The burden of so much ‘meaningful’ stuff
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Anonymous
Your mom is an inspiration. I hope I can be like her. |
Anonymous
This |
Anonymous
| If you are given stuff you don’t want, give it away or put it in the dumpster. |
Anonymous
+1 Also, don't play favorites - save the good stuff (even if it is not expensive, if only it is sentimental) for blood family, not people who marry in. Don't cause drama/division and breed resentment in your own family, unless you want that to be your legacy. |
Anonymous
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My mom was a low-key hoarder for decades -- not pizza boxes stacked sky-high in the living room with dead animals in the corners, but a three-car garage and 4-bedroom house with 3 bedrooms full of boxes and crap. We were military and the boxes never got fully unpacked, and there was always a "junk room," but it got worse as she got older and she just piled *every piece of paper* into a box without dealing with it and would "unpack" from a trip by dumping out toiletries and meds and whatever into a box...and then pile paper on it. Maybe medium-key hoarder?
My sisters and I, and her saint-like neighbors, moved her from that house to a one-bedroom apartment in a local CCRC last October after multiple months of crazed cleaning, that included 3 full 15-cubic-yard dumpsters of absolute crap. Sadly, not all the boxes got cleaned out so there were still 5-6 left in her new apartment to deal with. I finally finished the last one a couple of weeks ago when she was in a rehab center following back surgery. I am glad we finished the cleaning out before she died. If she'd died and left us that mountain of garbage to deal with, I would have been so furious that I'd have ended up hating her posthumously. As it is, I've been able to work through my anger at her failure to deal with her crap for decades and get to a better place in my relationship. The stuff she has left will be manageable when she dies, because she doesn't have room to hide it away. I'm not ever doing this to my kids. Never, never, never. People who hold on to stuff to pass down to their kids -- whether it's valuable/sentimental or just plain garbage they haven't been bothered to deal with -- truly don't understand what a physical and emotional burden that stuff can create. |
Anonymous
| No action means, they have made their decision -- that their stuff is not worth the hassle of making a plan. Therefore, do with it what you want. |
Anonymous
+1,000,000 I truly want to do everything I can to make things easy for my own kids. |
Anonymous
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My parents are going to be leaving me a house just full of crap, just like their parents did to them, despite their previous vows not to do so to me.
Their intentions were good. But from observing them, I can see that it’s a mistake to leave the dejunking to the end of life, like Swedish death cleaning. Thinking of it that way lets you put it off into the future, but there is no guarantee that you will be healthy enough in the future to do it. The thought of cleaning out my house right now is exhausting, how much more exhausting would it be when I am 85? What’s more, keeping stuff over time lets the sentimental attachment grow ever stronger. And, if you leave it to the end, you are not practicing the kind of ruthless junk disposal energy that you will need. It’s like thinking that after a lifetime of not working out, you are suddenly going to be able to lift heavy weights over and over. As a result, I practice constant dejunking now. Periodically I go through and just try to clear out a large percentage of the stuff in my house. It’s amazing how you do not even miss it! And then more stuff will roll in and so you have to keep pushing it back out. If I was not working hard to do this, it scares me how much stuff would be in my house accumulating. |
Anonymous
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My mom is going to leave me a house stuffed to the gills with junk. It's my quiet gift to her to not say a word and deal with it when she dies. I've already looked up services in the town she lives in that help deal with such situations for my own peace of mind. It will be a lot of work and hassle but that's what it will be.
For me, I'm working on getting rid of my junk to not put my own family in the same situation. |
Anonymous
| It is no big deal to call a junk removal service to clear out a house. Your problem is of your own making— it is because you want to keep some items of the deceased. So either call junk removal or don’t complain if you want to treasure hunt. |
Anonymous
Um… what? You must be the person who always posts about “legacy of resentment” whenever older family does anything you don’t like, and pretends there are some bright line ethical rules about this stuff. Your parents’ real legacy is not raising you right. Which is also going to be your kids’ inheritance it seems. |
Anonymous
The point that you can’t seem to grasp it that it is much easier for the adult son in the family who is getting married to say, “Actually, Mom, I don’t like that quilt, and it won’t fit our decor. I understand it has great sentimental value, which is why I think [cousin’s name] would like it instead.” If there are then any hurt feelings or resentments, it can be worked out mother to son/family to son, and it doesn’t put DIL in the horrible position of not liking a “gift” and either accepting it (and disliking it) or rejecting it and being labeled as cold, uppity, unfeeling, whatever. But sure, tell me how my parents raised me. I am secure in the fact that they raised me to always be considerate, and to not make family traditions or family heirlooms into burdens. |
Anonymous
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I’ve had to deal with three elderly relatives who passed away without getting rid of all their stuff. The fact is that they don’t want to get rid of it themselves, because that’s like saying, “okay, I’m ready to die now”. And they get mad if you offer to declutter for them, because that’s like telling them, “okay, I’m ready for you to die now”. It was simply easier to do it after they actually died. Then you don’t have to feel very bad about tossing or donating something your mom loved.
In each case all that was left of an entire life was some photo albums and some odds and ends. And I doubt my kids will keep those photo albums of their grandparents and great grandparents. In due course there will be nothing left to show they lived at all. |
Anonymous
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My mom was an only child and lived in the same house 50 years. I moved her out last year. You just need to dissociate. Brother and I chose a few things that were meaningful, but the reality is that neither of us wanted/needed silver, china, rugs, a million faded pictures of relatives who are now unidentified (and mom doesn't know), etc.
Step 1 I got a dumpster and filled it with crap. Phone books (remember those?) from the 1980s, lots and lots of junk. Step 2: picked a few pieces of art, a few small mementos each, plus what I would bring to my mom's assisted living. step 3: Got an estate sale to take care of the rest. Aside from a few things i put in auction (from grandparents), we didn't really get much money (about 15k for stuff that was appraised at some point for like, 150k, but the time it would take to sell each etching, each silver spoon, each vintage doll...time is money too). There were a few regrets I realized we had some really valuable things that went for a song but to be free of the burden of stuff is priceless. DH and I dont have a ton of stuff, as we've moved multiple times, and we dont have much that we would consider "valuable" that the kids would feel guilty about getting rid off. There are things they can keep if they want, but most of it will be given away, etc. We will try to downsize again once they are in college. |
Anonymous
Same. My parents are in their 80s and still in my 4-bedroom childhood home that is stuffed with junk. Basement, bedrooms, closets, all of it, stuffed. |