Getting acquainted with Swedish death cleaning is not a terrible idea. Less really is more. https://youtu.be/yv6fBOZlMgE
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The great junk transfer is coming
11–20 of 461 posts
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#12I’ve already told my wife that when her parents die we are just going to burn the house down. I’m just half joking.
I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. You can’t take it with you. And I have no intention of sorting through it. It’s all going straight to the landfill.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#13It doesn't have to be this way.
Synopsis of "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning" by Margareta Magnusson.
In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning “death” and städning meaning “cleaning.” This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you. In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace minimalism. Her radical and joyous method for putting things in order helps families broach sensitive conversations, and makes the process uplifting rather than overwhelming.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Gentle-Art-of-Swe...
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#14I’ve already told my wife that when her parents die we are just going to burn the house down. I’m just half joking. I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. You can’t take it with you. And I have no intention of sorting through it. It’s all going straight to the landfill.
Don't throw things, get specialists that can sell and redistribute it. You can negotiate to not get money back and they can even take care of what's really trash.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#15I’ve already told my wife that when her parents die we are just going to burn the house down. I’m just half joking. I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. You can’t take it with you. And I have no intention of sorting through it. It’s all going straight to the landfill.
Don't throw things, get specialists that can sell and redistribute it. You can negotiate to not get money back and they can even take care of what's really trash.
Yes. Well, this process takes months. Do you want the empty house to sell or use? Or would you rather wait 6+ months while stuff slowly clears out?
Edit: for the replies: that works in populated areas. Rural MO, WS not so much.
Edit2: also, arguing with kinfolk about stuff or waiting for probate (in the absence of a Will)
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#16We went through this ten years ago with my wife's dad. He had a lot of stuff, but he had a lot of hobbies...there was relatively little "junk," and he used a lot of it until just a year or two before he passed. Some of it went to fellow hobbyists. Some went into storage. The stuff we just couldn't deal with were sold, along with the house, to a professional flipper who conducted an estate sale, hauled the rest away, and remodeled and sold the house.
My mom was smart, for the most part. My parents weren't really big into accumulating stuff, beyond what people without many hobbies accumulate over the years. Twenty years after my dad passed, my mom downsized before she sold the house and moved into and independent living community. We got professional help downsizing further when she moved from independent living to assisted living, and finally got rid of almost everything else when she went into memory care. As much as she'd gotten rid of, she still had an amazing amount of stuff. It was a little easier doing it in stages, I suppose.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't throw things, get specialists that can sell and redistribute it. You can negotiate to not get money back and they can even take care of what's really trash.
Yes. Well, this process takes months. Do you want the empty house to sell or use? Or would you rather wait 6+ months while stuff slowly clears out? Edit: for the replies: that works in populated areas. Rural MO, WS not so much. Edit2: also, arguing with kinfolk about stuff or waiting for probate (in the absence of a Will)
There are definitely people who will move every single thing out of a house in a weekend for free. That's how storage unit auctions are done, and buyers even pay for it.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#18It will be handled the exact same way it always has: 90% of the time it's off-loaded at a garage sale, at Goodwill, on E-bay or otherwise sold - almost always below market value because the survivors can't be bothered - they just want it gone.
This is the very basis of yard sales and antiquing.
It's how I get a 1999 BMW Z3 with 20K miles back in 2008 for $5K bundled with a Mac Cube and several $K of other goodies from a widow of a former Apple employee. She just wanted it gone. I didn't even "hardball" her - I gave her what she asked for all of it!
I got a vast stamp and coin collection from my father: my sibs who live within 50 miles of my mother wanted nothing to do with it; she's getting on and needed to deal with it - I was willing to come across the country to take it all. Now I have quite a collection of both valuable stamps and a ton of gold and silver.
It's how you get cheap Ham radio gear, machine tools and furniture also - estate sales.
The article is ignorant of all of this apparently. Never had anyone close to them actually die perhaps. The "problem" will solve itself and no one will notice it ever was a problem!
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#19I get this if one of your parents was a bad painter and filled the house with huge framed canvases. Otherwise, I'm just looking for stuff I want, and anything that I know was meant for posterity and few people would care about (my father updates a family tree, for example.) After that, call a professional and sell the lot to them i.e. the thing that these people mention not doing.
You may "lose" your parents if you don't have all of their stuff (I'm not sure what that means, but the article keeps saying it), but luckily, the odds are you won't have to live without them for more than another 20-30 years.
If that stuff outlived your parents, that means that it served its purpose well. Let somebody else buy it off ebay from an estate liquidator so it will create more happiness in the world, rather than hoarding it, which is the impulse I really suspect these situations are feeding.
I have brought up in hypotheticals to anyone who might be lumbered with them after my untimely passing the best ways to liquidate a lot of board games without getting pennies on the dollar. My only actual worry about my (physical) estate is that my heirs may get ripped off while dumping it.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't throw things, get specialists that can sell and redistribute it. You can negotiate to not get money back and they can even take care of what's really trash.
Yes. Well, this process takes months. Do you want the empty house to sell or use? Or would you rather wait 6+ months while stuff slowly clears out? Edit: for the replies: that works in populated areas. Rural MO, WS not so much. Edit2: also, arguing with kinfolk about stuff or waiting for probate (in the absence of a Will)
Shouldn’t take nearly that long. Get another quote from a professional with a warehouse so they can work from there. Or schedule an estate sale as soon as legally able.