<p>But it’s much more fun to talk about divvying up stuff. My Mom moved in with one of my brothers at the end of last year, and this is the weekend we are supposed to divvy up the leftovers. I’m not anticipating too much trouble, but there is one piece of furniture and one painting we all want.</p>
<p>I guess you better buy some straws mathmom…</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>We should start a new thread about divvying up!</p>
<p>When my Mom moved into an adult community @18 yrs ago, she sat us all down. Told us what she was leaving us because in her words “she moved there so the next move again would be when they took her out feet first” Mom also said, “get the best price for the house, because I plan not to leave much in my bank account!”</p>
<p>She informed us that speak now or forever hold your peace. We sat with glasses of wine, beers, and chips pointing, I’ll take this or that. If we had an argument over something she decided. We LOAO through the whole thing thinking she was joking, not one of us thought of it as morbid, and when we did, we said this is morbid dividing up in front of you, but somebody would crack a joke about not wanting something so it turned into “I don’t want that!”</p>
<p>When we were done she said okay well now I know, so I am going to color dot with initials everything so when I die you won’t forget.</p>
<p>Again…“okay Mom, whatever!”</p>
<p>No lie, the woman dotted every big piece. If you look behind furniture placed up against the wall, like a dresser you will see a flipping dot with an initial.</p>
<p>Our running joke now is the only argument we will have is who has to clean out her closets? Bullet and my brother both swear they are so bad they will buy Pith Helmets! My joke is they better find my wedding gown. My Mom has her gown, my sister (married 5 yrs after me), baptismal gowns for every grandchild, every velvet dress DD wore until she was @ 10, her communion dress, etc, but somehow my wedding gown is the only thing missing! That also tells you the need for the Pith helmets.</p>
<p>For Bullet’s side, his parents flip flop constantly, and we have come to terms that since we live out of state, we will get the dust bunnies.</p>
<p>My parents handled the divvy-ing up brilliantly. They listed all the valuable items and decided, 20 years before their deaths, who would get what. They told my sister and me we were permitted to swap if we both agreed to it. </p>
<p>After our mother passed away, there was a lot of “not valuable” costume jewelry. Sister and I laid it all out in front of us and we took turns picking a piece. </p>
<p>It helps that my sister is the most honest person I’ve ever known. She was the executor of our father’s estate (she’s an estate attorney) and whenever there was a odd penny, she threw it to me.</p>
<p>We put all the little stuff (including jewelry) on the pool table at my brother’s house, and then went round robin taking something. </p>
<p>For the bigger stuff, I took post-it notes, numbered everything, and then took pictures of groups of stuff so you could see the numbers and told everyone to get back to me with a sorted list in order of what they wanted. I then went through and gave everyone I could their first choice, those I couldn’t then got their second choice, and repeated until we were done. I didn’t hear too many complaints. (And, given our wide age spans, people turned out to want different things. Stuff my folks acquired when I was out of the house had little or no connection for me. Things that hadn’t been much seen since grandparents had lived in Connecticut resonated a lot more with me since I’d spent so much time with them there.)</p>
<p>A friend’s parents use the following system: starting when the four offspring were adults, every Christmas and birthday each got to put a “string” on an item in the house, and the mom kept a running list of who picked what when. One year a brother might pick the grand piano, and another might pick the cake platter. As the parents progressively downsized, items were released to the holder of the string. </p>
<p>My kids get crabby when we ask them who wants what…they think it is morbid. H expects S to want his collection of antique swords, so that is that! I have two sets of sterling silver, one my mom’s and the other mine, though my aunt picked it out and the set was completed before I ever got to have an opinion. I prefer my mom’s. I offered mine to D, but told her that if she took it, that she would be stuck with it, but if she wanted my mom’s she would have to wait. She is waiting. I guess my thinking is that she gets first choice, for whatever reason…though maybe that is not totally fair. </p>
<p>Off topic: One really hot subject among my friends is when family jewelry is given to the son to give to his bride-to-be. Subsequently some of these marriages have either not happened or dissolved, and there are some crabby feelings about what happens to it.</p>
<p>I just went through a similar exercise as executor. There are many ways to do it, and any way works so long as everyone feels it’s fair. The way we did it was that my brother and I went through the house, and each wrote down privately the top 10 items, in order, that we wanted. Then we showed our lists, and each took the same number of items that didn’t appear on both lists. So we each got the top items that we wanted, that the other one didn’t. The items that appeared on both lists were discussed. Then we had one item appraised independently, and put it up for “sale”. The one who “bought” it, gave 50% of the price to the other. He - and almost as importantly, his spouse ! - felt it was fair, and each of us ended up with cherished items. </p>
<p>It’s always tough to go through breaking up an estate that represents a loved one’s life. I felt through it all that being as fair as I could, and taking my brother’s wishes so much into account, was the last gift I could give the parents who loved us both so much.</p>
<p>I’m so sorry for you, jym, and for anyone else who has to deal with both the loss of a parent and a bad sibling situation at the same time. That must be really, really difficult.</p>
<p>One other thing that’s still hanging over our heads from the estate: my father had a bunch of mementos from WWII. Some of it was Nazi stuff.</p>
<p>My husband was horrified when we found it among all the other WWII stuff. He wanted to throw it away, but I couldn’t do that because I’m a history buff. Now my husband is not happy that we have it stashed in a closet in our house. We don’t want to sell it because that might cater to people who are Nazi buffs, not history buffs, which neither of us has any sympathy for. But history is history to me.</p>
<p>What would you all do?</p>
<p>See if there is a museum that wants it.</p>
<p>I agree, try to find a museum for it.</p>
<p>How about your college, HS or maybe the local library, or even the HS library?</p>
<p>You can get it appraised and donate it. Educators will cherish it, students will learn the importance of these items and you get a tax right off.</p>
<p>If it was me, I would give it to our HS LIBRARY because they do re-set the library often based on themes. Most History teachers follow the same time frame, so when 9th grade is teaching civil war, so is 10th and 11th. When 10th is teaching WWII, so is APEURO or WORLD.</p>
<p>Giving it the library keeps it with the school, plus it allows the teachers to “sign it out”.</p>
<p>I am puzzled about why your DH has issues with the Nazi items. I would think if it was your father’s from WWII, he would not want to throw it away at all, and not because of it was NAZI, but to remind us all never to go down this path again.</p>
<p>How do you beat ignorance? Education and personalizing!
