George Carlin wasn't wrong when he said houses are just a place to put our stuff. Why are we all so attached to stuff?
I've found myself slowly letting go of material things, and with that comes a feeling of tranquility.
The great junk transfer is coming
351–360 of 461 posts
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#352Cleaning 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…
Seriously could not finish the opening story. I understand a small tinge of disdain for the effort required, but surely deep down a sense of gratitude and nostalgia should be mixed in no? Do people really not have no love for their parents they inherited the belongings of? The fact of the inheritance occuring is a hint that we're already filtering for kids who did not have an amiable relationship with their parents,…
It depends what kind of relationship you had with the parent(s). I'll give you an example: I've not seen my mother in half a decade, I've barely seen her in twelve years. Perhaps that's for the best, after all, she did just leave my father and I over twenty years ago to pursue a man twenty years younger than her from the other side of the world that she met in a psychic chatroom. When I have spoken to her, as recently as last Christmas, we only argue. I've tried extremely hard.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#353Cleaning 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…
I agree. My parents should enjoy life to the fullest all the way to the end. Wasting their golden years cleaning up, planning for death, and likely emotionally parting with a lifetime of possessions is not something I'd like to foist on them. It will be time-consuming and painful for me to do, but so what.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#354This article makes me sad. Is this all what it remains when someone passes away? A headache, an unpleasant chore? What about memories? Do people have no feelings? Are they so selfish?
That’s literally what the article is about?
I think that's the point they were trying to make. I can see things from their perspective: it is pretty antisocial and callous to focus solely on material things when the fact of the matter is that somebody has passed away.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#355Cleaning 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…
I was having a tangential conversation with my parents this morning.
They're getting on, and are looking at selling a treasured holiday property in a warm country - I originally thought it was due to not feeling able, or wanting to, visit - but it's because when they die they're worried about me and my brothers having to sort out marketing it and paying the inheritance tax.
I pointed out that's not a burden, it'll be fine, we're all adults and can sort things like that out - only sell if it they want to spend the money on visiting other places, or doing other things, not because they worry about being a burden after they're gone.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#356My parents lived on the same farm for 70 years, a mile from where my father's parents had lived since 1905. If you think a suburban home can fill up, just imagine a place with all kinds of outbuildings, and two adults who having grown up dirt poor in the depression, could see potential value in almost anything. But when my father became too incapacitated by age to maintain the place, they bought a new townhouse in the small prairie town 7 miles from the farm, selected the things that they needed and wanted to occupy that space, including a few things they thought they should pass on to their children. Then they sold everything else, including the homestead, at auction. Us kids were permitted to buy anything we wanted personally, of course, but at the auction. Costs for us could come from our eventual inheritance, if necessary (in the end, nothing that valuable went to any of us). A week preparing for the auction, and a morning, and it was all gone.
Now in my own retirement, I have been thinking a lot about what happens to our own homestead, and the tools and detritus of a lifetime that it contains. I've been diligently culling things that I know I won't be able to use in the next 20 years (which is probably the most I've got here), either through Craigslist or the like where an item is still of use to someone, or to by disassembling them and recycling the materials (where feasible), or hauling to the landfill (where recycling is not feasible) for those things that are no longer likely to be useful to anyone.
But that will still leave a lot of stuff. Multiple looms, spinning wheels and associated equipment and fiber material from my wife; innumerable tools and machines that I still use regularly in the orchard, woods, garden, and wood and metal shops; a library of thousands of volumes.
We have a neighbor 15 years older than us who, faced with this problem and no children who wanted their homestead, which they, like us, had built up from bare land over 40 years, found a much smaller place, moved what they wanted there, and sold the homestead, furnishing included. to a younger couple wanting to start a rural life. I like that idea ... make it someone else's problem, but also boon. My own kids will get and have enough that we can afford to sell at a discount if someone who really values the place and supporting materials comes along.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t necessarily look forward to this, but I imagine it’ll be very satisfying sorting through my parents’ stuff and finding all the little gems. Of course 80% of it is junk, but 80% of everything I save is junk too, so I can hardly blame them for it. My dad recently threw out a lot of his old school stuff that we’d gone through and looked at a few times during various instances of cleanup over the course of my lif…
> to me the only tangible remains of the time when my dad was a boy/young adult have disappeared. My parents, when they were young and carefree and enjoying life, used to make mix tapes. Loads of them. There was something almost magical about being able to listen to them in my old car, and experience a little window into what they used to listen to etc. Sadly my car went to the great scrapyard in the sky and now I ho…
Get a cheap tape deck and digitize them. They are just containers of information that will otherwise wear out. After that, get rid of both and enjoy the contents any time.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to me the only tangible remains of the time when my dad was a boy/young adult have disappeared. My parents, when they were young and carefree and enjoying life, used to make mix tapes. Loads of them. There was something almost magical about being able to listen to them in my old car, and experience a little window into what they used to listen to etc. Sadly my car went to the great scrapyard in the sky and now I ho…
I'm also sorting through my parents things (the article is timely), here's a drive-by suggestion: pick up a Walkman on eBay. My folks have a rack of VHS cassettes of their performances in plays, which they ripped to DVD at some point. I haven't started watching them but I'm lucky to have them.
Back them up. Homemade optical media perishes in a surprisingly short time. Drawers full of it.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#359Cleaning 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…
> I want my parents to pass their problem down to me and my siblings. I think forcing parents to tidy up or downsize can be cruel. Why be selfish and needlessly make my parents sad?
Lots of people downsize before retiring because they don't want to be encumbered by a bunch of junk. It's a lot of work to live in a house surrounded by stuff. It's work to maintain the stuff, it makes it harder to clean, you have to have a larger living space to house it, etc. All of these things are harder on the elderly once they can't move around or do physical work as easily anymore.
It's also not just parents to children. Parents don't typically pass away at once. Often enough it's one spouse leaving a pile of their things for their partner to live with. That can be a weighty reminder of grief and once they pass getting rid of any of their things can be too emotionally heavy to cope with.
Re: The great junk transfer is coming
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 collecti…
It can always be worse: my mother has a storage unit with 2,000+ unsold paintings she did in it.