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?
Not really…
my parents got divorced and my mom abandoned everything and everyone
I'm not looking forward to dealing with my parents stuff, a major reason(other than their death) being that taste seems largely generational. They both seem to love giant wooden cabinets...for everything. They both have monstrosities of a TV stand/console/shelf, etc. It's actually nice quality, but nobody I know my age or younger really likes stuff like that. I can't imagine I ever will.
Doesn't sound very hard. Walk through and grab the stuff you like, and then have an open inspection to sell off all the stuff you don't want at a price just worth making it for your time.
Perhaps gather the common items like kitchen stuff and dump it at an op shop / charity.
I digitize all of the photos so they’re preserved and organized. That way you can feel a little better about getting rid of the prints.
I wonder if digitized objects will hold same sentimental value as real ones. What if taking a picture of a vase or a postcard, or even 3D scan of a toy you cherished as a kid, will help with keeping memories and not agonizing on the decision to junk it.
I stumbled across some digital photos from about 25 years ago while going through my "library". The experience felt very similar to finding some old analogue photos in a box, though unlike with physical photos you'd be unlikely to find them while looking for something that wasn't photos.
It will be handled the exact same way it always has: 90% of the time it's off-loaded at a garage sale, at Goodwill, on E-bay or otherwise sold - almost always below market value because the survivors can't be bothered - they just want it gone. This is the very basis of yard sales and antiquing. It's how I get a 1999 BMW Z3 with 20K miles back in 2008 for $5K bundled with a Mac Cube and several $K of other goodies fro…
>The "problem" will solve itself and no one will notice it ever was a problem!
Yep, everybody wins. The person selling gets quick cash for minimal hassle, and the person buying gets extremely inexpensive treasures. Win-win
It will be handled the exact same way it always has: 90% of the time it's off-loaded at a garage sale, at Goodwill, on E-bay or otherwise sold - almost always below market value because the survivors can't be bothered - they just want it gone. This is the very basis of yard sales and antiquing. It's how I get a 1999 BMW Z3 with 20K miles back in 2008 for $5K bundled with a Mac Cube and several $K of other goodies fro…
> The article is ignorant of all of this statement... The "problem" will solve issue and no one will notice it was ever a problem.
I think you've misread the article a little. It's not so much a problem in the sense that there will be an overwhelming wave of junk that piles up on street corners. The problem is that there's a generation which is about to share a collective experience, one which will enforce an already minimalist tendency. The article doesn't spend most of its time going on about waste management. It's about the physical and emotional toil associated with handling an estate. That's why it focuses on stories of individuals struggling.
As someone who lost a parent this last year (and spent three days just removing food from the house), I may be a little biased. But that was my reading.
It will be handled the exact same way it always has: 90% of the time it's off-loaded at a garage sale, at Goodwill, on E-bay or otherwise sold - almost always below market value because the survivors can't be bothered - they just want it gone. This is the very basis of yard sales and antiquing. It's how I get a 1999 BMW Z3 with 20K miles back in 2008 for $5K bundled with a Mac Cube and several $K of other goodies fro…
My take is the population growth differences that accounts for the premise of the article. The 1950's parents for the first time had extra stuff more so than previous generations with the rise of consumerism, but they also had larger families where the parents of the 1980's took stuff off their parents hands. Garage sales for sure. Today, the trend is smaller families while the things of the 80's tend not to transfer…
This will be very regional I feel. I have tried to stock my house with used furniture everywhere I've lived. This was very successful when I moved to Cornwall (UK). If you weren't too picky about the styles, there were many options, all at huge discounts over original price. But in contrast to that, in large U.S. urban areas, used furniture shops are not worth your time, with no good deals. I assume this relates, somewhat morbidly, to the difference in death rates vs. new-resident rates.
The book "Inheriting Clutter: How to Calm the Chaos Your Parents Leave Behind" by Julie Hall is a fairly good guide to how to handle this situation. Would recommend reading it before you need it.
It will be handled the exact same way it always has: 90% of the time it's off-loaded at a garage sale, at Goodwill, on E-bay or otherwise sold - almost always below market value because the survivors can't be bothered - they just want it gone. This is the very basis of yard sales and antiquing. It's how I get a 1999 BMW Z3 with 20K miles back in 2008 for $5K bundled with a Mac Cube and several $K of other goodies fro…
Death is the only way to obtain a lot of hobbyist board games. They usually only go through a printing or two, then are sold and traded for a few years after that until they find the collections that they're loved in, then they sit in those collections for another 50 years until the collector dies. A collector dying is often cause for a feeding frenzy that will make a hundred people happy. I know of at least two game…
The most fascinating collection I think, was the auction of notorious mayor, police chief and brow-beater, rather fist beater Frank Rizzo, of Philadelphia.
No where else was there such a collection of awful italian style Tchohkes, religous paintings, horrid furniture and even his own personal police baton.
It will be handled the exact same way it always has: 90% of the time it's off-loaded at a garage sale, at Goodwill, on E-bay or otherwise sold - almost always below market value because the survivors can't be bothered - they just want it gone. This is the very basis of yard sales and antiquing. It's how I get a 1999 BMW Z3 with 20K miles back in 2008 for $5K bundled with a Mac Cube and several $K of other goodies fro…
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 returned to sender. Simply put your destination as the return and you get a free mailer.
It will be handled the exact same way it always has: 90% of the time it's off-loaded at a garage sale, at Goodwill, on E-bay or otherwise sold - almost always below market value because the survivors can't be bothered - they just want it gone. This is the very basis of yard sales and antiquing. It's how I get a 1999 BMW Z3 with 20K miles back in 2008 for $5K bundled with a Mac Cube and several $K of other goodies fro…