What to do with all the "stuff" you inherited?

[Anonymous]

OP, the only plan I would make is to always have a reasonably sized house. (Meaning, a house without space for an enormous library.)

I wouldn’t talk about this much now, except to say that it sounds like a nice tradition that brought them lots of joy. Make no promises and keep your house small.

After they pass away, you and your DH can keep a few and offer the rest to the other siblings. If anyone gets bent out of shape about the library getting broken up - great! They can keep it. This is the most important part: DO NOT agree to keep the books in storage. There will never be a good time to get rid of them and your DH will alway want to deal with it “later.” If you give in to DH on the storage unit you will end up paying several thousand a year until the day you die.

[Anonymous]

We were not given quite this quantity of stuff but still more than we could accommodate in our home. We rented storage space for a year, informed all relatives of what was there and how to take it and got rid of all most all of it after 12 months.

A weed is a plant that is growing where it is not wanted.
Junk is stuff that nobody wants.

[Anonymous]

I would not consider the books that are in storage to be part of an intact "library." If your husband's parents can't keep all the books together, why should you?

That said, if it were me, I would want to keep history books, biographies and atlases, and I would fill my basement with built-ins to keep the ones I wanted. That is me, though -- I am a book afficionado and collector. You and your husband should decide if there are any particular books that you would want. Hopefully they are well organized, because otherwise it will be impossible to sort them out. There are too many.

30,000 books is more than anyone would read in a lifetime. Even if you read one book a day, it would take 82 years to read them all.

If no one else in your family wants the books, and if it would truly cause your in-laws angst or pain to think of the family "library" coming to an end (again, I don't see how books in storage are part of a library, but whatever) -- I would not feel bad about not telling them about your plans to dispose of the unwanted books after they are gone. I actually think that would be a kind thing to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would not consider the books that are in storage to be part of an intact "library." If your husband's parents can't keep all the books together, why should you?

That said, if it were me, I would want to keep history books, biographies and atlases, and I would fill my basement with built-ins to keep the ones I wanted. That is me, though -- I am a book afficionado and collector. You and your husband should decide if there are any particular books that you would want. Hopefully they are well organized, because otherwise it will be impossible to sort them out. There are too many.

30,000 books is more than anyone would read in a lifetime. Even if you read one book a day, it would take 82 years to read them all.

If no one else in your family wants the books, and if it would truly cause your in-laws angst or pain to think of the family "library" coming to an end (again, I don't see how books in storage are part of a library, but whatever) -- I would not feel bad about not telling them about your plans to dispose of the unwanted books after they are gone. I actually think that would be a kind thing to do.

OP here. By "storage" I didn't mean storage units, they have some books (unknown number to me) in their attic. I agree if they (who have big house) can't even accommodate the books, my small dc suburb home sure can't!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, the only plan I would make is to always have a reasonably sized house. (Meaning, a house without space for an enormous library.)

I wouldn’t talk about this much now, except to say that it sounds like a nice tradition that brought them lots of joy. Make no promises and keep your house small.

After they pass away, you and your DH can keep a few and offer the rest to the other siblings. If anyone gets bent out of shape about the library getting broken up - great! They can keep it. This is the most important part: DO NOT agree to keep the books in storage. There will never be a good time to get rid of them and your DH will alway want to deal with it “later.” If you give in to DH on the storage unit you will end up paying several thousand a year until the day you die.

I'm OP, haha, keeping my house small is very easy considering where we live! That's done. And DH wouldn't waste money on storage units, he had told me multiple time those things are stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It obviously depends on what your husband wants, but if some are rare and museum worthy, maybe it's time to find the museum that would like them in the collection. If they are just random books it's kind of ridiculous to keep paying to store them in either your house or a storage unit forever. They aren't helping anyone there! What's the point?

+1 Go watch a Marie Kondo episode. These things should bring you joy, not cause you to move house because you need to keep them.

I know, I am OP. I've been a Marie Kondo fan ever since her first book came out. And I have been de-cluttering at my house. My house is now as clutter free and organize as it can be! My problem is just that I can't force Marie Kondo's method on my in laws, how can I get them to understand that those books are not necessary? I don't want to hurt their feelings.

You don't have to convince them of anything--unless the collection of books gets in the way of them getting into a downsized living situation that they desperately need.

Wait until they are dead, and you and DH do what makes sense for you. You can do research on the kinds of places that might want rare books, or handle collections like that. Is there a family connection to a college or university, a museum, that might want some of the rare pieces?

[Anonymous]

I would tell my parents that the library is way too large for me to handle and that they should (1) get it appraised (2) find a library or school that would like the collection and then (3) get a tax deduction. If the appraiser says it is of little real value other then it’s been in the family then it won’t be easy to find someone who wants it. The cost of packing and moving the books could be huge.

[Anonymous]

Using http://awfullibrarybooks.net/size-matters-estimating-shelf-capacity/ you can get about 12 books per linear foot of shelf space. You'd need 2500 linear feet of shelves for 30k books.

If you did 6-shelf bookcases, and each one was 4 feet wide, (basically the Ikea Hemnes) you'd need 104 bookcases.

If you have a 12x12 room with 3 walls' worth of shelves (figuring that the 4th wall's worth is for doorways and windows) you could only get 9 such shelves in there. So you'd need more than ten such rooms, with bookshelves on every wall!

Now of course there are other ways to store that many books, like floor-to-ceiling shelves and shelves on rollers and off-site storage but you get my point--if there are truly 30k books that is massive (literally--the weight of 30k books! you might need to reinforce your floors!). You and your husband would really need to want to take that on. Otherwise, I think it's ok for your husband to explain that he does not have the capacity for that many books and that he's happy to help them think about who else might want some (are they on special topics that a library or university might want?). He could say he is excited to take 1000 very important books. You could probably get those onto a shelf or two.

