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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#401

Post by deanCommie »

Almost 400 comments, and noone seems to be getting to the crux of the issue:

This is about mortality, legacy, and humanity's fundamental inability to effectively deal with death.

The "junk" is memories. A lifetime of memories of people important to us - important to them - a record of their accomplishments. It was the best they could do. Not everyone gets a library wing, a mausoleum, or a wikipedia page. But for a brief moment maybe you have your stuff - and stuff triggers memories that your life actually happened and had meaning.

And then you're gone, and it all becomes a useless burden.

Yes, it's frustrating. But it's more existential than that. When you clean out your parents' junk, you have to confront with the reality that in some years someone else will be cleaning out yours. And the memories you're making of the rich and powerful experiences you had will also disappear into the aether.

That is disturbing and upsetting to most humans. I'm impressed so many commenters here can be completely detached from it.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#402

Post by ncpa-cpl »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #394
robocat wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I definitely try to help, although it is very very important to be respectful. One friend showed me a bag with a heap of kiwi fruit fluff they had collected a decade ago. Nothing to see here. One friend had too many tables, so I thought it might help them to grok the absurdity of that if I gave them a bunch more tables (tables which someone else was discarding): that didn’t work because they now have tables stack…

I'm crashing at my parents atm (including my family). Counted 10 chairs in one room - they are couple of 70 year olds that never have guests. 7 mops in bathroom. About 20 huge bowls in one of kitchen drawers. I'm just trying to offload the excess to some storage to make their (and mine) lives easier, but oh boy.

I counted more than 200 dishes in a house of 2 :(

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#403

Post by SoftTalker »

robocat wrote: post #142
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…

And an altruistic gift for friends and family: take away their useless rubbish. Tell your aunt you need some wires from that old Pentium computer she has, and take it to be recycled. “Drop in” at your friends on the way to the dump with half a trailer full of rubbish, and ask if they want to fill up the other half for free. When there is a book market on, visit your friends and take away their old books to go to the…

I've found books surprisingly hard to get rid of. Local recycling center doesn't take them, and they are pretty heavy so you can't set out a big bin full of them for trash collection. Used bookstores are extremely picky about titles, authors, and condition. Listing and selling on eBay is not worth the time for the tiny amount of money you may make, and most of them don't even sell.

I mostly just end up throwing them away a few at a time.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#404

Post by teh_klev »

lupire wrote: post #273
teh_klev wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find for the generation being discussed they likely didn't buy "a house as big you can possibly afford". Their houses were sanely priced, decent sized accommodations before the property market went bonkers at some point in the 80's.

A lot of those houses got additions added over the years, and were 2500sq ft which is plenty of room for junk as kids grow up and move out

And that as well.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#405

Post by ncpa-cpl »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #123

Generational differences in tastes will take its toll on some of this more than other bits. I don't know anyone under the age of 40 who cares one bit about fine china and china cabinets. As more and more people who collected china die off, there's a bigger glut of it. Collections that took a lifetime and thousands of dollars to accumulate end up going for pennies at estate sales while the cabinets end up in a landfil…

> I don't know anyone under the age of 40 who cares one bit about fine china and china cabinets

Definitely. My parents house has a china cabinet, with china dishes no-one is allowed to use. I've never understood why, I'll ask them tonight.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#406

Post by selimthegrim »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #59
Scoundreller wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, stamps, for the past 10 years I’ve bought “discount” stamps off eBay. Basically buying 45cent or whatever stamps for 25 cents or less and plastering my packages like the… never mind. Obviously this is the lossy side of stamp collecting, but man, to take a haircut like that after preserving something for 20 or 30 years.

My father does this... incessantly. He has stacks of stamps he uses to send out for work and he gets them all at major discount on ebay. It turns out the post office, mostly doesn't actually care to count up the 1 and 2 cent stamps. There's a group of hobbyists committing felonies out there making their own stamps and sending them out. The post office doesn't notice. One sillier trick was, forget a stamp, it'll get r…

I have definitely gotten mail with a postage due ink stamp so they count at least the absence of them

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#407

Post by ghaff »

SoftTalker wrote: post #403
robocat wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an altruistic gift for friends and family: take away their useless rubbish. Tell your aunt you need some wires from that old Pentium computer she has, and take it to be recycled. “Drop in” at your friends on the way to the dump with half a trailer full of rubbish, and ask if they want to fill up the other half for free. When there is a book market on, visit your friends and take away their old books to go to the…

I've found books surprisingly hard to get rid of. Local recycling center doesn't take them, and they are pretty heavy so you can't set out a big bin full of them for trash collection. Used bookstores are extremely picky about titles, authors, and condition. Listing and selling on eBay is not worth the time for the tiny amount of money you may make, and most of them don't even sell. I mostly just end up throwing them…

That surprises me. I've always been able to donate to my local library for their annual book sale. I've also seen donation containers in various parking lots around my area. Books are one of the easier things for me to get rid of.

>Listing and selling on eBay

Yeah, unless something is a big ticket item, eBay isn't worth the effort. You used to be able to outsource it to someone for a cut but nothing like that seems to exist any longer.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#408

Post by hinkley »

HollowEyes wrote: post #344
tomc1985 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my parents is a hoarder and has filled up a 2500+sqft house with junk. It is so bad that there are aisles carved through the house so that they can get through it. My siblings and I have been begging and pleading with them to sort this out for the past 20 years. We have offered to help. But they haven't, as said parent is "throw themselves in front of the car if we try to leave with anything" emotionally attac…

I feel your pain. But they won't change. We cleared a house in a week, that belonged to a hoarder. It can be done. And requires a week, rather than years of pestering and agonising yourself. Our neighbour died and the kids just paid not much for house clearance, which was a side line of the funeral parlor. For them it's a gamble as to whether they will find something of worth to make it worthwhile. I have another slo…

It's important to note that anything too big for a vacuum cleaner to pick up off of carpet can, with a moment's practice, be picked up with a broom and a dust pan. Don't try to separate everything into boxes and trashcans by hand. It takes too long and it's hard on your back.

Importantly, if trash is a bulk operation, then the cost difference between keeping things versus throwing them out becomes more pronounced, earlier on.

I'm sure most of us have that experience of figuring out that our stuff isn't going to fit in the truck and/or car and all of a sudden things we really intended to keep become negotiable. Problem is that there are probably three other things you'd be more willing to part with, but they're already in boxes in the truck.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#409

Post by olyjohn »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #369
jseban wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just use a service to take care of the estate, you are not obliged to do that at all.

That's assuming they've got money to pay for it after funeral expenses, et al.

They've had this house for 9 months. They're paying money to keep it, whether it's rent, mortgage or property taxes.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#410

Post by ghaff »

whartung wrote: post #395
oh_hello wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is very important. Having cleared out 3 parents and a grandparents house, it gives a very stark vision of the destiny of my "stuff". Simply, the bulk of it is going into a landfill. I have no children, I don't think anyone is really going to be interested much in the pictures of my cats. Or my family. Or my parents. Or any of it. So, long term, it's all for naught. No museum for us, no trust to maintain an estat…

I have some things like a fairly big laserdisc collection and some vintage (1980s era) computers and probably various other things that are presumably worth something to someone. But it's honestly not worth my time to pay matchmaker between the stuff and that someone.
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