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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#81

Post by jahewson »

flybrand wrote: post #8

When FiL passed away there were multiple buildings on their 50 acres full of stuff. Both he and MiL were only children. Everything over 200 yrs had flowed to them. “Priceless heirlooms” weren’t of interest to anyone. Auctions led to junk dealers. There is a hopelessness in realizing that lifetimes of activity were of little value, that nobody even knew what many objects were. I felt like the girl in the movie Labyrin…

Oh yes, we had a few of these accumulators on my wife's side of the family. It's like the depression created an entire generation that couldn't bear to throw anything away.

Five giant boxes of rags. Every tax return back to 1942. Every disposable coffee cup sleeve. Presents, never opened. Dresses, last worn in the 1980s. Every little white table-shaped thing that comes in a takeaway pizza box. 20 of the same wrench, all rusty. The old front door knob, long since replaced. Unopened, in-box power tools from the 1960s. Boxes of their own parents' stuff they never sorted through. 72 boxes of piano sheet music. All in a tiny post-war 3 bed family house. It took us 2 years to get through it all.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#82

Post by debbiedowner »

robocat wrote: post #70

Cleaning up after your parents is a gift you give to them: look at it like them paying it forward for all the times the cleaned up after you as a child. Psychologically, mentally, and physically, parents can have difficulty tidying up their stuff. My friend’s parents came from very poor backgrounds and had a lot of trash. The father had a shed full of stuff that was useful to him - he knew what was in it and how to u…

What are some examples of the obsolete tools? I can imagine a manual hand drill...

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#83

Post by dhosek »

flybrand wrote: post #8

When FiL passed away there were multiple buildings on their 50 acres full of stuff. Both he and MiL were only children. Everything over 200 yrs had flowed to them. “Priceless heirlooms” weren’t of interest to anyone. Auctions led to junk dealers. There is a hopelessness in realizing that lifetimes of activity were of little value, that nobody even knew what many objects were. I felt like the girl in the movie Labyrin…

I feel a bit that way about my life’s accumulation of books. I suspect that the vast majority will end up getting donated to the library book sale after I die (plenty of worn and ancient paperbacks). I have made a point of pre-segregating the books that will likely have a notable resale value, but those are not many. Perhaps when I’m older but not too old I may spend some time trying to connect some of the specialized sub-collections with individual collectors who will treasure them as I did.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#84

Post by aix1 »

sockaddr wrote: post #67
ryandrake wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. I almost replied this way, too, but then I remember the junk drawer I have full of DB9 serial cables, Firewire cables, PCI SCSI cards, 256MB RAM chips, 2GB spinning hard disk drives, three prong computer power cables, mice, webcams, power strips, power bricks, and a fully functional Dell OptiPlex GX620 with a screaming Pentium D 3.2GHz CPU. I keep…

I had a similar pile but went through it and tried to pick: - Only one of each type of thing - Only the highest quality/safest power bricks - And items that punched above their weight in terms of utility (like an adapter that at least one end was not obsolete) This reduced my pile by about 75% . I find that I subconsciously keep a map of things that I encounter on my search for other items and this is actually a burd…

I have a similar method: I keep all cables in a set of small boxes. All USB cables go into one box, networking into another etc. I don't allow the boxes to overflow.

This does three things:

1. Makes it easy to find the right cable or to establish definitively that I don't have one.

2. Limits the volume of cables I keep. Say some gadget comes with a micro-USB cable, but the USB box is full. I either already know that I don't need any more micro-USB cables and recycle it right away, or check the box and find another USB cable to recycle to make space. (On extremely rare occasions I decide that the box is too small and either upgrade to a bigger one or split the category up into subcategories. I haven't needed to do this for a very long time.)

3. Makes explicit the process of thinking "Do I need to keep this thing?" instead of automatically storing it away.

I use the same method for chargers, mains extension leads and adapters etc.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#85

Post by AnimalMuppet »

My dad was born at the beginning of the Great Depression. He told me once about being unable to buy thread, not because they didn't have the money, but because there was no thread to buy - all the thread factories had closed. You had to re-use thread.

Now imagine that that was all you had known for your entire life up to that point. And you had no idea that it would ever be different. That would shape you.

My dad was a hoarder, at least partly because of that. When he saw something that he could possibly use in some way, he kept it.

My dad died earlier this month. I'm getting to clean up the mess. It's not fun. I don't like it. I find it rather depressing that he spent so much effort collecting so much that has so little value. But I can understand why he did.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#86

Post by bentcorner »

SoftTalker wrote: post #10

After having to deal with all the stuff my parents left behind I swore to myself that I would not do the same thing to my kids. It's easy to say "just throw it out" but so many items have nostalgia and memories attached. Yet if I hadn't had to sort through it all, I never would have missed that stuff. I need to get on it. I'm not getting younger.

My dad is getting older and even though he doesn't say it I can tell he's contemplating his own mortality. He recently asked me if I'd like to take the old Vic-20, C-64 and Apple 2e off his hands. We have a lot of very fond memories we made together with that technology and it played a part of who I am today. But frankly I don't have the room nor do I have the time to do anything with that stuff. It'd just sit in a box in my garage.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#87

Post by jhgb »

robocat wrote: post #70

Cleaning up after your parents is a gift you give to them: look at it like them paying it forward for all the times the cleaned up after you as a child. Psychologically, mentally, and physically, parents can have difficulty tidying up their stuff. My friend’s parents came from very poor backgrounds and had a lot of trash. The father had a shed full of stuff that was useful to him - he knew what was in it and how to u…

For some reason you've just reminded me just how much archeologists love midden heaps. I guess pretty much everyone gets to be an archeologist of sort at one time in life.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#88

Post by astrange »

shakezula wrote: post #68
tmountain wrote: post #13

It 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…

This feels like the anti-hero to Kondoesque sparks-joy cleaning.

Btw, “sparks joy” was invented for the English translation. The Japanese was IIRC “tokimeki”, so I’d say that is a clever localization but is too specific about the kind of emotion sparked.

Kondo’s Japanese books also have a lot more specific advice about trash disposal in Japan, which can be difficult, leading to hoarding because you don’t want to figure out how to do it.

Japan has some high productivity systems for sure, but in things like trash and childcare they’ve instead chosen to have very complicated processes you have to get just right, and instead of improving them they just have all of society shame you if you ever get any of it wrong.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#89

Post by astrange »

chaostheory wrote: post #36

I feel with Millennials not being able to buy normal sized homes and the rise of minimalism with trends like Marie Kondo, this traditional junk transfer may end with Gen X.

I wonder how far back these traditions go? People didn’t have the ability to generate junk until recently. Even the concept of generations is post-WW2.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#90

Post by pbuzbee »

SoftTalker wrote: post #10

After having to deal with all the stuff my parents left behind I swore to myself that I would not do the same thing to my kids. It's easy to say "just throw it out" but so many items have nostalgia and memories attached. Yet if I hadn't had to sort through it all, I never would have missed that stuff. I need to get on it. I'm not getting younger.

For me, often the amount of time I've hung on to the item becomes the reason I keep it longer, rather than the item itself. "Oh wow I've had this trinket since the 5th grade. It's not really significant to me anymore, but it feels a little sad to get rid of it now."
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