A pile of beautiful reclaimed brick. I used them to hardscape a couple areas in the yard and they look great.

I've left yard tools when moving from a house to a condo, light bulbs and other things I didn't want to move or didn't need. the best I've been left were clothes and shoes in an apartment carport storage when I was young and poor, they were all nice, nearly new and my size. Always felt a little guilty wearing them, but the management said they'd been gone for months. Thanks, whoever you were.

I refinished an old chair left in my college house. It ended up being painted cherry. Pretty fun find... but may I just add that my bf recently left a rather large jar of pickles in his old apt fridge? Terrible... just... terrible.

I always leave touch-up paint. Probably new owners will, eventually, repaint, but until they get around to it, it's nice to be able to fix those move-in scuffs. (I always used to ASK landlords for touch-up paint if they were repainting before I moved in, as well. I think most of them were impressed that I thought ahead to maintaining their property.)

I would also always leave light bulbs for installed fixtures, and often a partial roll of paper towels (if I had one not used up.)

A brand new large window air conditioner. I wasn't going to buy one for my new place (the last one had central air) but hey, I'll take a free one! Window units aren't pretty but man, it just feels so good on a hot, humid day. :) Too bad the electric bill isn't free.

They left 2 bikes, a bike rack and several storage shelving units. HOORAY!

Our house was an estate sale, so the son left us a brand new vacuum, three punched metal folding chairs, two nightstands, a child's armoire, a cute side table, and two vintage department store counters with really deep drawers. I've refinished and repaired everything but the vacuum. Considering we moved in with a mattress, a couch, a desk, and dozens of boxes of books, these unexpected gifts were lifesavers.

Oh, I forgot about the old farm table left in the basement. I haven't done anything with it yet.

I inherited a gorgeous dining table and a very useful air conditioning window unit.

When I bought my house the family left a garage full of garbage. Good news is buried in that mess was an early 1900s oak paneled store counter, about 14 feet long. It inspired me to open my own little antique/vintage shop. In this picture you can see just the end of it. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vyk49fkzHZQ/T-j43yAD1KI/AAAAAAAAAlg/0Bpoiatampw/s1600/shop1.jpg
They also left me a bright yellow cone fireplace in the basement. It's in great shape, and I now use it as a display in my shop!

In my last home, it was a beautiful vintage dresser with a cedar chest in the bottom drawer. Of course, it was pea soup green, but I changed that!

The previous tenants left behind a dish drying rack. Which was great, it was good quality. However they left it in the oven with a plastic water-catching tray and, well, that was the victim of our first use of the oven... Ended up having to buy a new metal grate for that.

Window A/C unit - third year in this apartment and it's still going strong!

The sellers of my apt left an assortment of things, some useful (toaster oven, coffee maker. cleaning supplies) and some not (clunky wooden shoe organizer, ugly mirrors and food items). Nothing stupendous. I tend to eave my apartments completely empty when i leave. I don't assume that the next person willl want anything of mine.

Our garage welcomed us with dry kindling for the woodstove, fireplace tools, a "moving sale" sign, a driftwood sign that now adorns the garden, iron strap hinges, and odds and ends, some of which we've donated and others of which await inspiration. We still use a sturdy braided rug left in the house's entry. If we move, we'll leave the curtains covering the kitchen sliding glass doors--a privacy issue, as we learned early on when we had nothing there--some "starter" firewood, that same braided rug, some gardening supplies, and tips on tending the gardens I've labored over, plus intros to gardening neighbors, in case the new owners want to maintain those plantings.

In our last apartment I left behind a nearly full box of dishwasher detergent and some rinse aid because we were moving somewhere with no dishwasher. I also left extra paint for touch-ups.

I bought my sister's condo, and she left behind a ridiculous amount of cleaning supplies, paper towels, and mops. I was grateful for all of the cleaning supplies since I had used all of mine cleaning out my old place and I think everyone should leave some cleaning items behind.

She also gave me her old dish rack, baking sheets, and 34 wet naps. I think I'll have to hold a massive bbq soon.

The best thing left behind by a previous rental was a danish modern chair. The cushions were well worn and needed replacing, but the wood itself was beautiful and it was in fine structural form. I've since moved on from that rental and, needless to say, the chair came with me.

i purchased an estate sale and was left:
A full set of deck dining furniture
a round mid century table
hoses some yard tools
a huge tanker desk (which is still in the basement beacuse it's so heavy)
many horrible wire shelving wracks, which have since been moved to the basement, where they are useful, but ugly.

The best thing we found when we moved to our current mid-century modern house was one of the original built-in cabinets. It was in the garage being used for storage, but once we had it refinished and put new sliding doors on it, we moved it back into its original place in the living room and use it to store LPs, games and other miscellaneous stuff.

