Parents finally downsized. Now what to do with all this stuff?
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Anonymous
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My elderly parents (very belatedly) finally moved out of their 3000 sq ft house in the suburbs to a CRCC apartment. My father would not move and insisted on staying there until the very end. But my mother broke her hip and a split level house is about the worst in that regard post recovery. The house is sold and my brother and I rushed to get stuff out of there. Two rooms were stuffed to the top with boxes and more and more haphazard stuff. I found my grandmothers momentos and pictures (really great) in the garage with mouse droppings all over it. Other crazy stuff. There was more signs of dementia there than we imagined.
I have given away a truck load of stuff and still there is more. My kids (and brothers kids) have picked thru what they want. Any suggestions on how to deal with: 1. 1000s of pictures and associated negatives. Some might be good. 2. 100+ Picture albums - many related to their hobbies. Some from European trips and cruises. I dont have enough storage space for them all. 3. Electronics. many many cameras - most of which are small point and shot but a few better digital ones with big lens. Computers. 5 ipads. 4 laptops computers. 4. Photo slides. 3 carosuels full of them plus a couple of boxes. Can they be converted to photos? 5. Lithographs. European. Late 1800s and early 1900s. No idea if these are valuable. A couple i would keep but not 50 of them. 6. War memorabilia like swords, one really old gun, daggars, belts, WW1 helmet 7. Steins - a couple are nice but 20 not so much 8. Silver - my grandmothers silver is lovely but i don't want it. My kids wont want it. Ditto on china and linens. 9. A lot of personal papers. I went thru and trashed much of it but still there is more. Any guidelines on what to keep? My parents apartment is stuffed already and now the house is out of mind so they seem to not care about what remains. If i ask about anything, my father wants me to bring it over and then it is added to the already extremely cluttered second bedroom (bed is unusable already). If there is anything of value it would go towards their living expenses which are very high. |
Anonymous
| Since the items in the house are out of sight, out of mind until you bring them up would they remember things if you do not bring them up? If that's the case I'd consider an estate sale and after that has concluded I'd contact museums to see if they'd be interested in the war memorabilia and local shelters to see if they could use the linens. The pictures will probably end up being trashed. I know that's difficult but it was the case with my FIL's estate. We kept a few slides from each trip but no one has the space to store those things and it doesn't sound like you do either. Sorry, OP. |
Anonymous
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Yes, photo slides can be converted to photos if you want, but sounds like you have plenty of photos already. For sorting the photos, maybe it could be a family tradition every Thanksgiving to spend an hour together going through a new box and an hour on Christmas?
Please totally destroy the old gun so it doesn't get into the wrong hands. No idea how to destroy a sword. You can probably take a photo of the lithographs and do a google image search to find out more or just google European Lithographs and spend 15 minutes to get a sense of if they are worth keeping. Could also put on ebay. All this takes time and your time is worth money too. So many parents think they are leaving some fortune for their kids saving this junk, but they forget nobody deals with it until someone is sick and you need to move quickly and save your sanity. most people I know dumped everything because they did not have an ounce of energy left to deal in the hopes it might yield a few grand. Those who do get one of those special auction companies involved often find rich mommy's junk is still junk. |
Anonymous
| You can get a slide scanner for the slides and negatives. |
Anonymous
| Regarding the photo albums relating to their hobbies; could you possibly see if there is an organization/museum that would be interested in receiving it as a donation? For example, if the hobby is surfing, and they have photographs from historical surfing events or competitions, a surf museum might be interested in them. |
Anonymous
No! There is almost zero chance that a museum or historical society wants any of this. Their space is finite, and they routinely purge historically significant resources. They don't want to go through your vacation slides! It's hard to accept, but most of these photos should just go in the trash. |
Anonymous
100% agree. The odds that there is a historically significant photo among thousands is virtually nill. The use of precious resources (manpower) would be an absolute waste on something like this, especially since most are non-profit. |
Anonymous
Why? The antique gun and/or sword are probably the only things listed here which may have value. OP should have them appraised and sold accordingly, especially since the money is needed. Just because you may not like guns or swords doesn't mean there isn't a collectors market out there which places value on them. |
Anonymous
| You can digitize all of the images -- but it's a lot of work. My DH got his parents' slides and he spent a lot of quarantine digitizing them. It was a pleasant way to connect our kids to his heritage. If you think the lithographs, steins, and other memorabilia might have some value, call a local auction house and ask them to come and take a look. Sell the valuable ones. You can also look for specialized auctions for things like the war memorabilia. For the papers, keep the anything related to the sale of the house, the last seven years of tax returns, birth , marriage, baptismal and other certificates, and anything clearly interesting like a genealogical chart, immigration records, etc. |
Anonymous
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Would you parents want to keep the photo albums of their trips and hobbies? My parents kept theirs and would reminisce about their trip.
The rest I would get rid of except the gun, sword and steins maybe a consignment store will take. |
Anonymous
| Why not give the antique war memorabilia to your local VFW? |
Anonymous
Good point. When you visit them this will be a pleasant way to interact with them-go through old albums. If they lose new memories, they still often have old memories and it bring a smile. |
Anonymous
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Post it on Facebook marketplace. I really want silver for my formal dinners. Grandma left me hers in her will but someone ran off with it before she died and it was gone.
I don’t think Facebook will let you list the gun or sword but those are valuable. We have our ancestors guns from various wars (civil and American revolution) and we appreciate them. They’ve been passed down for a long time. |
Anonymous
| Estate sale. There are companies that help organize estate sales. Don't know the details, but a former colleague does this on the weekends. |
Anonymous
| Sell what can be sold, throw out the rest. Rent a storage unit for emotionally sensitive junk, and if no one remembers about in in 2-5 years, throw away. |