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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#191

Post by Teever »

Freak_NL wrote: post #154
debbiedowner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Look at what gets put out at jumble/rummage sales and charity shops. In addition to what others posted, I see a lot of rusty screwdrivers (Phillips and slot) which everyone already has (and most of the time you're using Pozidriv or Torx anyway) and rusty spade drills. Every once in a while you spot a good one before someone else does (pincers, a good vintage cast-iron hacksaw frame for €5, a pristine sheet metal clam…

> Which does make me wonder where all the good tools go.

Now I'm imagining tool companies sending people around to garage sales and estate sales to buy up good used tools to landfill them so that they can sell not so good new tools.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#192

Post by fuzzy2 »

ars wrote: post #32
pessimizer wrote: post #19

I get this if one of your parents was a bad painter and filled the house with huge framed canvases. Otherwise, I'm just looking for stuff I want, and anything that I know was meant for posterity and few people would care about (my father updates a family tree, for example.) After that, call a professional and sell the lot to them i.e. the thing that these people mention not doing. You may "lose" your parents if you d…

You have no items in your parents home that reminds you of something you did as a child? Nothing?

Oh, I had tons of them. When my parents decided to move out of their house, I had a blast going through the stuff and remembering things. Still, except for my LEGO bricks, everything went into the trash.

I do not have the space to keep a lot of stuff.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#193

Post by niemenmaa »

unwind wrote: post #171
brabel wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :/

Saunas filled with stuff like warehouses arouse unpleasant feelings in me, and sometimes actually offend :D

I guess I'm a sensitive Finn :)

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#194

Post by robocat »

helmholtz wrote: post #161
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…

Your comment is cathartic to me for reasons I cannot explain. I hope, for my sake, that everything you mentioned really is something you're doing often. I love the idea of constant forward progress in downsizing not just your own possessions, but that of the near and dears too.

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 stacked up on one another. Nice enough tables, but I feel bad. Also it is very likely I will help them move . . .

I am semi-retired, but I still need to take care I am not wasting my time.

The free trailer load to the dump is fun mental jujutsu because dumping stuff isn’t cheap: someone who just can’t pass up a bargain trying to choose stuff to throw out for free! Needs a believable reason why it is “free” e.g. neighbour already paid me, or work is paying for it.

I haven’t done the book one exactly, but I have done similar.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#195

Post by [deleted] »

Ntrails wrote: post #185
Aeolun wrote: post #136

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#196

Post by tlb »

Avamander wrote: post #175
drewzero1 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The good quality large-scale ones like AVO are wonderful to use.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#198

Post by jseban »

hiq wrote: post #184
onion2k wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who owns a house fills it with what other people call junk.

That's a good argument for living in a small place rather than a house as big as you can possibly afford.

I don't see what the big deal is to be honest, just a harmless hobby to collect random trinkets, it gives people joy, and you can just get rid of it when they die. I don't see what the harm is

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#199

Post by paganel »

dhosek wrote: post #83
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 specialize…

Hopefully all of my (by now many) physical books will get donated to the village library from where my mother grew up and where my parents live right now. I remember I borrowed a David Copperfield translation and never returned it, that happened about ~30 years ago. I still feel guilty about it from time to time.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#200

Post by jseban »

petesergeant wrote: post #48

I love getting rid of stuff. I've just packed up my apartment again, and my wife and I have under 5m3 of stuff, and that includes a couple of larger pieces of furniture, 7-8 framed pieces of art, a decently-sized toolbox, and a big TV. Most of the time we're away from our homebase anyway, so living out of two suitcases. It really means that our treasured items are treasured, as most have undergone several iterations…

If you are always travelling then yeah, I guess it makes sense. The problem I have with minimalism is that it also minimises the activities you can do. Any sport and hobby requires stuff, the more stuff you have, the more activities you can do.

Painting, playing music, going swimming, skateboarding, playing tennis, running, picnic/barbecue, hiking etc etc.

If you don't have any stuff, you can't be active. I just get bored to death when the only thing I do in my free time, is looking at things and eating/drinking.

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