We've all heard about it...Sims complaining of a phantom trash pile that we simply cannot see. We've replaced fridges and trash cans, perhaps even remodeled entire homes, only to find that our Sims continue to hallucinate, complaining endlessly of the filth around them.
I'd heard of this glitch, but had never experienced it...until now. The Gaia family began whining about a trash pile, though I searched high and low, and found nothing. I began to consider moving my household...but remembering how much trouble I went through the last time I did that...pulling so many things at once out of the family inventory that the game would crash, rearranging my precious supply of cut gems, replanting fruits and vegetables...no, just no.
So I decide to go scientific, and perform an experiment. I usher my beloved digital family into the basement, enter Build Mode, and nuke the entire house. BAM. I go back into Live Mode, and what happens? All four Sims whine at once about invisible trash. I mentally bash my head on my keyboard multiple times. Okay, so that didn't work. Time to delete the basement. I move everybody out onto the now-empty lot, and begin demolishing the walls of my massive subterranean treasure storage.
Then I see it.
Yes, that is a pile of trash, suspended high above the basement floor at ceiling level, most of which is now demolished (you can see the second level of the basement beneath). I find that I can grab the trash with the hand, and dispose of it.
Since I obviously haven't saved the game, having destroyed my Sims' entire property, I exit, then reenter the game. I go to the same spot, and find the trash still suspended near the basement ceiling, and finally rid my Sims of what in fact wasn't a hallucination at all, but a quirky glitch...and here I thought my constant state of epic insanity was rubbing off on them.
Lesson learned...if your Sims begin complaining about trash you can't see....search the darned ceiling, because it's probably stuck in an alternate dimension just beyond the reach of Sims.
