I just cleaned out my parents house last summer. I’m an only child. Things that I found that I kept: Love letters between my grandparents from 1918. Family photos. Old quilts. Jewelry (including diamond bracelet found in hall closet in a sack next to the vacuum). My grandmothers HS ring. One chest of Repousee silver.. one piece of antique furniture.
Estate sale company sold everything they could and kept 1/3. The things that didn’t sell went to an auction company, we split 50/50.

I spent $500 shredding old checks, checkbooks, bank statements etc. Three full truckloads Of trash to the College Hunks Hauling Junk. It was awful and I can’t describe the volume of clutter mixed with nice stuff overlayed with dust, junk mail, old Christmas cards etc.

And the worst of it- parents are doing the same thing to their lovely senior living apartment. I will not do this to my son.

Anonymous wrote:I downsized with absolutely no help....I mean not even carry out the garbage....from my kids and their spouses. They took what they wanted and were not seen until all the work was done.
So, are my kids on some forum talking about how fortunate they are to have no worries when we die?
Nah.....they’re probably whining about the Christmas gift we gave them. Or that we gave our grandchild a starburst while exhausting ourselves babysitting. Or deciding when they want to go to our beach house.....so we can get their seats together when we buy their plane tickets.
Leave your parents alone....and check the books.

Umm it's your JOB to declutter yourself. Don't act like your kids should have done it

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t confuse people with things. Your memories of people are not the same thing as their stuff. Keep one or two tokens and then toss or donate the rest.

I don't confuse people with things at all, but I happen to love using the china, silver, and furniture that belonged to my husband's and my parents, grandparents, and great aunts.

My mom is convinced that her granddaughter (my DD 7) is someday going to want her China and silver, which I don't want because I think of it as "old lady stuff". But reading this... Maybe mom is right...

I would hang on to the china & silver and let your daughter decide when the time comes. Just box it up if you don't want to use it yourself. I doesn't take up that much space. You don't want to be the Mom who threw away her inheritance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t confuse people with things. Your memories of people are not the same thing as their stuff. Keep one or two tokens and then toss or donate the rest.

I don't confuse people with things at all, but I happen to love using the china, silver, and furniture that belonged to my husband's and my parents, grandparents, and great aunts.

My mom is convinced that her granddaughter (my DD 7) is someday going to want her China and silver, which I don't want because I think of it as "old lady stuff". But reading this... Maybe mom is right...

In my experience, the boomer and older generation values all this stuff more than their relationships with other people. Sad really.

This happened to my SIL. MIL got remarried and basically chucked all her personal stuff when she moved in with her new DH. SIL was scarred by this. All childhood toys, etc. Also scarred by not having a place to go home to on school breaks while in college - MIL basically told her not to come home and mess up her new married life. Sucks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why didn’t you take your crap with you when you moved out? I throw my kids crap out. Baby crap, gone. School drawings and crap. Gone.

Can’t wait to get rid of the toys and crap one day.

De clutter is wonderful

Because I moved to the capital city of my country by train (26-hour ride) and had no place to live there - just a bed in my relatives' apartment. After I found a job and rented my own apartment, I would have been happy to take everything from my parents' home, but everything was already gone by that time.

It sounded like you most missed the shoebox of items. Knowing your parents as well as you did, you couldn't manage to take the shoebox amount of precious things with you?

Why are you gangig up on this person? That was a horrible thing for the parents to do, and I can understand why it's still hard to swallow. You sound like the person during the holidays who kicked her family out of her "stainless steel kitchen" the morning after xmas and told them they could eat gas station food.

To the poster who came back from college to all the memories thrown away? I'm so sorry.

There are different people responding in the thread you quoted. Nobody is ganging up on OP.

She said that her parents refused to store her valued things, and that it wasn't too much to ask, because it was only a shoebox worth. Okay. So if it was so very very little for them to store, it would have been very, very little for her to take with her, no?

I mean, I've never traveled and been unable to take a shoebox sized amount of stuff extra. It just didn't make sense, that's all.

I do wish she still had the things she valued and that she had a better relationship with her parents. I bet she will do better by her kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why didn’t you take your crap with you when you moved out? I throw my kids crap out. Baby crap, gone. School drawings and crap. Gone.

Can’t wait to get rid of the toys and crap one day.

De clutter is wonderful

Because I moved to the capital city of my country by train (26-hour ride) and had no place to live there - just a bed in my relatives' apartment. After I found a job and rented my own apartment, I would have been happy to take everything from my parents' home, but everything was already gone by that time.

It sounded like you most missed the shoebox of items. Knowing your parents as well as you did, you couldn't manage to take the shoebox amount of precious things with you?

Why are you gangig up on this person? That was a horrible thing for the parents to do, and I can understand why it's still hard to swallow. You sound like the person during the holidays who kicked her family out of her "stainless steel kitchen" the morning after xmas and told them they could eat gas station food.

To the poster who came back from college to all the memories thrown away? I'm so sorry.

Anonymous wrote:^^ Guess what, gramma? It was your work to do. Kids did not 'help' you accumulate all that crap, you did.

You're SUPPOSED to take care of this stuff so they don't have to do it when you die.

Oh and stop buying their plane tickets if you're gonna bitch about it later.

DP.

Harsh, but true.

^^ Guess what, gramma? It was your work to do. Kids did not 'help' you accumulate all that crap, you did.

You're SUPPOSED to take care of this stuff so they don't have to do it when you die.

Oh and stop buying their plane tickets if you're gonna bitch about it later.

I downsized with absolutely no help....I mean not even carry out the garbage....from my kids and their spouses. They took what they wanted and were not seen until all the work was done.
So, are my kids on some forum talking about how fortunate they are to have no worries when we die?
Nah.....they’re probably whining about the Christmas gift we gave them. Or that we gave our grandchild a starburst while exhausting ourselves babysitting. Or deciding when they want to go to our beach house.....so we can get their seats together when we buy their plane tickets.
Leave your parents alone....and check the books.

PP here. And the worst thing is she tries to pawn this "rescued" crap from my siblings, etc. on me.

My parents have SO MUCH junk. Last time I was there, I took several bags of books from my old room (they won't let me touch anything else) and bagged them up for donation and my mom went through it and "rescued" all these books she thought were "sentimental" and lectured me on how much people "want these books" and how "books are worth money" (no, not these). They never got donated because she grabbed them and said she would take them and just stashed them in the laundry room. Same thing with bags of clothes I bagged up for donation 10 years ago when I lived at home--she rescued them and stashed them in the house. She helped my sister move out of her college dorm and "rescued" bags of clothes and stuff she and her roommates were donating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t confuse people with things. Your memories of people are not the same thing as their stuff. Keep one or two tokens and then toss or donate the rest.

People die and they take their memories with them. If you want your kids to have a connection to past generations you really do need to keep some pictures, medals, etc.

Old coffee makers, toasters, throw rugs, coffee mugs, tube t.vs, vcrs, video tapes...toss/donate/sell.

+100

Anonymous wrote:Don’t confuse people with things. Your memories of people are not the same thing as their stuff. Keep one or two tokens and then toss or donate the rest.

I don't confuse people with things at all, but I happen to love using the china, silver, and furniture that belonged to my husband's and my parents, grandparents, and great aunts. We have many of their accessories as well, along with framed photos. One or two tokens would not be enough for me, and my husband feels the same. Fortunately, our adult kids feel the same as well. Doesn't mean you have to keep everything.