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3katz4me

going through old things, purging, getting ready to sell

3katz4me
9 years ago

Oh my - I spent nearly all day going through some of the stuff that has accumulated at our weekend lake place. We have no storage space at home so everything over the past 16 years has come here to be stored. During this time our parents have passed on and all kinds of their stuff has come here too. And because they had their parents stuff we have grandparents stuff too. OMG - it's overwhelming.

I went through a bunch of boxes of my family stuff and threw out a lot. It's very weird to throw away family photos and the like but I'm the end of the line - no kids and neither of my siblings had kids either - so there's no one who is going to want these. Many of them I had no idea who the people were. I kept more than a few that really touched my heart though.

It's hard to describe going through some of the stuff - letters, photos, etc. Pretty much everyone in my family had kind of a tragic life in one way or another and you look at people when they were young and think it's quite sad their lives didn't turn out the way they or their parents would have wished for them.

I read all the letters from my father to my mother when they were courting. Gad, she should have been able to figure out he was going to be a problem before she married him. But love is blind as they say and I wouldn't be here today if that wasn't the case.

And then the cancelled checks....it's like they just kept coming and coming and coming. I burned them in the fireplace and just when I thought I was done I'd unearth a bunch more boxes of them. It's horrific what you can accumulate when you have the space.

I've only had one garage sale in my life but I am going to have one in the spring because I have so much to get rid of including some furniture I'm not taking to the next place. So I also started piling stuff together that will go to the garage sale.

I need to get DH going on his stuff and that is going to be a real challenge as he doesn't throw anything away. Hopefully I can convince him that we don't want to pay someone to move all this crap and/or pay for storage if we sell before we find another place.

And when the time comes that we pass from this earth, I really do not want to leave a bunch of junk behind that some poor soul who isn't our kid has to deal with.

This post was edited by gibby3000 on Sat, Oct 4, 14 at 22:07

Comments (10)

  • Fun2BHere
    9 years ago

    I don't envy you your task. I dread the thought of cleaning out my parents house when the time comes. I don't have to worry about earlier generations' possessions though. They didn't have much and what little they did have has been taken care of already.

  • lucillle
    9 years ago

    I've been decluttering, not because I'm a pack rat, I'm not, but because I do have a little bit of extra stuff and I want to have an uncluttered easy to take care of home.
    One thing I've done which is effective and to me, rewarding, is that I put stuff out on the front sidewalk on trash day with a sign that says free/gratis. It is always taken within an hour and I like to think the items went to someone who really needed them.
    I have been doing this off and on every few weeks because doing it all at once would have been overwhelming, and I am just about at the point where it's all done, the garage is organized, and there are no boxes of stuff.
    Good luck with your project, don't get overwhelmed because it sounds like you have a lot to go through, just set aside a few hours at a time.

  • oldfixer
    9 years ago

    It's a good feeling when "stuff" is gone. I just lack the ambition to keep going, knowing it's going to take a year to accomplish that goal.

  • kitasei
    9 years ago

    We bought an old house that had a container and shed on it that was filled with what I considered,well, crap. Nothing of any value. We arranged to have a demolition/salvage company and cart it all away for about two grand, when i started posting some of the things on craigslist for free. Everything went! I met interesting people who had unimaginable ideas for how they would use every thing. There is also FreeCycle. I found salvage people happy to haul out anything metal -- including tangled christmas lights and fencing. I was happy to save the money, and even more to keep all of it out of the landfill. Many nice encounters in the meantime...

  • DLM2000-GW
    9 years ago

    If you haven't tossed it all yet, and I hope you haven't, the family photos may be of interest to a historical society, the letters as well, especially if there are things relating to war times. And you'd be amazed at how many artists use old photos in their work. I agree about freecycle and the free section on Craigslist. Use them before a landfill.

  • juliekcmo
    9 years ago

    I know that everyone is well meaning when they bring up craigslist, free cycle, garage sales, etc.

    But in my experience, that Responsibility to shepherd items to a new home can be stifling. It is OK to just throw things out and not feel guilty about it. It takes a lot (a whole lot) of mental energy to even go through stuff. To add to the process the added task of sorting and then redistributing items that mean nothing to you is not something that you need to do if you don't want to.

