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My emotion, yes. The trick is, how do I get it separated from my mother's emotion? She is having memory issues now, so maybe that will help - or maybe it will make her hold on tighter
True.
My mother is an emotional person, rather than a rational one, though, so when she is even willing to think of maybe possibly considering moving sometime in the future, she thinks of the overwhelming stuff and dismisses the thought.
Maybe you could take her to see some of the potential places she might move, too. If she finds something that she likes you could help her to select what she needs to bring with her to the new place and then offer to put the rest into storage or offer to give the items away to those who could use them - even if that means you hold an estate sale, sell the stuff and then use the proceeds to help pay for things that your mom actually needs.
As long as she is looking at rooms stuffed full of stuff, she is going to feel overwhelmed and she won't get around to downsizing.
Post 40, StealthRabbit; Caring Transitions is another company. They come in, do what needs to be done. For me, this I would do, as one may feel emotionally overwhelmed.
In some part of the country (the South mainly) estate sales still yield a lot of interest. When my parents pass they have told us (the three daughters) to get what we want for us and our children and sell/give away the rest. My mother has 24 place settings of sterling silver flatware and a zillion sets of fine china. In her heyday she entertained a great deal. She has some beautiful furniture pieces, but I have no need for any of it. Plus she lives 12 hours away so even if I wanted it, it would cost a fortune to transport. She is not interested in the least in downsizing her 4500 sq foot home in which every closet is full of stuff.
After dealing with several packrat houses, I have been pushing my elderly relatives to give stuff away now, instead of bequeathing it or leaving it for someone else to handle.
Personally, I've downsized. I also read the Swedish death cleaning book and applied those concepts to my own life.
We've taken it a step further and requested useful gifts. Better yet, we encourage our family and friends to share experiences with us. We reciprocate.
I got it from my library. It's all about leaving things neat and tidy for those tasked with cleaning up after you when your gone. It has other info, too, like getting rid of stuff that you wouldn't want others to find. I found if very freeing.
My mother-in-law does this every time we go to her house. She tries to give us or her grand daughters china, silver, porcelain lamps etc. One of her relatives passed away and he had a house full of several china sets, silver platters and trays and the lamps. They took the lamps and spent a lot of money on rewiring them and tried to sell everything. You can't give the stuff away. Even consignment shops didn't want them. She even gave my daughter crocheted toilet tissue covers that she made. She was making them for the family. They were awful in the 1960's. She has collections of so much stuff. A case full of holiday Barbie dolls and Disney glasses. I don't get it. Nobody wants any of it and we don't want to hurt her feelings, but no one has any use for it or a place for it. We just tell her to put it on Market place or Ebay or give it to someone who would appreciate it and use it.
this is what my (ex) inlaws family did.
all the stuff went into a (very very large) storage unit. "to hold it for the grandkids until they got settled in a home"
which was kinder than saying to their face "no one wants this stuff" which was actually the case.
and when the grandparents were deceased, the storage locker was emptied and the pieces were either sold (a few) or given to good will (most of them).
the grandparents had spent 60+ years collecting antiques, furniture, dishes, glass, rugs. they had a lifetime of enjoying it, shopping for it, refinishing it, building a house (literally) to store it all in, bragging about it and showing it off. the truth is nobody wanted it.
and there is nothing wrong with that. i can't tell you how good it felt when i left that marriage, to walk away from a house filled with dark antique furniture, none of which was to my taste. our whole house was filled with stuff they "gave us as gifts" which we were forced to ooooh and aaaah over. it was utterly oppressive. frankly i am glad not to inflict that on my kids. in the 28 years since then i have lived with very plain simple wooden furniture that is much more to my taste. it still feels good to walk into my simple apartment and NOT see dark oppressive furnishings which i was forced to endure. yikes
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 05-11-2021 at 08:54 PM..
My uncle died last January, my mother's last remaining sibling. She was the oldest, he the youngest, and he preceded her in death by two months.
He had more money than the rest of the family, and he often showed off the sculptures and other artwork he and my aunt bought to decorate their home.
They lived in New Jersey, but their two daughters had made their lives on the west coast. My mother always wondered if my aunt missed being near her daughters and grandchildren, but she was loyal to my uncle, who kept his hand in his east coast business past the age of 75 until his health began to fail as he neared 80.
Within six months of his death, she sold her beautiful house, called her church to come take the furniture, the artwork, and everything in the house except whatever personal items she chose to take with her, and left NJ to move in with one daughter in Washington State. I guess all their things meant more to him than they ever did to her.
Out of curiosity I checked Ebay for prices of well known brands of quality China. Some of the pieces and sets had pretty good prices. Then I went to the listings that were about to expire and found no offers on any of the listings. That is pretty much what I expected. You can't give the stuff away.
eBay is the worst for selling dishes. It's just not worth it to pay the shipping on a large set of heavy, delicate items that have to be individually wrapped and put in large boxes so they won't break during the mail, but aren't actually worth that much themselves.
We were recently gifted a set of beautiful Haviland dishes from the 1920s. Bone china so thin you could see through it, service for 12 including serving pieces, teapot, etc. etc. Unfortunately everything was also monogrammed in gold with the letter "F," which means they would be hard to sell and Replacements definitely wouldn't give us much if anything.
We thought of some friends of ours whose last name begins with F. Got in touch with them, and they connected us to their niece who was absolutely delighted with the set. We gave them to her for free. More important than any money, was that they went to someone who will cherish them.
But if someone has a lot of things they truly can't give away, they should have an estate sale or take it all to a consignment shop. Marketplace and Craigslist are fine for a few items, but listing one thing after another and meeting up with buyers is practically a full-time job if you have a houseful of things.
I told my mother that I wanted the home. It's in a rural market and not all that expensive. I promised to pay my sister half the value. My sister was fine with it as she didn't want the home but was surprised I did. She asked if I planned on moving there and I said I'd visit once in awhile (I live 2000 miles away) but now we will have the perfect place for all of the stuff.
Really I like the stuff....there and all together. For example, I would never can vegetables here, but there she has everything one could possibly want for it, and places to get fresh produce. Here it would simply get in the way. There's a very real chance that the stuff will become just that when the home is empty....but I'll make that call then. For right now, it's perfectly placed. Unless Mom doesn't want it. It's her stuff after all. No need to hang onto it on my account.
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