What a wonderful article. I think the notes are a great idea. I never thought of it. I would like to leave notes saying "You're worth it," or "You're beautiful." I think people need that reminder sometimes.

I love this! We've just sold our parent's home, our family home for many years, and I've been the one living in it keeping it warm while it sat on the market for a year. The realtors do their best to keep us apart so I won't get to know the new owner for a while. But leaving her a Secret message is a great idea. I'd love to pass along some of the great karma that resides here and it will help me with my own closure as well. I'm making this part of the ritual I'm planning for my final move out of here. Thank you for this wonderful inspiration.

My parents found a time capsule when they remodeled their bathroom - it had a newspaper (the moon landing!) and a note, along with photos of what the bathroom looked like before the OLD owners remodeled. When they were sealing up the walls, they put it back and included a note, newspaper, and photos of their own.

Now I'm doing the same in my house, but also including a thumb drive with video we took while touring the house prior to buying it, and another with what it looks like now.

What a fun idea - I would love to find that. It would be a fun welcoming to my new home.
Much love,
B

Great idea! My note would say, "The couple next door installed an AC unit that is sooo ridiculously big, it cools your apartment, too!"

reminds me a bit of 'bookcrossing'... a set-your-books-free-and-track-em website system... there's a "chosen" element to finding the books, too. bookcrossing.com if you want to check it out.

During renovations, we found 3 prohibition era bottles of scotch behind a bathroom wall. One empty. Told us something about one of the previous occupiers!

So we get to see the new tenants' response, but not the original note?

We bought our house from a family who moved because the mother had remarried and they needed more room for the new blended family. The kids left us a note about how much they loved the house they had grown up in. It was very sweet.

I love things like that, I wish we had found more of those kind of things. The only thing I can think of, is that my children bedroom had chemical formulae scribled on the walls before we renovated, which I found quite special since we knew that the previous owner was the widow of the chemist who had invented DDT (and won a Nobel prize for it).

I left a ceramic figure of Dodger from 'Oliver and Company' in the attic at our first apartment. :)

What about the family that left a note about the secret room filled with black mold? http://boingboing.net/2008/01/06/suburban-family-disc.html
It's a pretty good story.

fulinlin: One of the many things the previous owner of our house left behind was an actual bottle of DDT.

If the previous owners of my house would have left a note, it would have read:

Dear new owners, good luck with the family of raccoons that come to live with you every summer that we didn't tell you about. Oh and we lied about the flooding in the basement. Also - after you settle in for a bit, you'll notice we liked to use scotch tape instead of screws in a few places. So have fun you crazy kids!

p.s. Those wood beams in the back porch are really just made out of foam and painted brown. See ya!

Looks like my scotch tape link above didn't work: let's try that again: here.

if you visit his blog and give him the traffic he's so desperately seeking you'll learn that he plugged the damn thing is his little "secret message."

"Mostly I thought — if these people were anything like me — they’d have fun stumbling upon some covert correspondence from the previous occupant of their new home. Like a midnight visit from a ghost or receiving an email from a wealthy Nigerian prince in desperate need of an overseas bank account, something about it would make them feel special. Chosen."

what the duck? is this guy serious? ok then, apparently there are 2 kinds of people on this planet:
A. People who think this is a fun, cutesy idea.
B. People who think this guy is on heavy medication or needs some.

Then there's the AT author. Leaving little notes in hotel rooms and in your friend's homes? How the hell is that acceptable? Are your friends aware of your compulsive littering problem?

I'm all for people using their homes for whatever they want. You want to keep track of little Jimmy's height on a door trim piece? Great - go for it! But I draw the line at doing stuff just so the next occupants will acknowledge you in some way.

Flame away.

One vote for "group B," Jess13.

Gee, jess13, you sound like a really cool person. Must be fun to hang out with you.

Sadly, I thought about leaving the next tenant a note about this apartment. But I would warn him/her about everything that's wrong with it that the Landlord has no interesting in fixing. Sigh.

@Jess13: Wait, you quoted a passage in which Daniel compares his note to a piece of spam mail from a Nigerian prince, and you can't tell if he's serious?

Oh dear, Jess13. Oh dear.

Nothing like a bit of Scrooge-y-nastiness, @jess13, to sober one up after a lovely evening out.
I'm with "group A", and pleased to be there.

When I was 14, we moved out of my childhood home to a new house that was literally 5 minutes away in the same town. However, my sister and I being the stubborn little girls we were, were absolutely resistant to any sort of change.

When I finally accepted that yes, I was moving, I decided to write a note to the new owners - a young couple, just about to have their first child. I hid it under the carpet in the closet, figuring it would be years before anyone tore it up and found my note.

Lo and behold, they call my father 3 weeks later to say they found the note and it made them cry. It's been over a decade and they still have the note, to remind them of the happy memories a house can hold for a family.

The previous owner of my house gave me a note in an envelope at closing, and she included $20 because she felt bad about not being able to afford to have it professionally cleaned after she moved it (the place was spotless).

@ sillyputty -- sounds just like Amelie!!!

We thought the previous owners had left us a gift when we found 5 pounds of frozen shrimp in the freezer and an apron on a hook. They actually came back three weeks later for the apron but figured (correctly) that the shrimp were gone. They also left us 27 boxes of fuses in the basement, but that's another story...

It is a sweet idea but I like the idea of actually going back to see your childhood home years or decades later. There was an episode on Modern Family about this topic.

In my first condo with my bf (now husband) I left a note on the kitchen counter that just said,"Welcome to your new home!" I also left a bottle of wine, paper plates and cups. Oh and a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom since everyone forgets that when they are first moving in.

I didn't leave notes, just things to make moving in easier for the incoming occupants. I left light bulbs in the fixtures and toilet paper rolls in the baths, and left the spaces clean, empty, and move-in ready. That doesn't sound like much, but it's more than I ever found when moving into a new space.

My sister bought a house about 5 years ago that was foreclosed on, and she found a small baggie of cocaine in the ceiling of the basement.

I love this idea - wish we had thought of it when we moved out of our last home.

A from IsItAHouseYet: your blog is cracking me up!

You wouldn't believe the exhaustive BINDER I left the guy who bought my old studio apartment! I had painted the walls of the bathroom to look like the mosaic tiles of a subway station, and then when I moved out, I didn't want him to paint over it, so I re-painted the "name" of the subway station from my name to his name. He and his lawyer were like in SHOCK when I showed him photos at the closing from my phone that I had taken when I finished at 2:00am the night before. But I left him all kinds of tips and pointers about how to maintain whatever he might want to keep of what I had done. It was fun.

@curtis, was that the apartment with the lana turner bathroom? I hope the new owner appreciated your work!

I don't get this. I can see leaving a helpful note, that's just good manners I think. But what's with all the "top secret" and "stuff I loved" notes? Seems cutesy and twee. Must everything be so?

Also, you should *NEVER* leave a note, cutesy or not, on a stovetop heating element. That is SO SO dangerous people!

(this comment is a joke)

Usually I just feel sorry for the people who end up in my old apartment.

Moving out can be quite hard for some people because of the uncertainty with living in a new environment. There are those who leave secret notes in their previous apartments in case future tenants want to establish communication with them, especially to those who have deep connections to their previous living spaces. Anyway, the important thing here is that you make sure that before you finally close that door and move out - the area is clean and you are certain that you have not left any of your personal effects in there.

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