    It is OK to do as you wish.

  • Annie Deighnaugh
    9 years ago

    Oh I can relate.

    DH had a grandmother and an old maid aunt...guess who got all their stuff. His folks had an apartment in NYC and the old house here. Guess who got all their stuff. Then my Mom had to clean out their old house after Dad passed...50+ years of accumulation and both were pack rats. Guess who got a lot of their stuff. She moved into a condo here and had a house in FL besides. When she passed, guess who got all her stuff from those 2 places. Let alone our own stuff and moving out of the old house and into the new house. Is it any wonder we left the upstairs in the new house just attic space? Any wonder that it looks like a goodwill store?

    And the tension one suffers between, this is still good, how can I throw it out...but do I really need 14 wooden spoons? And then you get this weird support for keeping it...like when our can opener busted and we just went to the attic to get another one...and there's still another up there...

    And trying to get rid of stuff that was in DH's family triggers this strong reaction in him, like a hoarder, that I'm not tossing a dishtowel, but a piece of his family history and how dare I! So I know that an awful lot of this stuff I'll have to deal with once he's gone.

    We too are orphans with no children, nieces or nephews and ends of the line. So I know a lot of this stuff will be meaningless to many. We both have cousins though who have children so will probably pass some stuff down to them. The rest will just have to go.

    And yes, looking at photos of people who looked so young and carefree, and knowing ex post how their lives ended, often in such sad and painful ways. It is truly heart wrenching. A labor required of those of us who are the end of the line. Not easy, I know. But there it is.

    On the other side though, we've been working at cleaning out over 60 years of accumulation and mess in the barn...while it is dirty nasty work, there is something wonderful about looking at the space that you just cleaned up, all the room you've made, finding treasures you didn't know you had amongst the detritus of accumulation, and that sense of accomplishment at having made a tremendous difference. So there's that too.

  • hvhay
    9 years ago

    I so relate to your stories. I am an only child with a lot of 80+ year old relatives who never had children, so I keep being given more and more stuff that I donâÂÂt know what to do with. I love to be given family photographs and other memorabilia like that, but do I need another china service for 12? Nope. Is that how I need to remember my dearly departed relatives, by keeping a museum of all the stuff that they ever bought? No, not really. But I always found it very hard to part with it all. But what happened over the last year is that we went through a big remodel where we put all of our stuff in storage for months and months, and when we came back to unpack everything, it was like that emotional connection that I had with those things had been broken. I hadnâÂÂt only not missed the stuff when it was packed up, I didnâÂÂt even remember that it existed. I started putting stuff on Ebay (smaller stuff), Craigslist (bigger stuff), bringing stuff to Goodwill (clothes etc.) and itâÂÂs been so, so freeing. I started small, but at this point itâÂÂs like a switch was flipped in my brain. I have gotten rid of like two-thirds of my clothes and honestly itâÂÂs like I have a new wardrobe. I can now find all the clothes that I like, because theyâÂÂre not buried under all the carp that I felt mediocre about but somehow couldnâÂÂt get rid of before. It helps that my husband is on board with the program whereas he too had been holding on to a lot of stuff for no reason. So, to anyone who has a hard time getting rid of stuff or a partner who has a hard time getting rid of stuff, I would say to take heart, that it is possible to get to a point where it gets easier.

  • 3katz4me
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Once you come to grips with getting rid of the stuff it is a great feeling when it goes. I'm going through some things at home too. I finally got rid of some dishes and glassware from my mother and grandmother. I donated it to a community garage sale fundraising event for the local childrens hospital. After years of keeping the stuff I finally decided this was a worthy way to get rid of it and hopefully someone wanted it and bought it. I love the open space in my pantry closet every time I go in there now. Also dropped off four bags of clothing and shoes at a local homeless shelter yesterday. And it was great putting three boxes and two bags out for the garbage man from my other project. Also had two bags of paper to recycle and burned boxes and boxes and boxes of cancelled checks. Can't wait to do more.

    I even got DH to agree that he will get rid of all the paper copies of HBR, Forbes, etc. that he's kept for years and years. YAY!!

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