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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#281

Post by pfdietz »

ggm wrote: post #183
eddy_chan wrote: post #34

Where I live we have 'council clean-up' days. It's a designated day once per year you can leave a reasonable amount of rubbish outside your house including old furniture, tools, utensils etc etc. The good thing is it's widely advertised and if you sort your stuff out properly and lay it out in an organised manner, lots of amateur collectors will come and take it away to re-sell or re-use leaving only a small amount o…

Me too with a sad twist: no matter how often I put a sign on my council kerbside collection e-waste saying "works" some metal scavenger on a copper hunt cuts the powercord and moves on. They're trashing value to extract the one bit they care about.

If it were actually valuable they wouldn't do that.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#282

Post by [deleted] »

basisword wrote: post #217

Is it just me or is that article written by, and this thread full of, assholes? Your parents are dead and you’re complaining about having to sort through their stuff and deal with their horrible taste in furniture? If you don’t want to deal with it have it all collected and sent to landfill and get on with your life. I’m genuinely surprised at how miserable and selfish sounding a lot (not all) of the people in this t…

[deleted]

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#283

Post by dijit »

jahewson wrote: post #81
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,…

Poverty does that to the brain, if you weren't aware.

I have the same hoarding mentality, despite being extremely wealthy by my parents standards.

My mum still keeps everything she gets her hands on, part of the reason is because reacquiring once discarded may not be possible. So better to be safe.

While you get pretty good at using things to fix other things, these days everything seems to be single-use molded plastic with clips; once broken it often has no chance of being fixed. :\

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#284

Post by sumtechguy »

audiometry wrote: post #207
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…

Yeah I “de-thatched” my parents basement by filling up an enormous dumpster of shit. Literally things like “oh here are 9 CRT monitors that will never be used” etc. objectively it improved the basement and usability at zero opportunity cost. But it didn’t make them happier at all. My conclusion was better to let them do as they wish. I fortunately don’t have to live amidst the debris. (The basement has since then swe…

You stumbled upon one issue some people have. You can declutter but they use that opportunity to refill and somethings grow even further. Sometimes it is best to leave in place. Unless you get to the root of the issue of why are they keeping it all.

I have this issue currently in my home. My wife does not want to go through anything but will not let me touch it either. "no dear my shoebox sized matchbox cars collection is not worth anything to me and I am not going to play with them lets get rid of it". I leave it be, as is, as it is at least in easy to get rid of boxes now. That was at least a step forward. My parents have filled every possible storage area in their house top to bottom with stuff. Some of it has not seen the light of day in 40 years. It is at least 'neat' but it will be an interesting challenge to pull it all out and sort it. I leave that one be as they have filled the storage areas and they have no more room to still be neat and tidy but grab more items.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#285

Post by wilgertvelinga »

eddy_chan wrote: post #34

Where I live we have 'council clean-up' days. It's a designated day once per year you can leave a reasonable amount of rubbish outside your house including old furniture, tools, utensils etc etc. The good thing is it's widely advertised and if you sort your stuff out properly and lay it out in an organised manner, lots of amateur collectors will come and take it away to re-sell or re-use leaving only a small amount o…

In Amsterdam we have a Facebook Group called "Amsterdam Deelt/Geeft (Shares/Gives)" with 40k+ members. Almost anything you put up there is picked up within 24hrs by a very happy new owner!

I must have given a way over 50 items through this page. It is really nice that you can see the happiness of the person who will benefit from what you don't need anymore.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#286

Post by donw »

wccrawford wrote: post #224
donw wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I was thinking. I'd love to go through all those "useless" tools. Oh no, Dad's old all-steel table saw that was designed and built to be repaired, and which has the same tolerances as a "precision tool" today, doesn't have bluetooth to pair with your iPhone? Guess you'll just have to toss it, then.

Unfortunately it probably also doesn't have all the safety features like a riving blade, either. That doesn't mean it's useless, but it does mean it needs more care to use it and novice woodworkers shouldn't rush in blindly.

Fair point!

Although a riving knife — which I wish that I had known about when I was younger - shouldn’t be that hard to add.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#287

Post by sbarre »

antisthenes wrote: post #141
jahewson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in a tiny post-war 3 bed family house. It took us 2 years to get through it all. Did it take you 2 years because you thought some of it would be actually valuable? Seems like a weekend job with a couple of buddies and a pack of beer. Buddies are also great for this, because they don't have any emotional attachment to the junk.

It takes time because maybe you want to go through it all, to either learn and understand more about your parent(s), or to judge for yourself what is "valuable" and what is "junk" - both very subjective terms (with exceptions of course).

It's easy to say "toss it all out in a weekend" when it's not your family's stuff.. hence your point about getting friends to help. :-) But sometimes efficiency and speed isn't the point.

My SO is going through something similar and it's a very emotional and meticulous process, where you don't want to miss out on a chance to learn about your family's history as you sort through it all, particularly if you don't have much family left.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#288

Post by jakedata »

I collect phonograph records, generally from thrift/charity shops. It is always an interesting glimpse into someone's life when an entire record collection (minus anything actually valuable of course) ends up there after a house cleanout. Sometimes a bit of the personality shines through, and if there is a name I can often get more context.

I recently discovered an acetate home recording from the 1940s that had a name on it. I discovered that the family still lived in the area and a little research let me reach out to one of the children to return it to them. They had no idea of the recording's existence, it just went out with all the other stuff.

It's probably a great premise for an extreme cold case murder mystery.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#289

Post by NickBusey »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #186
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…

You don't have to be old to experience this problem. This was my take on techno-clutter from a few months back: https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/techno-clutter-farnell... A more funny story: Back in school, when we were about 17 years old, another kid told me that his Great Uncle had died, and caused him much stress. He'd never met this distant relative, so I enquired, why was he worried? Great Uncle Ben-Ali had…

The article you linked I agree with almost fully, nice work.

The only part I have issue with is when the teacher says “we fix things by "switching them off and on again"” as if that’s a bad thing. I see and agree with your actual point, but a power cycle is generally step one for almost all debugging.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#290

Post by zivkovicp »

dijit wrote: post #283
jahewson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Poverty does that to the brain, if you weren't aware. I have the same hoarding mentality, despite being extremely wealthy by my parents standards. My mum still keeps everything she gets her hands on, part of the reason is because reacquiring once discarded may not be possible. So better to be safe. While you get pretty good at using things to fix other things, these days everything seems to be single-use molded plast…

spot on, it's very difficult to shift mentality.
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