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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#61

Post by bee_rider »

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…

I can't really think of much I'd want from my parents house. Maybe a few items with family history. But mostly, it is like you said -- they've mostly got their stuff for a reason, and if it serves them well for as long as they need it, then it has already met and likely exceeded expectations.

On the other hand, one step removed I think it makes more sense, because you have maybe less direct contact with the person -- I've got a microscope and and oil stone from my grandfather, which have some significant sentimental value to me. These were almost certainly obsolete when I got them, more than a couple years ago (Well, the microscope at least. An oil stone will last you a while). I think I value these because he was a very precise, but also very down-to-earth guy. That's my summary, having had limited time with him. My mom would not be able to sum up his whole personality in two items, because she has a much more full view of it. But, despite knowing that this stuff holds only the slightest outline of his personality, it really does mean a lot to me.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#62

Post by calvinmorrison »

SoftTalker wrote: post #10

After having to deal with all the stuff my parents left behind I swore to myself that I would not do the same thing to my kids. It's easy to say "just throw it out" but so many items have nostalgia and memories attached. Yet if I hadn't had to sort through it all, I never would have missed that stuff. I need to get on it. I'm not getting younger.

What's hit me the most are a few keepsake items. I have a watch handed down, worthless. I have a old cigar tray from Cuba. I have some fine dishware we pull out at christmas and i say "this is from your grandmother when she lived in Cuba".

However, I sold my grandfathers STHL chainsaw, and that guy still uses it.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#63

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #60
FunnyBadger wrote: post #18

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…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#64

Post by danielodievich »

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…

Nice use of "kipple" in a sentence. Props and respect!!!

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#65

Post by ars »

ryandrake wrote: post #30
irrational wrote: post #12

I’ve already told my wife that when her parents die we are just going to burn the house down. I’m just half joking. I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. You can’t take it with you. And I have no intention of sorting through it. It’s all going straight to the landfill.

> I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. I almost replied this way, too, but then I remember the junk drawer I have full of DB9 serial cables, Firewire cables, PCI SCSI cards, 256MB RAM chips, 2GB spinning hard disk drives, three prong computer power cables, mice, webcams, power strips, power bricks, and a fully functional Dell OptiPlex GX620 with a screaming Pentium D 3.2GHz CPU. I keep…

Are you me? :)

And whenever I think about throwing it out, I actually do end up using something from the pile :)

My only consolation is that it's all easy stuff to throw out for the next generation - there's no emotional stuff there.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#66

Post by calvinmorrison »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #4

I watched a friend have to deal with this. There’s just so much to sort through or get rid of. My grandfather left dozens of model airplanes behind. No one in the family flies them. Most of the people he used to fly them with died before he did. Fortunately, my grandmother is still alive and we’ve found people who would appreciate the planes. We could have just burned everything but we have emotional ties to these th…

If you are in a niche, plan to get rid of it BEFORE you get old. Please, there are collectors, and stuff!

I just got four new to me toolboxes, from my neighbor who was a diesel mechanic. Perfectly good after a bit of sanding and oiling. They're awesome, from the 80s, well made, and they'll keep me going for a long time.

My father, a prodigious collector of oddities has done several wholsale removals of collections.

One comes to mind in parcticular - every single novel, novella, newspaper clipping and piece of paper of "E Phillip Oppenheim", a turn of the century paperback novelist who wrote hundreds of books and stories. Some guy drove out, gave him a nominal amount (a pittance for all the work done), but another avid collector.

Somewhere Indiana Jones of the paperback detective world is screaming "This belongs in a museum!"

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#67

Post by sockaddr »

ryandrake wrote: post #30
irrational wrote: post #12

I’ve already told my wife that when her parents die we are just going to burn the house down. I’m just half joking. I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. You can’t take it with you. And I have no intention of sorting through it. It’s all going straight to the landfill.

> I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. I almost replied this way, too, but then I remember the junk drawer I have full of DB9 serial cables, Firewire cables, PCI SCSI cards, 256MB RAM chips, 2GB spinning hard disk drives, three prong computer power cables, mice, webcams, power strips, power bricks, and a fully functional Dell OptiPlex GX620 with a screaming Pentium D 3.2GHz CPU. I keep…

I had a similar pile but went through it and tried to pick:

- Only one of each type of thing - Only the highest quality/safest power bricks - And items that punched above their weight in terms of utility (like an adapter that at least one end was not obsolete)

This reduced my pile by about 75% .

I find that I subconsciously keep a map of things that I encounter on my search for other items and this is actually a burden. Just getting rid of that PCI SCSI card lets me just forget that type of thing even exists and move on with my life.

I've been doing this sort of thing since the pandemic started and I haven't once regretted it. Actually now I have more space for new junk.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#68

Post by shakezula »

tmountain wrote: post #13

It doesn't have to be this way. Synopsis of "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning" by Margareta Magnusson. In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning “death” and städning meaning “cleaning.” This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you…

This feels like the anti-hero to Kondoesque sparks-joy cleaning.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#69

Post by danielodievich »

A friend of mine has a dad who is known in certain circles (name withheld) and I quote "Mr XYX, the owner of the largest collection of non-running Triumph coupes in the USA". He got a lot of sh*t for what is essentially a junk yard from his city. His house is filled to the brim with model train cars, in the bozes still, and all the EBay printouts of the auctions he won and lost. I do not know what my friend's plans are for all of this when his dad kicks it but I am betting on a lot of hassles around rusted hulks. Although they are strangely photogenic, we took some incredible photos...

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#70

Post by robocat »

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 use it. When the father died, the stuff in the shed was mostly junk to be sorted into scrap metal or put in the skip. A very few useful tools, a bunch of valueless obsolete tools, and a little antique/collectable stuff. The mother’s stuff was useful or precious to her, mementoes and knick-knacks. Plus some hoarder mentality that made sense given her background. Mostly valueless stuff to anyone else. What value is a drawer of your smalls?

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?

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