The “land of indecision” says it all.
Get what you want and tell everyone else the storage units are closed in 60 days.
If they want something THEY are responsible for retrieving it. Not you.
And no “saving” things for someone. That’s just another “indecision”.
Get pictures/letters if you want and have them scanned as suggested or just divvy them up (my preference).
Contact a dealer if you think there is anything of real value.
Donate/trash everything else.
Do not fall for the “I’ll pay for the units” deal. The stuff will be there another 20 years until the grandchildren trash it finally. And they’ll be sending you a bill for “your share” of the rental.
It’s very hard to part with loved one’s belongings. My friend’s brother just couldn’t. And still can’t. I took a lot of stuff from the home when their mom died not for me but just to donate it. It was easier for him to give it to me than donate directly. It would have never left the house except for me. A lot more is left years later.
Do everyone a huge favor and get rid of all of it. It’s your designated duty.
You were elected when you got the storage keys and paid the bills.
Clear the storage units and your lives. Everyone will breathe much easier.
I feel your pain. I still have a house to empty and will feel guilty when I start the massive pitching/donating phase. The others have been asked to take what they want for years, but haven’t.
When my mom died a year ago my dad wanted everything gone immediately. He was protecting himself from an overload of emotions. Great decision on his part.
But it left the task to my sister and me. It was very hard but probably the best thing we could have done.
I ended up bringing home things that we couldn’t “decide on” and now pretty much am discarding much of it.
It took us 5 years to empty my in-laws home enough to rent it out. My SIL and BIL who were 2500 miles away didn’t help the clearing but didn’t strenuously object. It took us months hauling stuff down the 66 steps from the house to the street. It is tough but it helps to be as unemotional and objective as possible.
It was helpful that a GS was doing her gold project due needed clothing and bedding donated, so that was a no brainier. SIL and BIL had decades to get their stuff, but we still found some of their things–we gave some and pitched the rest. It’s thankless, but time to write deadlines and move on with your life.
Just focus on how much donating things will help others who will use them and appreciate them! It will also help ur planet by getting some re-use out of the items.
My youngest brother who was the last of us to marry had just bought a home at the time my father died. He and his wife wanted much of the furniture and it simply made sense for them to take it. The interior of their home is almost a replica of the home I grew up in. The rest of us chose a few favorite paintings and I asked for my father’s watch and eye glasses. Pretty much everything else went to my youngest brother.
Stand strong, but also be prepared for any family backlash which may result when you put your foot down to resolve this situation.
While it’s been over 5 years, an older college friend is still dealing with an angry half-sibling over the way he was forced to clean out and wrap up his mom’s estate due to tight scheduling constraints from the financial and legal obligations his late mother incurred. Did I mention this half-sibling didn’t bother to even offer to pitch in to help at all?
The level of anger from said sibling is such he’s still concerned about the possibility of a lawsuit from the wrapping up of his mother’s affairs as that was threatened several times by the sibling over written correspondence and in my presence while I and a couple of other college friends were at the house helping with the clean out.
If you think you’ll have trouble cleaning out the units (or a sibling shows up who has trouble) get a friend to go with you. An objective eye who understands is very helpful when it comes to discarding sentimental things.
I don’t have any advice, just wanted to chime in and say that I feel your pain. Although for me, it’s down to about 12 boxes that I keep moving from place to place in my house. Some of it is estate paperwork that I probably need to keep for a period of time, some of it is sentimental and some of it is stuff that we couldn’t throw away for whatever reason. My brothers were perfectly happy for me to keep it all - since it doesn’t have any real value. If it had value they would have claimed it! Every once in a while when I am shifting the boxes around, I think that my husband and/or kids will trash it all the day I die. So why wait, right?? Maybe in time, but for now opening the boxes brings back way too much emotion to make any real decisions…so in my case, the land of deferred decisions is the perfect explanation.
I’m sorry you are having to deal with this. I’m assuming that nothing in these storage units are of interest to you and your immediate family.
What exactly was supposed to happen to all of this stored “stuff” when the last estate was settled?
I would do the following:
Pick two or three days when folks can come and get what they want from the storage place(s). No negotiation on this. You are paying the bill...and you want to get this stuff out of the storage place.
Tell the folks that you have been paying for the storage of these items yourself, and you will no longer be doing so as of...and pick a date. Tell them, the unit either needs to be emptied, or someone else needs to pay for it. You will need to stick to your guns about this.
Do not ask them to SHARE the cost of this unit. If someone is dying to have all,this stuff in storage, they should pay for it all by themselves…after others have removed what they want, of course.
Re:old photos…and old papers. Save a couple of special ones (a parent wedding pic, for example), but pitch all the snapshots. Really…no one will ever look at them again. Ever.
My MIL had to leave her condo that she lovingly decorated down to the last pillow/soap dispenser (moved to a skilled nursing facility). None of us could deal with it, and her stuff in her condo just sat there. A relatively short 7-9 months later, it was all ruined (long story).
