Branded a Hoarder

      There was a man, a tenant that I inherited six years ago when I began managing the buildings where I live. He always wore blue denim bib-overalls, a stained formerly white t-shirt, large metal framed eye glasses, a ball cap and often a white respirator mask over his mouth and nose. He always stunk of too much rose oil and a hideous combination of every tester perfume from the Macy's fragrance counter. Mostly, he roamed the streets of the downtown area scouring the ground for errant coins. On several occasions I witnessed him standing in front of the Plaza mall where he would orient himself facing East down 4th street, then put an open hand to each side of his mouth, tilt his head back, and yell out in a might bellow,"RiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiBBiiiiiiiiiiiT!" You could hear this for many blocks. For that he became known as, "Ribbit Man". In our apartment complex he was known as "The Hoarder".


 He lived in a one bedroom apartment on the second floor for over thirty years and in that time he threw away very little.

When his health began to fail, he was forced to leave. He took nothing with him.

I had the pleasure of managing the clean-up.

He was a brand loyal man who loved specific products. In fact he loved them so much he was unwilling to get rid of the empty containers.

Ribbit adored his Mott's applesauce and left behind about 300 empty jars.


He ate lots of Quaker instant oatmeal and kept a huge stockpile stored on the kitchen counter at all times.

There were hundreds of empty candy wrappers as well as jars full of MnM's candy.








He never used his refrigerator once. In fact, the original paperwork was still inside and it had never been turned on or plugged in.

Ribbit Man must have made daily walks to the store to get his fresh food.

There were cupboards full of Clover cottage cheese tubs, hundreds of them in all.









 Apparently, Maruchan ramen style noodles were regularly on the menu as there were thousands of empty noodle wrappers.

It seems though, that he never used the seasoning packets because these were all still in tact.







Here, you see evidence of one of his ultimate weaknesses, See's Chocolate. He went to the mall everyday for thousands of days. 



It took two months to renovate the apartment and there are many more photos that I will try to post later. Some are a bit shocking and others are just down right bizarre. One thing is for sure, Ribbit loved his brands, including his favorite pop stars Brittany Spears and Brooke Shields.

 Thanks for Reading.