Since you asked for personal experiences, my sister and I dealt with this with my grandmother's china. We divided it--she got the serving pieces and I took the plates, bowls, and cups. My mom has the silver. But now my mom is trying to get rid of the silver AND her own china and silver. Not sure what we'll do about that. I'm hoping my sister lives out her dream of getting a giant house so she can have it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is DH's family tradition that DH gets all the books from his parent's library, I estimated there will be 20k -30k books (could be more, I can't count all of them, I head that many cases of books are in storage, not on shelves). Our modest house cannot possibly hold all those books, so what do we do? Passing down the family library is their tradition started 3 generations ago. Will it hurt their feelings if we tell them we can't handle the number of books? Shall we build a big house to house all the books once we are a bit older and have more $$? We can't afford a big house right now. And also I probably would want to downsize later in life anyway, I wouldn't want a 5000 sqft house when I'm retired.

Maybe you never have to inherit books, but maybe you had to deal with other "stuff" passed down to you. What did you do with those "stuff". Any suggestion?

You sound completely fill of sh%t. The avesragbhigh school library has 12k books. Not a chance your inlaws have more than that. Probably not even a quarter of that.

[Anonymous]

OP, it sounds like it is time for DH to end the family tradition of passing down the entire library to one person.

Have him suggest that it is so large, no one can afford to store it...and offer to split it among all siblings and family members who are interested, with him having the first choice.

As someone who owned about a thousand books, the numbers sneak up on you and we found places to shelve them--until we moved and realized how much they weigh. Then we sold / donated about 500 of them.

If there is family money, it might be wise to hire an archivist / librarian / antiquarian bookseller to evaluate the collection first. There are probably books that are sentimental, books most of the family don't want, valuable books, books that have almost no monetary value, books in poor condition, and books many libraries and archives might be interested in.

Otherwise, selling some of the more valuable books to finance moving the book collection and having shelves to store the book collection might be another course of action. 30,000 is a lot of books, however. You could give 10 family members 1000 books apiece, which would be much more doable, for example. All traditions have to end sometime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is DH's family tradition that DH gets all the books from his parent's library, I estimated there will be 20k -30k books (could be more, I can't count all of them, I head that many cases of books are in storage, not on shelves). Our modest house cannot possibly hold all those books, so what do we do? Passing down the family library is their tradition started 3 generations ago. Will it hurt their feelings if we tell them we can't handle the number of books? Shall we build a big house to house all the books once we are a bit older and have more $$? We can't afford a big house right now. And also I probably would want to downsize later in life anyway, I wouldn't want a 5000 sqft house when I'm retired.

Maybe you never have to inherit books, but maybe you had to deal with other "stuff" passed down to you. What did you do with those "stuff". Any suggestion?

You sound completely fill of sh%t. The avesragbhigh school library has 12k books. Not a chance your inlaws have more than that. Probably not even a quarter of that.

What inspired you to come on here and post such a nasty comment?

[Anonymous]

And, I don't doubt they have a lot of books. One of our friends, and older academic, set up his own library in the basement of his house. It was larger than most small school libraries.

I'm an academic librarian, and have gone through very large estate collections of books, donated to a university from the heirs to the estate. As a public university we could not sell any of the books, but did love all the out of print local history books the library could find no other way!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, the only plan I would make is to always have a reasonably sized house. (Meaning, a house without space for an enormous library.)

I wouldn’t talk about this much now, except to say that it sounds like a nice tradition that brought them lots of joy. Make no promises and keep your house small.

After they pass away, you and your DH can keep a few and offer the rest to the other siblings. If anyone gets bent out of shape about the library getting broken up - great! They can keep it. This is the most important part: DO NOT agree to keep the books in storage. There will never be a good time to get rid of them and your DH will alway want to deal with it “later.” If you give in to DH on the storage unit you will end up paying several thousand a year until the day you die.

I'm OP, haha, keeping my house small is very easy considering where we live! That's done. And DH wouldn't waste money on storage units, he had told me multiple time those things are stupid.

Then let your DH handle this. If your ILs aren't oblivious, they will notice you have no room for 30K books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, the only plan I would make is to always have a reasonably sized house. (Meaning, a house without space for an enormous library.)

I wouldn’t talk about this much now, except to say that it sounds like a nice tradition that brought them lots of joy. Make no promises and keep your house small.

After they pass away, you and your DH can keep a few and offer the rest to the other siblings. If anyone gets bent out of shape about the library getting broken up - great! They can keep it. This is the most important part: DO NOT agree to keep the books in storage. There will never be a good time to get rid of them and your DH will alway want to deal with it “later.” If you give in to DH on the storage unit you will end up paying several thousand a year until the day you die.

I'm OP, haha, keeping my house small is very easy considering where we live! That's done. And DH wouldn't waste money on storage units, he had told me multiple time those things are stupid.

Then let your DH handle this. If your ILs aren't oblivious, they will notice you have no room for 30K books.

This sounds like one of those things that brings them happiness to dream and fantasize about. If the ILs seem happy to talk about the possibilities, indulge it. Why not?

This is no different than when old people buy a huge vacation imagining that all their children and grandchildren will vacation there every year and spend all holidays there. In the back of their mind they know this isn’t going to happen - just like your ILs know you guys aren’t going to build a library addition to your house. As long as they’re not asking for a firm commitment from you, let them dream! All that they’re asking from you is appreciation of the family’s history. That’s it. Validation.

[Anonymous]

Keeping 30,000 books organized and in good condition is a full time job for several people. There’s also not much purpose in doing it if nobody gets to access the library. Hire professionals to help you sell or auction the collection, then put that money into 529s for your children. Education can still be the legacy that continues.