Just about everything there went in a dumpster.
It hit me then how important it is to deal with stuff. At some point, somebody will have to. And by that point the stuff may be of no use to anyone else.
Maybe you will be the catalyst to resolve this situation, though I’m sorry that you’re in that position. My husband was too. It’s not easy.
@Montegut I think you have to answer for yourself two questions:
are your siblings thoughtless or actually selfish?
what do you want to accomplish?
The actions you might take are very different depending on the answers to those questions.
If your siblings are thoughtless, then you can wake them up with a plea for action. If you have already made the plea clearly and in writing (not just hinting) then you can send the “Time to finalize” letter.
If your siblings are actually selfish, then your boundary is easier to establish and hold to because what are these people bringing to your life?
But before that, What do you want to accomplish? is the question to answer.
If it is simple (clean out and not pay for storage locker), then there are many good suggestions here.
If it is complex (I want my siblings to care that I cared, to show their love of me by x, y or z) then you must know that you can’t control other people. You have to resolve in yourself what the stuff means and what being a sibling means. Sometimes we need to create a family of the heart and let the family of blood become “acquaintances” .
I lived through the cleanout of Mom’s house and finally processed internally to myself that it isn’t about the stuff it is about the actions. And accepted control of my own actions and let all the other people have theirs. THAT is TOUGH, but eventually, it is a lot more peaceful.
Full disclosure, my sibling and I totally get along, we have a good relationship, but he was unable/unwilling to take much action to clear stuff. In the end, yes he hauled a bunch of stuff home to his house and my husband stood behind me with a pitchfork so I didn’t take much. 3 years later, I am grateful to DH, but don’t know if bro is mad because HE has the stuff.
One more thing to think about is this. My Aunt died in her 50’s shortly before my Grandmother. So my Dad had to go through both his sister and his parents houses by himself. Aunt had a house and Grandma lived on a farm. Poles barns full of farming and other stuff. Plus a cabin and a place in Florida. It took him over a year just to go through the farm and probably another 2 for everything else. He is now in his late 70’s and he is going through his stuff and getting rid of it so we won’t have to. What if something happens to you and your husband? Would your son end up with all this stuff or would he donate it? If he would donate it then go ahead and get rid of it now.
My friend has her MIL (age 92) living next door in the house husband grew up in (friend and H live in ‘Grandma Agnes’ house, quite the family compound). The MIL’s house is a 1950’s museum, with knick knacks, pyrex dishes, a piano that all could have been used by Donna Reed when filming. Her husband, who is now dead, was stationed in China after WWII and there is a lot of his junk like swords and medals. There are ‘collections’ everywhere - elves, teddy bears, beer steins, clocks, pillows, dolls, dishes. Everything displayed with a doily. It’s like going to the thrift store without the price tags.
We have tried and tried to get the MIL to part with some of this clutter, but it’s not happening. I did get a sewing machine, and MIL wants me to take this large rug hooking frame and all the materials, but I don’t have room for it either. (It’s lovely.) We all know that when she dies, it will take a looong time to go through everything, sorting the junk from the treasures. To add to this, the only other child, SIL, moved to LA years ago after her husband died suddenly. She sold her big house, got 3 storage lockers and moved everything else into the ‘shop’ between the two houses. The shop was the grandfather’s old woodworking shop, but hasn’t been cared for so there are squirrels, feral cats, mice, etc. SIL often comes to town is and shocked! that there is water damage to her stuff. It’s been 20 years. At some point she cleaned out the storage lockers and moved everything into the shop. There is an old car, a Jag, that hasn’t worked since the 70’s.
There will be fighting over the crap in the house and shop. The 4 grandsons, who never do anything for their grandmother, will want the crap but won’t want to do any of the work to clean the house. The property will be a scrape as it is a huge, huge lot in the city where mini mansions have been built all around it. My friend is NOT looking forward to this as she had to clean out her own mother’s house 10 years ago, and it was also an assortment of real crap and a few treasures. In fact, my sewing machine was really her mother’s, given to the MIL, and now mine.
In the Midwest, it’s typical for the ‘stuff’ to be auctioned off. The auctioneer company puts it all out on the lawn, advertisements go out, a crowd gathers and by the end of the afternoon, it’s all gone. In California, there are estate sale companies that do a similar sale, no auctioneer, just price tags.
Ann Landers gave good advice on this. Go through Mom’s house and take photos of everything. Put the photos in a scrapbook, copies for all. But the actual stuff is sold.
Well, there’s alot more to it but basically her air conditioner broke without any of us realizing it (it hurt too much to go over there - sounds dumb I know) and a domino effect of negative effects consequently happened. She also had a “friend” create a problem that we were unaware of at the time, which also blossomed into a big mess because nobody was there to nip it in the bud.
