@eastcoascrazy I agree completely! H and I are not happy my parents (95% my mom) will be doing this to us. She refuses to ignore the huge amount of stuff she has crammed into a large house, barn, and yard. Her stuff is nice…but huge collections of pottery chickens and antiques aren’t worth all that much. She’s one of those people who think market value is more than what she paid…she just keeps buying and buying, too.
We made a huge downsize a year ago, filling a large dumpster, giving a ton to Goodwill, and sending a trailer to the antique sale/auction company. We emptied H’s mom’s entire house into dumpsters. I’m not doing that to my kids.
My mother thought everything was worth $$$. She moved across country to be closer to my brother and paid for two storage units for 8 years. One was filled with old tupperware and junk. At some point she had dozens of cabbage patch dolls. I just found three pieces of china yesterday that she had sent me. They are now in a bag to leave the house. H still cannot see why we need to take care of our stuff now but I am forging ahead.
My mother had 44 moving boxes of “stuff” when we moved her here. This was feet 8 or so trips to her place that I did to toss things. The movers told us that people with four bedroom houses don’t have 44 boxes of stuff. My mom lived in a one bedroom apartment.
We only moved what she needed to her new place here…but brought a box or two every weekend for her to unpack. Sadly, she died less than six months after the move.
That left us with about 30 unpacked boxes! It took us a long time to go through them all. Let’s just say, we outfitted several new college grads with dishes, pots and pans, towels, sheets, etc. Mostly new…because she was saving them.
We kept three things we wanted. The sterling flatware, a Nippon tea cup and saucer, and a set of Royal Doulton white porcelain China that we use as our everyday dinnerware…oh…and her real jewelry.
Everything else was either tossed, donated or given away.
My mother also believes everything is worth something. She has half used jars of food (molasses, spices, instant tea that she didn’t like, etc) that she thinks people will buy. I told her to throw all the opened jars, bottles, boxes away.
And Beanie Babies. She has $1000 worth because she thought they would be collector items some day. Except that everybody thought the same thing and already has their own collection. She gave my S some of them years ago. They’re in a box in my closet. New grandbaby (due next month!) is going to get to play with them.
@musicmom1215
sadly, many elderly people believe that the crap they have hung onto for decades will still have some value.
I think that you need to step back and let someone else handle the disposal of your parents belongings, so that their home, will HAVE the chance of value.
You will, unfortunately, have more work ahead of you, by that means being their for your parents in their new home, in the months to come.
Beanie Babies! - A friend, a Transport RN at a Children’s Hospital, was glad for our donation. Each child transported gets a little lovie distraction and so the Beanie Babies went to a good cause. Check with your local Children’s Hospital or ambulance services.
Here is the rub…someone who has a service for 12 of Rosenthal China…likely paid a pretty penny for it back in the day. At this point…it’s worth maybe $50…IF you can find someone to buy it.
^Yes, it’s hard. My mom has an incredible amount of clothes. I would hold up each item for her to decide on. A lot of times, she would say, “Well, I think that goes with something else, and I need to see the other item to decide if I want to keep the outfit…” Ack! There was no way I could find the “other item,” so I just kept it and moved on. At least now all her stuff fits on hangers in her huge walk-in closet, but she needs to get rid of a bunch more before moving.
My parents have a 4 bedroom house. Every closet in every bedroom is crammed full of clothing, most of which hasn’t been worn in ages, some of which has never been worn.
Because there wasn’t enough space in the 4 closets, dad even bought an extra wardrobe that is in a bedroom that is stuffed with clothing as well.
The few times I’ve made an effort to help my mom find anything to wear, it has been a struggle because the garments are so tightly packed and in no discernible order. Lovely designer garments next to moth eaten blazer that looks like she found it somewhere (I took the moth eaten garment and threw it away in my garbage can when I got home so she wouldn’t fish it out of hers).
My brother has been working valiantly to bring done order to the house, but he has been much better about discarding than I ever have. It’s endless.
Have seen all these issues with family members…and yet, we cannot seem to get the momentum going to deal with our own house, which has absorbed a bunch of “treasures” from the previous generations. It’s hard!
Oh, all the clothing in my parents home (which they no longer live in because they’ve moved to a 2 bedroom CCRC) belongs to the parents. We kids have all taken our clothing and other items from that home long ago.
Cleaning out our parents’ homes, both 60-70 years of accumulation, both 4 BR ranches with loaded full basements, one in 2017 and one in 2018, both out of state for us, was several days of hard work each, but in hindsight I feel so good about it. I feel that caring for a parent includes being a good steward of what they have and what they leave. I have no judgement if others feel differently but maybe the way we did this task will be helpful to someone. We identified the things that anyone in our very small families wanted -took them away or put them in one room. Both times we found a scrap metal guy and gave all the scrap metal including nails and screws, fireplace tools, metal buckets, license plates collections, metal trash cans, etc - 2-3 pickup loads each. We took all leftover unopened medical supplies and wheelchairs, walkers and such to a medical mission place. We listed many things online on Craigslist every evening (with only 2 specified pickup days) with stated prices of $10-30 each as a donation going to a very local well run charity. Free would have been okay too, but too many people reply to free and too many don’t show up. When people came, we offered them more for free or almost free - met many people who were either running charities themselves or very needy -lots of thankful people. We donated most furniture to a charity that helps people down on luck move into furnished apartments - also gave them full sets of very good condition dishes, linens, kitchen things for the welcome home packs they also supply; I think we had enough to nicely furnish 3 apartments between the two houses. We cashed in coins, stamps, sterling silver to appropriate dealers, recycled paper items, took cleaners and hazardous waste, and obsolete electronics to drop-off sites. We earned about $1000 selling antique toys on Ebay. We donated clothes, and other dishes and some household items to other charities. We opened the house to friends/neighbors of parents to choose art pieces if they wanted any. We found several small surprise things that are not particularly valuable except to us which we kept and I am so glad we have these unexpected treasure finds. There was one bin that was labeled “all this can be thrown away because it wouldn’t mean anything to you but it did to me”- (photos, trip memorabilia and such), and we plan to do something similar eventually. Of course at the end we had one dumpster each but they were full of pretty useless and worn out stuff, and not huge. We are both good volunteers and we saw this as a worthwhile volunteer activity that was of benefit to many individuals and charities, saved more from being landfilled than we could otherwise save from landfills in decades, and gained some peace in difficult situations from feeling we found good homes for as much as possible.
I was in charge of cleaning my own parents’ belongings. It really wasn’t that hard, but they had already downsized once. It included their own treasures, but they were not hoarders. I took photos in each room of shelves, open drawers, etc. and sent photos to family asking what they wanted. They chose a few items, but since they lived out of town, kept their choices to smaller pieces. After pulling those items, I sent a few photos, and an outline to my friends. At the time, many of their children were in college, or recent graduates in their first apartments. They seemed delighted to get a jump-start on supplying their apartments, and I pulled and boxed their requested items for pick-up. If there were duplicate requests, I just divided as best I could. Remaining items of any value, were donated to primarily three local charities. I took a few items I was not yet ready to discard, but eventually sold or gave them away over time. The major clean out took several weeks, part-time. Like lb5, I felt it was partially “a labor of love”, or even a volunteer activity. It is a joy when I visit friends, or their children, and see an item or two they now enjoy. It did not feel overwhelming, but nor did they have the extent many of you are describing.