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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#171

Post by unwind »

brabel wrote: post #156
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…

Swedish garages are never used for cars. Their only purpose is to hold a whole lot of trash that "you may need some day". I've visited lots of houses when I was on the market, nearly all of them had a garage or basement completely full of what to me looks like trash (as the article says, to the owners, it's old stuff that has some sentimental value, of course).

You forgot the semi-official extra storage that many houses come with, especially I guess in the northern half: the sauna. :)

Apologies to any sensitive readers from Finland.

In my case, no sauna and previous owners redid the garage into hall/utility (laundry) room/big bathroom and a small unheated workshop. Guess where the clutter lives, heh. :/

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#172

Post by vintermann »

jahewson wrote: post #72
calvinmorrison wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in a niche, plan to get rid of it BEFORE you get old. Please, there are collectors, and stuff! I just got four new to me toolboxes, from my neighbor who was a diesel mechanic. Perfectly good after a bit of sanding and oiling. They're awesome, from the 80s, well made, and they'll keep me going for a long time. My father, a prodigious collector of oddities has done several wholsale removals of collections. O…

> "This belongs in a museum!" Does it? A museum for who?

I've gone to my share of oddball museums.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#173

Post by a9h74j »

peter303 wrote: post #78

PBS has an interesting way of decluttering in the Legacy List series. The service asks for 5-10 mementos to (find and) keep. Everything else goes to resellers, charity, or garbage. They often choose large estates that have been in the family for a century.

One bit of advice I took from an old decluttering book: You can only sentimentalize a limited number of things, so any mementos of yours beyond what are displayed on a single set of shelves should be stored/rotated or discarded.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#175

Post by Avamander »

drewzero1 wrote: post #138
debbiedowner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A NiCd-powered cordless drill would be my first thought, clearly obsolete since the widespread adoption of lithium battery tools and the rapid degradation in NiCd cells over time. A radial arm saw also comes to mind, replaced for most tasks by the more portable and generally safer compound miter saw. Tools made before modern safety devices, such as table saws without anti-kickback fingers or riving knife. Some tools…

Analog multimeters can surprisingly be useful with more complex or short signals. Sometimes providing significantly better results than digital equivalents.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#176

Post by jokoon »

I guess somebody will come up with an app to sort all this out so that a few of those objects can find new users.

The amazon of used stuff.

Not to mention the recycling of things people nobody wants.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#177

Post by dhosek »

Ekaros wrote: post #162
dhosek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 specialize…

I'm also kinda worried about my parents bookshelves. Some of it has probably bit over minimal resale value like book series still collected. Many things albeit interesting for period not so much actual value... I wonder how it will end up, let the people pick interesting stuff and then leave some value there and have someone buy it in bulk or get all of it and save the cost to recycling and processing it.

When my grandfather died some 30 years ago, he left behind a significant library that was of little interest to anyone but him.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#178

Post by MandieD »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #85

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…

I wonder what effect the narrow, intermittent shortages of the past 2+ years is going to have on what had been the minimalizing generations.

Before 2020: having more than a few rolls of toilet paper and an extra bottle of cooking and olive oil seemed excessive - I have three grocery stores within walking distance!

Now: we always have two month's worth of toilet paper, and are currently glad that we started stocking cooking oil, because the cheapest available is 5 EUR/liter.

Plus all the little-to-major electronics/amateur radio parts that have been really hard to get the last year or so...

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#179

Post by prmoustache »

vulcan1964 wrote: post #92

What will happen to the heaps of digital junk stored on flash drives, hard drives, forgotten online accounts? I get overwhelmed thinking about organizing my own electronics files… wonder what my kids will do with it all.

I try to remind myself to print albums on a regular basis as I am pretty sure my daughters will be as happy as I am to go through old photos albums as the digital stuff will probably be hard to manage.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#180

Post by femto »

First thing I did was take a bunch of photos. One of the things that had meaning wasn't the individual items, but the assemblage of the whole: the choices made in the arrangement of tools in the workshop, projects being worked on, the "look and feel" of the house. After that I felt I could "disassemble" things without losing too much: in the process getting rid of cruft and keeping other stuff.

A big part of the job was "reverse engineering" the things the deceased knew but I didn't, and I could no longer ask about. That random key? Can it go out, or is it irreplaceable and belongs to something that matters?

In my mind the best thing a person can do to ease the clean up is leave current documentation. Little things like labeling keys and making sure documents have dates. The things in your head that others can't know.

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