Not "useful," but a couple of boxes of stones collected by someone who was obviously a rock hound. BEAUTIFUL stuff!

Snow shovel. Being a Southern transplant, it was a huge help the first time I had to dig my car out from a foot of Minnesota snow. Without that shovel, I would have had to use my hands and spend hours outside in my woefully inadequate outerwear.

a $10 radio mounted under the kitchen cabinet. we LOVE that thing. also got some rakes, brooms, paint, a microwave and at least one AC unit, but that radio is definitely my favorite.

We just bought a house from a weird couple in their mid 60s. They did leave some useful things (potting soil, scrap trim, etc). The WEIRDEST thing they left was very blatantly placed on some shelves in the bedroom: cassette tapes on improving your love life.

Ours was an estate house too. In the garage, we found tons of tools, manual and power. There was also a bible, a big vintage metal tool chest, and lots of firewood. I found an old mirror in a frame, nailed over one of the garage windows with the mirrored side facing out (it took me a while to realize it was there). I have it in my living room now.

They left a pool table in the basement (with balls and chalk, but no cues) and a two piece topper for table tennis.

A slightly different answer, but I live in NYC so this is a valuable one...we left our folder of take-out menus in a drawer for the next people. We were moving neighborhoods and didn't need them anymore. Even though Menupages has everything on there, we would only keep the physical menus of places we liked, so we were able to pass along menus of places that had our stamp of approval for the new tenants.

Previous owners of my home left a shed filled with garden tools including: Lee Valley manual lawn mower, rake, shovels, grass trimmer, hedger, multiple hoses, nozzles, sprinklers, soil, and seeds. Oh and all garden ornaments such as tiki torches with lots of citronella refill.

The last people in my parent's old house left us a very nice note telling us about the great memories they had at that house, and wishing some new ones for us. Very touching. They also left some hideous curtains, but we forgave them for that!

They left me a bunch of old pool supplies and chemicals for a pool that was filled in years ago, not fun. However, the gigantic shop vac left in the garage makes up for it, that thing would have cost well over $100 new. Also a nice, new dehumidifyer in the basement, and all the leftover paint cans from the repainting they did before the sale.

But the most awesome thing they left were the original blueprints of the house. And I mean real blueprints, from the late 50's. They are so beautiful I'm planning on having them framed.

Lots of cleaning supplies and gardening tools.

Oh, and a hidden video camera in the attic trained on the driveway and neighbor's yard, with convenient power switch extension wired into the coat closet and connected via co-axial cable to the basement, where it presumably fed into the TV/VCR.

My electrician found it when he was doing some wiring for a vent hood.

I usually am disgusted by old tenant's things. .it just seems like, who knows how clean they were. Nice furniture would be another matter, though. That said, there is one thing I kept: a to-go coffee mug. We have a few but could always use another. I feel kind of gross for sharing that :) We just moved to a house a week and a half ago that came with many lacy grandmother curtains, some were hung up on the rods that have those needle N shaped hooks(?) We gave those back to the owner of the house. We're a bit more modern in style. I think she felt bad, she said she thought we might use them :(

We bought our house two years ago. It was an estate home being sold by the owner's daughter. There were some plastic chairs in the shed and it only recently occurred to me that I could use them for a party we were throwing. I always thought of them as the previous owner's chairs and it didn't seem right to use them without permission, so we just shuffled them around in the shed, keeping them out of the way. It took two years for it to dawn on me that they're actually our chairs now and we can use them if needed. Weird.

Old fashioned metal shower curtain rings for the old (1920s) shower rod. The kind with ball bearings.

Also wooden blinds that were probably custom made for the windows.

A gas clothes dryer! I had an electric washer and dryer, but only a gas hookup in the new place. The dryer is not cosmetically beautiful, but it's functional and has continued to work for the three years (this month) I've lived in my home.

I am moving into a very old house, that for the past few years has been the home of one of my closest friends. When walking though this weekend, he mentioned that some of the main items just belonged to the house. Things like the outdoor furniture, including chairs, small tables and a couch. This will be nice since I don't have any of those things! It will be a big empty house for a while (other than my room) and I look forward to finding the right items to bring into my new home, complimenting what is already there.

The previous owner left drapes in two rooms and vertical blinds (hello, 50's!) in the living room. That's pretty standard, leaving blinds/drapes.
I took me a while to replace the hideous vertical blinds (due to the gigantic size of the window, I was not sure what to go with). The curtain in the bedroom and in the office were so hideous that i ripped them off right away. My bedroom window is ok in terms of privacy and I moved in in November so I could live without replacement ones for a while.