Your artifacts will tie a name to it. It will educate and personalize it.
If you have pictures give them too.</p>
<p>Maybe I am strange, but than again, when Bullet went to the Green Zone in 04 he brought back Iraq money with Saddam’s face on the bills. I framed some of the bills, showing front and back, gave that to every History teacher for our 3 kids to use as a teaching aid. (I was a teacher). I also placed the bills with every currency amount, including coins in a folder for the libraries. My kids were in 2 different schools.</p>
<p>The look on their faces was priceless. We gave them a tool that they could never get on their own using school funds. They were excited to show the kids. I came to find out that the folder was passed around the HS’s in the county too. Something I never thought of…Economic classes. When I learned that this was occurring, I also sent in Euro’s that were unspent.</p>
<p>You can change our kids education system just by one action!</p>
<p>Just me, but tell your DH, this is about educating, to remind people not to sit by while leaders like:</p>
<p>Hitler - Jews
Hussein - Kurds
Taliban - Women</p>
<p>“Selectively” target people and the world does nothing because it has no impact on them in their daily life.</p>
<p>Those items are daily reminders that we must fight for the meek, weak and the minority.</p>
<p>I want my kids to see them. I hope in some way they will tie bullying in HS to Nazi’s. If you want to get rid of them or donate them, PM me because our HS will gladly use them as educational tools.</p>
<p>hayden, I’m sorry to say that my family owned a slave back in the 1850s. My dad has the bill of sale for the 17-year-old girl named Josephina, whom they bought for $800. I think I’ll keep it to remind our family of the shameful part of our history. It’s important for my kids to realize history is REAL, not just a bunch of facts to memorize.</p>
<p>We are about to clean out my MIL’s house as she has moved to a nursing home. Unbelievable amounts of books, plus furniture and musical instruments. We have the opposite problem of above posters…lots of stuff that nobody wants! Tastes change, and the grandchildren are still too mobile to want much “stuff” anyway. </p>
<p>Probably public institutions will be the recipients of much of it.</p>
<p>I am dreading clearing out my inlaws’ home when they go to assisted living. They have refused to do it when they are/were able. They think it will be “easy for us.” WOW. Two jobs, two kids, and a dog that needs daily meds and they think we can drive across the country and easily do it! Thank goodness my mom was more thoughtful. I should go to the venting thread!</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone. Those were terrific ideas.</p>
<p>Mommusic – The local classical music station runs a program every year where they solicit donations of musical instruments, which are then refurbished and given to schools with high free/reduced lunch rates. Maybe something like that?</p>
<p>Having just been through this with MIL’s stuff – I send you my sympathy and I hope you have some help. One trick: I cleared out (down to the walls) one bedroom, and that became the staging area for everything we wanted, including all the boxes to be shipped. It really made the whole process a lot easier. (Also meant that all the packing supplies were in there.)</p>
<p>Something I would do differently: get a dumpster delivered. We ended up paying a hauler $500 to take away two huge loads of stuff that would have all fit in one dumpster. And nobody – nobody – wants old, crunchy bath mats, old underwear, or used toothbrushes. Or cracked and chipped glasses, sheets with holes in them, and broken chairs. Or cardboard furniture. Or burned out light bulbs, decrepit shoes, or ancient and dusty open boxes of food. Or the old broken garage door opener that had been replaced but not hauled away.</p>
<p>My recommendation-- do not rush. I threw away a LOT of stuff that I felt pressured to clean out that I now really wish I had kept.</p>
<p>arabrab–unfortunately, the musical instruments tend to be recorders & harpsichords. Not suitable for school bands! But there is a plan for them.</p>
<p>hayden</p>
<p>those nazi stuff are very collectable, you will be suprised how well those are sold on ebay.</p>