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". . the best things in life are freeeeee, but you can give 'em to the birds and bees, just give me mo--ney. 'That's what I want.' That's what I want."
I watched my WW II generation relatives break the handles off 100 year old Belgian china coffee cups and break the plates when my grandmother died. They didn't want anyone to have the set, which was a full service for 16, which had been brought over when she immigrated to the US. The same with a Prussian Army officer's sword, broken in half in a shop vise. Antique tools from that shop were thrown into a 55 gallon drum piled with wood, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Hand blown German Christmas ornaments used as target practice with .22s.
I tried to tell them that some of the individual items were worth hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. All to the landfill and the bony pile at a local coal mine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BIMBAM
That's horrific. I guess I'd take more on then I otherwise would if I knew that would be the result. I guess I can't really understand the aversion to selling old items to the point of destroying them so no one else could possibly enjoy them. It just sounds like an extremely selfish act.
It IS an extremely selfish act! But I greatly appreciate your sharing this because it makes me feel less alone.
My experience has been contrary to this article. When my grandmother died- born in the 20s- her boomer kids donated NOTHING and threw away EVERYTHING. Their exact words: "we don't want people making money off our stuff."
Well if it was "your" stuff then why didn't you want it??! Or at least why not be responsible with what you had and the prospective good it could have done.
Probably due to watching them make decisions like this that not only do I donate everything that I don't need, but this millenial was the only one in the family who wanted my grandparents old photo albums!
The fact that her boomer kids didn't want them made me very sad. I'm sure not all boomers are but these were some of the most selfish around.
We had to dismantle my mother's house in a flash when at age 89 she sold it (under a little pressure from us) to move into another (small) house. She never in her life had thought about getting rid of anything (though thankfully was not a mag/newspaper packrat). We had to surreptitiously hire a guy with a truck and have a neighbor come over to distract her in the front of the house while we frantically threw stuff out of the back of the house into the truck in the driveway, willy nilly. We had no choice, as she would never have left the house. We threw out not only junk like dozens of aluminum cookie sheets and pots, etc etc but nice things as well. We had no time to think. To this day I feel badly about what should have been saved, but if she found out we had any of it we would have had h*** to pay. As it turns out she later made a list on paper of every blessed thing that was missing, and we never heard the end of it. Stress like you wouldn't believe!
But in truth, we did not want, nor would our grown kids have wanted, anything at all from her house (other than photos). Just too much to deal with.
If I can't fit it into a duffel bag...I simply don't own it.
I grew up in a household with two semi-pack-rat parents with slightly different tolerances for "clutter levels". My best friend's house growing up would make some of the homes on Hoarders look clean. So I know what it's like.
And I for one desire none of that junk. I don't want clutter. I don't want storage boxes packing the garage and attic filled with trinkets I seldom see and utilize even less.
Most millennials don't want your crappy, under-insulated, poorly built, crumbling houses either.
Trust me, as an electrician I've seen plenty of your cluttered garages, cluttered attics, cluttered basements and even your cluttered living areas. I absolutely do not want to live like that.
When my father in law died at 82 we had to clear out his 6000 square foot house. He had a swell collection of 7 black and white TVs that he was going to fix, many racks of Ham gear, 50 years of clothing, 8 rooms of broken furniture, etc. ad naseum.
We had the disposal company deliver a 40 foot by 10 foot by 8 foot deep bin and we filled it 3 times.
Don't do this to your kids. Donate your stuff to Goodwill or the trash bin well before you kick thee bucket.
Well-meaning parents and inlaws donated all their old outdated furniture to us when we moved into our house 25 years ago. We used it for a few years until we found some new furniture we LOVED. So we bought our own and donated the old. Parents and in-laws were a bit taken aback that we'd spend money (that we could well afford) on NEW furniture when we had "perfectly" usable old furniture.
Every time the inlaws or parents came over, for many years, they would bring a load of "stuff" that they no longer wanted, but thought we might need/want. This ranged from old canning jars, re-washed plastic bags (seriously), filing cabinets, cooking pans, etc. As a result, our basement filled up with crap. We did not really want/need what they brought, but we kept it because we did not want to seem ungrateful (except for the plastic bags...recycled immediately).
Fast forward 2 decades... after DH died, I decided to do a bit of purging and PURGED loads and loads of stuff out of my house....stuff that had been brought over and NEVER used in 20 years. Donated to whoever called and was stopping by to pick up stuff. Good, right? Well....the loads of "stuff" have resumed their arrival....sigh.
I tell my kids that if I ever offer them something and they really do not want it, just tell me! I won't be offended.
If I can't fit it into a duffel bag...I simply don't own it.
I grew up in a household with two semi-pack-rat parents with slightly different tolerances for "clutter levels". My best friend's house growing up would make some of the homes on Hoarders look clean. So I know what it's like.
And I for one desire none of that junk. I don't want clutter. I don't want storage boxes packing the garage and attic filled with trinkets I seldom see and utilize even less.
Most millennials don't want your crappy, under-insulated, poorly built, crumbling houses either.
Trust me, as an electrician I've seen plenty of your cluttered garages, cluttered attics, cluttered basements and even your cluttered living areas. I absolutely do not want to live like that.
And thats the beauty of it all... you don't have to and a simple no is short and sweet and you are probably better off.
I know one family of 4 grown daughters that are grandparents now... when their Mom passed... the job to clean up and settle everything fell to the oldest... one sibling was overseas and the other two within 20 miles could not be bothered.
It took a year before it was all said and done and now 20 years later the sisters have no relationship... all over items no one wanted at the time or couldn't be bothered with and now feel cheated.
The home was sold and added to the cash that was divided 4 ways...
The problems are over some now valuable civil war memorabilia from a Great Great grandfather a Lincoln Letter and similar things like Native American baskets and such... all that could fit in a couple or totes.
If you sell on ebay as I do, you will see that there is a lot of interest in "mid century modern."
Taste runs in cycles, just as when I was buying my first furniture, Victorian was ugly. Then it came back into style, now, who knows?
What matters to me is that I'm not sure the younger generations are able to see the difference between quality and junk. A lot of them seem to acquire junky particle board furniture--and it weighs a ton. It might look okay for a couple of years but then it falls apart.
Maybe that's the right thing for them to buy since they can just throw it away and move somewhere else and buy more cheap junky furniture. Maybe it's cheaper in the long run.
But people have always handed down quality items to the next generation, haven't they? Even if you go to a museum you can see something like a chest of drawers that was in the X family for hundreds of years. Of course maybe it was kept more out of necessity than out of choice since there was no cheap junky particle board furniture to buy.
But it does seem that a lot of what was handed down through the generations was fine quality and it was appreciated. That's why they kept it. The sterling silver--it was admired. The fine china, same thing. Beautiful paintings, hand carved furniture. Today they would turn down the sterling or just have it melted down for money. They don't want the bone china or the fine art. THAT is something I just don't get. They'll take 1950s plastic kitsch but turn down gt grandmother's hand painted bone china.
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