The previous owners left us a hose in the backyard, which we found when we took possession and we appreciated. A few hours after our taking possession of the house, I walked into the back yard and at some point in time they had stealthily snuck out there and took it. I was boggled that they would do that, without even knocking and saying they'd forgotten it. Isn't that technically trespassing?

I had my bathroom redone a couple years ago, and when the contractor guys ripped out the ceiling, they found an antique catalog (selling sarsaparilla and such) that the builders must have put up there in the 1880s. Pretty cool! I put it in a zip-loc with a note, and plan to leave it for the next buyers to find.

Also, behind the wallpaper, written on the horsehair plaster walls, were signatures of the builders, and the dates when they were working. I had to cover them when I painted. Very cool fun things, though.

Our previous owners left us a lawnmower and it is still running great after 7 years! Much appreciated!

The previous owners of my house left a ladder, three hoses, and sprinkler parts. They also sold me the fridge, washer, dryer, lawn mower, and weed eater for $500. Score!

I spent a couple of years at a very small college in Alaska. Most of the houses came with all sorts of stuff that people couldn't afford to ship when they moved. The school's new chaplain rented a house that came with a fossilized mastodon tusk, which sounds cool until you want to move it. A five foot long tusk weighs about 300 pounds.

I just purchased my first home with my husband in May of this year and although the place was a fixer-upper, the previous owner DID leave some nice things behind. These items included a nice hose/caddy, extra tiles for the floor (really nicely done so having spares just in case is awesome!), and a really sweet grill (near-perfect condition and works great!)

I found an entire flagstone terrace and path to the back of the lot buried under 6-12 inches of soil with grass on top. I have unearthed about 70% and have reused the stones throughout the yard (partly in a properly laid terrace that will not sink over time). I will probably dig out the rest in the next few years as I redo the beds now on top of the stone.

When I sold my house I left the outdoor wood stacker, touch up paint, and shelving storage units and zippered wardrobe for the attic that I had used for storage, extra bathroom tile and wood flooring.

Our last house had a flagpole laying in the attic that was so long I have no earthly idea how they got it up there. Unless they built the house around it.

Our current house had a conservation lot in the back yard. When we bought it the conservation vegetation had overgrown into the yard. When we finally tackled it we discovered some beautiful amaryllis in bloom back there. I don't know how they survived.

Wow. So many treasures. Our old owners left a broken ladder, a massive pile of smashed glass tiles and porn. :( Gross

Wow, lots of lucky people here! When we bought our place, the previous owner just left us a whole lot of nasty messes, which was unbelievable considering they'd just remodeled the whole place, and had barely lived there.

In my present home the previous owners left a yard stuff: lawn mower, plant food, hoses; curtains; bath room stuff like shower curtains and waste baskets, garden tchotchkes like a plaster crane; rolling trash cans and other bins, some with bird food in them; a notebook of photos of the flowering plants in the formal garden. Since I've had to repair a lot of things, it was nice to feel like maybe I sort of came out even. They left cleaning supplies and bird feeders. About half of it I could use, the rest: curtains, tchotchkes, etc. I gave to the thrift shop.

In one old rental house, there was a trunk with a few pieces of fabrics from I'm guessing the 1940's or 1950's. I made some clothes out of.

The last place I moved out of, in Minnesota, I left my snow shovel and snow broom. Now I kinda of wish I had brought the shovel--because it's useful for other things. Still I hope whomever move there gets good use out of it. (LMSimm?) Usually when I move I leave the place completely cleared out--like KayonNYC--but this time I wasn't able to get everything out.

We moved in three weeks ago to a fantastic bungalow in desperate need of some love (and a new bathroom) and the previous owners left us a lovely new tub and drywall that they never got around to installing in the garden shed (woot!!) Also left us a portable fire-pit, an old recliner (that my cat has claimed as his own) as well as a fantastic bent wood chair and matching plant stand. A few other odds and ends left around, but the tub and the fire-pit were a fantastic surprise!

Our previous owners left EVERYTHING since it was an estate sale, sold by an adult son. Selling/donating/sorting someone's entire life's possessions was a huge task.

Top finds: deer antlers, darkroom enlarger, urn with ashes (returned to family), complete National Geographic collection 1930s-2000s, British bike from 1953, hand-carved hawk decoy, and an airplane propeller

Those were weird but we were really grateful to keep the lawnmower, wheelbarrow, ukelele, a dresser, lawn chairs, hand tools, glassware, Wedgewood stove, cast iron pans, vintage maps, darning eggs, and walnut slabs.

