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[quote=Anonymous]My dad was a hoarder (not the gross kind, just the collector of (cleaned out) used cottage cheese containers stacked up into a tower kind).

When he died, we had to get a construction-sized dumpster and we filled it four times.

What is hard with clutter is you get decision-fatigue...after going through a lot of stuff, you start saying "screw it" and tossing it all.  You get to a point where you don't care if a hidden gem gets thrown out with all the crap.

In the end all that matters are the photographs (and any jewelry and money).  The other thing that matters might be the "thing" that was sentimental to them, but in our situation we couldn't find that "thing" because there was too much crap.

I wish people who hoard would think through what happens to their hoard when they are not there anymore.  No one can figure out that person's favorite thing that should be kept, and all that stuff they were saving to sell or give to someone just ends up in the trash, mostly because there is too much of it for anyone in the sandwich generation to take on.

Honestly, as I read your story, OP, I think you got really lucky that your sister(s) took the brunt of this on.  I actually think that the reason you are upset (focused) on the waste part of it has to do with the fact that you (unlike your sister) have the *luxury* of focusing on the waste because you were not the primary one mired in the crap.  I suspect your sister is not focused on the waste, just the horror of the avalanche of it all.

I hope you reward your sister(s) with a nice lunch or tea or an afternoon of babysitting so they can do whatever they would like.  Whatever it takes, to let them know that you appreciate them taking on this burden (even if they didn't do it the way you would have done it)

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