Not only did I keep having this dream last night, but I've had it before several times. With variations, this is the central theme.

I am moving into an old, run-down, very cluttered apartment that has been used for storage, and all of the dusty old things are still in it. In some versions of the dream, the apartment is the entire attic of a large house. In others, it is some attached rooms the homeowner doesn't use. In return for fixing it up, I am offered some deal such as very cheap rent or no deposit. I am given free reign to fix the place up as I wish. I can use anything I find in the apartment if I want, with the understanding that if I move out, I leave it there. But the homeowner asks me not to throw anything away, since he/she (I never actually see the homeowner) may some day want those things again. Fortunately, the apartment is always big enough that I can use some of the rooms to live in, and others to store the stuff.

The rooms are always in varying state of repair, with the rooms in front holding up better than the ones in back. Therefore I live in the better rooms, use the more run-down ones for storage, and close them off.

There are usually several family members with me when I begin the repairs. They can be siblings, or partners of siblings, and in one version my husband and oldest daughter were there. One part of the dream that isn't so pleasant is that it seems every suggestion I make gets second-guessed. "No, you don't want the TV there. You want it here." "That kind of light fixture won't work." My siblings and their partners tend to act as if they are the ones who are living there, and I am the guest. After the dream had been repeated a few times last night, I started referring to myself as "the dumbass," since I was being treated like I didn't know anything.

Toward the end of the dream, people show up asking about the things I have in storage. They are relatives of the homeowner, these are their things, and they want them back. So I give them back. Except in the last "rerun" of the dream, when it was ghosts showing up, and I was exorcising them.

Can anyone make any sense of this?