@Marilyn, I could have sent you my silver plated chafing dish; it is currently in the stack to get rid of! I had not finished cleaning out the kitchen when the packer started there, and I am guessing he found the old wedding gifts shoved to the back of a deep cabinet. I done even remember every using the chafing dish, nor the silver plated trays.
When we remodeled this summer our entire house got moved into the garage. I threw some stuff out on the way out, but I am really throwing out on the way back in. I am pretty good about not bringing it in the house, but not as good at getting rid of what I don’t want from the garage. It has been a month since construction was over, and I am hoping just one more month and we will be able to park in the garage. I knew all along we would need new furniture, but it took seeing the old couch in the remodeled living room for my DH to agree that yes, we need new furniture. I keep hoping the couple moving into this house will have the same realization.
We literally took everything from House1 to House2 piece by piece over a period of 5 months. All in our car and Mr.B’s truck. Each piece got a strict scrutiny type of review: do we really need it? I found several boxes of stuff from our previous move that have not been unpacked. All of that went into trash - if we did not touch it in 18 years, we were not going to miss it. We will be moving the last large pieces this weekend, weather permitting.
Somehow I doubt that Grandma is going to do any purging.
This is a lesson learned through watching all this. I am going to purge and downsize in the next year!!! I am not going to wait until I’m 75 and it is a huge nightmare and my brain has deteriorated into mush and I think I have to keep everything. I am sure it will be a nightmare, but I don’t have a deadline so maybe I can take one room at a time or something.
Every time I pointed out something that was deteriorated and broken that could go into the dumpster (while we had one available with guys to lift it), Grandma came up with “Ohhh… that was Julie’s and she might want it” Or “I’m keeping all of that because Julie or Kevin might want it”.
THEY DON’T WANT IT!!!
I have some friends who still have boxes piled in their office and garage 10 years after their move. For Heaven’s Sake… you obviously don’t need that stuff!
I’m off to the Bag A Day thread 
They need my niece’s house. It’s out in the sticks, was too far for MIL/FIL to travel to for the last years of their lives. So when anything was offered to BIL/SIL, they would offer to take it for niece to use. It went to the landfill, but MIL/FIL never knew that. It was a great system while it lasted, but MIL/FIL still had dumpsters full of stuff left in the house. Shoe boxes filled with every greeting card either of them ever received, stuffed in the rafters in the basement.
My mom’s house is clutter free except for her clothes closets and medicine cabinets (which are a whole wall to the ceiling cabinets.) On one visit a few years ago I made her go through everything. We took dozens of huge garbage bags filled with clothes, shoes and bags to the homeless shelter, who take the really good stuff and sell it at their store.
And I found stuff like shoe boxes filled with golf balls and at least 5 pair of golf shoes and she doesn’t even golf anymore. In her medicine cabinets I found prescriptions from 15 years ago, makeup from who knows when and a zillion hair products, lotions, etc. Everything got tossed. Then I bought her a shredder and spent days shredding bank statements going back to the 80’s with the checks included. Ditto for her brokerage accounts.
Fortunately my mom (who is 88) is in great shape physically and mentally which makes all this stuff much easier to get done.
What is it with these older people that think they have to keep every piece of paper for 30 years? Is someone going to walk in and demand to see their bank statement from January 2006?? Would they ever be able to find it if that even happened?
I’ve been culling out my parents in stages. First Mom passed away and my sister and I went through the house diligently to clear out the key things we wanted (that my Dad was never going to need or want).
My Mom was the Captain of Y2K Planning for her Sr Community. You would not believe what we found in their garage 8 yrs after the year 2000. 14, yes that is fourteen!!! Porta potties because, of course, there’s going to be a national toilet emergency when all the computers fail. Lifetime supply of M&Ms ( I guess that is the survival food of choice for the Sr Citizens?), 200 rolls of toilet paper to go along with that toilet failure and tons of first aid supplies because they were all going to fall down and skin their knees and every pharmacy was going to be looted and closed due to the computer failure.
Then we had to move Dad into Assisted Living and that took care of most of the other stuff.
My sister and I helped our Dad clear out some boxes but we must have missed some. He sat there on a chair and OK’d everything. Yes, it was OK to throw out old course materials from when he taught classes 20 years ago, etc. Honestly, I don’t think he was clinging to this stuff, he just didn’t have the energy to go through the boxes and it was easier to just move with them a few times than open any of them up.
In one of the boxes we missed were invoices from when I went to the orthodontist, 40+ years ago!
H and I have made a pact to downsize, simplify, and gimp-proof our living arrangements well before we turn 70. My in-laws are my inspiration here. They are rooted like bad, overripe turnips. One day we’ll have quite a party going through all the stuff that’s been accumulating in their house since they built it in 1967!
I find the idea that everyone turns into an debilitated old person with no common sense at the age of 70-75 very disturbing…and totally unlike the people I know!
My 94-yr-old mother is, I know, the exception, not the rule, in many ways, but she is a ruthless de-clutterer. On the other hand, she always has been, going back to my childhood. She disposed of all of my childhood stuff before I hit 20. She’s gotten rid of things that I really wanted. She keeps up a constant stream of donations to the Vietnam Vets. A few years ago I gave her three games for her to have in the house for her great-grandsons’ frequent visits, so they would have something to do. Within months, she gave two of them–one of which was the irreplaceable original version of a really good Ravensburger game that I really wanted to keep–to the Vets. I was furious. I could not understand why she wouldn’t at least ASK me if I wanted them back.
40 yr old bills, though…gotta go!
BTW, I would definitely use a chafing dish, if I had one, and definitely use silver trays. Please give them to Goodwill so that people who could actually use them can buy them, don’t just throw them out!
ETA, I’ve actually had to rent chafing dishes for some large parties!
I have 3 chafing dishes and they are used at least 3 times a year because I am the ‘entertaining’ house for my close group of friends. I am in charge of hosting all the big events such as high school graduation and college graduation parties.
@consolation … I am your mother. I throw everything away and it drives my family crazy. I will just take a giant sweep across the ‘dumping zone’ in the house and throw it all away. After awhile H and D have learned their lesson and they had better put their stuff away if they want to keep it. However, I am not good about clearing out things that are out of sight such as cabinets and closets
My husband is big into throwing things away, too. I have to keep a close eye on him. He goes through the mail standing over the recycling bin. Outside the house.
Once he threw away a check to me from a client for $1,500.00 without opening the envelope. Luckily I was able to retrieve it from the bin, and he hadn’t just torn it up or something.
After my reaction to that one he became a little more cautious. 
@greenwitch, the in laws moved out of their home since 1966 and we did find much paperwork from the 60s, some of it was good to have kept, essentially everything she kept was good, he kept a lot of junk. It was winter so we went through decades of tax returns and burned them all in the fireplace
DH I pretty ruthless, too. We had some 80s style fully cloth dining room chairs in the attic, not sure if we’d use them again or not (this was early 90s, so not an outrageous thing) and he was after me to get rid of them. One day, I drove up the driveway (acreage) and he had them in the burn pile!