/months, and for your reveals of the treasures. Thank you for sharing these with us.