We got some useful items like garden tools, and some fun stuff like ancient fishing poles and golf clubs (in the basement rafters). We also got broken furniture, too-old-to-use paint, literally TONS of 20yo casting clay for making porcelain figurines, an old mattress, boxes of broken tile, a partially-destroyed piano, much more crap ... the house was supposed to be "clean and empty" but we didn't do a walk-through before signing. Big mistake.

In our old house, I removed everything but a couple extra bottles of cleaning supplies, touch-up paint, a sturdy shelving unit in the garage, and some plain white mini-blinds that fit the windows but were not installed. Our buyer DID do a walkthrough and asked that I remove those things, so I did. But I thought they were being pretty persnickety. I would not have had those items removed myself even if I didn't want them. Who minds having a shelving unit in the garage?

I knew I wouldn't live in my old apartment for more than a few years, so when I had an address stamp made, I left off my name. When I moved out, I left it for the new tenant, along with my barely-used ink pad.

At my current house, the owner left behind some rakes and a charcoal grill. But what was really useful was the ant spray they left - a clear indicator that there were going to be bug issues each spring.

In one of our past homes, the previous owners left a snowblower and two dip nets...score!

A cool 1950's white Formica and chrome table in the basement. I switched the legs (which are very Jetson's or Atomic as they call it today) with the rather basic chrome legs on my 1950's red Formica kitchen table. And then when I moved I sold the white table with the basic legs for $75!

p.s. I would have left the white table for the next person but they were tearing the duplex down for a new development.

As simple as it sounds...I always leave TP.

I usually leave paper towels, a roll of tp in the holder, some cleaning supplies. When I moved in March, however, I ran out if time and was moving from a huge 2 bedroom to a small 1 bedroon with no kitchen storage. I left my vinrage cut glass, crystal and green glass cake plates and aluminum cake saver covers! I hope someone used them.

I just closed on my first house this past Friday and the previous owner was the seller of my dreams! She was moving to a island off of California and was happy to have some first time homeowners to leave her stuff to. Like you, my fiance and I had always lived in apartments and didn't have any real tools/outdoor stuff.

Here's a sample of what she left:

- Canadian canoe
- leaf blower
- shop vac
- hammock
- picnic table and benches
- tools and tool bench
- bathroom trashcans
- copper fire pit
- beach chairs
- lawnmower
- outdoor furniture
- outdoor lighting
- backyard fountain

oh... and some giant pine cones that look great on our mantle!

Weirdest thing- a floor lamp in the living room made from an old toilet!
Saddest thing- an orange tabby cat with a bowl of water & bag of food. We named her Sweet Cakes & she stayed with us for 10 years before she died, after being loved by us all.
Cha-chingiest thing- a coin collection that had been stashed under the bottom drawer of the bathroom vanity (Note: ALWAYS pull out drawers & check under them before moving out, & upon moving in, for things that were hidden or maybe just slipped out of back of drawer & fell into the recesses below). I had inquired about previous renter but was told he moved out of the country. 2nd Cha-chingiest thing- a $100 bill taped to the bottom of a drawer. Again, no luck finding the owner.
Coolest thing- a stack of old redwood boards that I turned into an awesome dining table. In the end it was too large & heavy for me to take with me when I moved out. Left it for the next occupants.

Patio Furniture!! Useful and I even like it - several huge and some small round terracotta pots that I used to plant my container garden, a little blue Weber grill, and a picnic table way in the back of the yard where it actually feels like you're in a forest.
I LOVE this post by the way ....

I don’t think this is exactly what you meant, but the people we bought our first house from left new rolls of toilet paper in all the bathrooms and put fresh liners in trash cans they had left us in the kitchen and the laundry room. It was incredibly thoughtful and made all the difference for us when we moved in, and made us feel very welcome.

I made sure to do this when we sold that house and will do the same if we ever sell our current home.

We bought a 1965 house from the original owners. They left behind all the appliances, including the washer-dryer and an extra freezer in the garage which I fill with bags of berries and extra meat for the winter. We love it! They also left a hideous brown refrigerator in the "rec room." My husband converted it into a kegerator, and it has become his pride and joy. They left a ton a garbage, like one of those old hot curler sets with the plastic hood and hose, and a giant metal desk we gave away on craigslist. Plus terrible drapery and dusty plastic flower arrangements and some terrifying plastic accordian-style shower doors. We have done countless trips to the dump inthe four years we've owned the place. They seemed like wonderful people, though, and we're grateful for the good mojo they left behind in the house.

They left old firework in mine. Which is illegal in Denmark, except if its the 1 of January. I had to leave it at the police station.

A birdhouse with a family of baby birds & parents! The animal lover in me swooned. Also an outdoor rabbit statue, bluebird statue, old birdbath pedestal, etc. As I have a house rabbit, I was instantly charmed :)