Die Quietly and Don’t Cause Much Bother

We are putting together everything of value and going to take a job lot to auction. Then we are going to spend the proceeds. It seems pointless leaving anything of value nowadays as the general opinion seems to be "What do I do with this rubbish". We have a couple of items with local historical value so we are sending these, with the providence, to the local museum. All anyone will have to do when we die is to hire a big skip for all our "rubbish".

butterandjam

I'd sell the lot. I'd also empty all my bank accounts and then donate everything to some very deserving charity.

Yes! I’d do that too 😀

Chestnut

Throwing out family photographs and documents is so disrespectful and cruel to the relatives. We had a husband who threw out all his wife's family photos, her ancestors right through to the Victorian era, the lot. Well the deceased wife actually came from a very large family and there were several of her cousins who would have given their eye teeth for those pictures and documents of their grandparents and great grandparents. The family now have nothing. He threw out their whole legacy just because it wasn't of interest to him.

I would expect my family to destroy anything that nobody else wanted. I'm sorry, without thinking, I just assumed that proviso rather than wrote it down. The mai thing I do not want anyone to find is my photo albums or personal papers for sale inan auction.

Throwing out family photographs and documents is so disrespectful and cruel to the relatives. We had a husband who threw out all his wife's family photos, her ancestors right through to the Victorian era, the lot. Well the deceased wife actually came from a very large family and there were several of her cousins who would have given their eye teeth for those pictures and documents of their grandparents and great grandparents. The family now have nothing. He threw out their whole legacy just because it wasn't of interest to him.

Caleo

One thing you need to do is remove photographs of people from their frames before they go to charity shops. It's pathetic to see people buying frames with photos still in them.

This is the one thing I have commanded my children to do - whether they do is of course out of my control.

if they call in House clearers all personal photoa and papers must be removed and destroyed before they come. Everything that makes my home personal must be disposed of.

For some years we had a hobby atiue business and most of our stock came from fossicking among the boxes of stuff that every auctioneer has on the floor unde everything else. So often we found albums of family photos, packs of letters and other ephemera from unknown people's life and I was left determined that that should never happen to me.

One thing you need to do is remove photographs of people from their frames before they go to charity shops. It's pathetic to see people buying frames with photos still in them.

I recently came across a small company who will help you deal with the situation of things we have collected that we value and that our children may or may not value! They are more sensitive than a house clearance company and not wildly expensive. Just a thought.

www.martlet-home.co.uk/who-we-are

No, that's part of it silverlining48 I think.
Our first computer was £2,000 plus (and was enormous!).
It had less "brain" than a cheap phone does now.
...that's a bit like your microwave.

"Stuff" is cheaper now.

Georgesgran
Our metronome and mandolin have both gone already - and the hand-machined paper-strength tester!
We still have 100s of other "now unused" things though...

Sorry I seem to have posted on the wrong thread. Will retire forthwith.

Our first microwave was £350 , bought at the ideal home exhibition in the 80 s. My current microwave was £40 in Asda.

When was it that our children got to decide on or have the final say on what we surround ourselves with.
They can butt out😃
A clean enough house is good enough if you are going to inherit it. Put the work in and stop moaning.

It certainly is true about one man's trash being another man's treasure.
One of my daughters loves her hand me down G plan dining table and chairs, but it does nothing for me.
I have spoken before about the bungalow purchased by my youngest DD and her DH. It was lived in by a hoarder, and has taken them a long time to rid themselves of endless boxes of stuff.
Over COVID, they put out box after mixed box ( china shepherdess, anyone?) and most of it was whisked away by passers by.
The last pieces went to the tip, but only a small percentage of the stuff mountain was left. I do wonder if, subsequently, sons and daughters visited some parents and sighed " Where did you get that pot dog, Mum?"...

I also think we live in different times. In ‘78 my parents had downsized to a bungalow, so at that time, a lot of ‘stuff’ was disposed of, but other than going out in the car, they didn’t have expensive hobbies or the income to justify them. When my Mum died in ‘92, as a SAHM and only child, I was able to help my Dad with her remaining few possessions, as she’d been house then bedbound for some years and had taken charge of discarding things she no longer needed or wanted. After my Dad died, I was then able to sift through everything at my own pace. When my time comes, I suspect both DDs will still be working full time, so the less complex stuff they have to go through, the better. That said, this year, I’m hoping to get rid of some stuff here that neither they nor I want. Anyone fancy a metronome and a mandolin??

We are probably the last generation who were brought up to be frugal and careful, making furniture and ‘stuff’ last, because that’s what you did.

As someone else said, many things have got cheaper and therefore easier to replace.

Our first video recorder, a fairly basic one, was £300.

This was the mid 80’s, 40 years ago.

Now you would just buy one as part of the weekly shop, if such a thing as a VR existed.

Different times.

We hear a lot about hoarding and declutterring. I wonder if these problems are any worse than they ever were?
Never throwing anything away is a state of mind. If your house is full of junk then declutterring won’t change anything permanently.
Nobody should feel they must get rid of stuff they value so their children’s job will be easier when they die.

I confess, M0nica I have been using a very unusual Clarice Cliff shallow bowl under my cactus since 1978!
Turning the sandy cactus has scraped lots of the pattern off.

It was my dad's. He only used it as a container for large but shallow flower arrangements - and never liked it.

My mother hadn’t died when we had to clear her house - she’d moved to a care home (dementia).

A sister in law who came to help, had the idea of advertising a ‘help yourself ‘open afternoon on local social media. We put a load of stuff, some of it not considered quite good enough even for charity shops - all sorts inc. crockery, cutlery, saucepans, you name it, in the sitting room.

It was amazing what people came and took away. Certainly it saved us quite a few trips to the tip or charity shop.

But it is all nothing new. It was the same when my grandparents died and my parents, lots of things they had were of no interest to young people furnishig their houses in the 1960s or 1990s.

Then a generation later everyone wants them. 30 years ago 1950s-70 household contents were a drug on the market. Now 'Mid-century Modern is all the rage. Ercol, G Plan, Nathan, now all command significant prices. Still cheaper than new, but a few years ago you could not give this furniture away. I can remember when someone would put a Clarice Cliff vase in the bin (my mother did) It was a wedding present and she thought it was hideous and nobody she knew wanted it, they shared her opinion - but now!

petra

Believe me it’s very sad for us who sort the donations.
The beautiful embroidered table clothes and matching napkins. The same with very good bedding, too dated.
We can’t display cutlery sets because we can’t display knives.
It’s very sad.
Fortunately I’m a chuckerouter extraordinaire but even I have to be strong.

petra, forgive me if this is a stupid question, but
how can ‘good bedding’. be too dated?

when we cleared out a maiden aunt’s massive house
we found in a large mahogany chest of drawers, in a
wall cupboard, in cases under beds, cotton sheets
galore, Dorcas I rcall, some still in cellophane packs,
a real mystery.

We sent them to the local laundry, washed and pressed
(through a press) £1 each, 70+ of them, plain with lovely
edging, huge sheets, daughters still using them.

Where I live now in a small town with 6! charity shops
which I haunt, I have never once come across any lovely
old bedding, or new.

Anything we do not want we put onto Freecycle, as
people will take anything.

Monica said S*d decluttering to make life easier for the childern. Why on earth should we do that? We have just downsized and that has obviously included disposing of furniture and possessions. But we have done what we want in our way.

The last thing I am going to do is trim the last years of my life to meet the whims of my children. As long as they take away - and destroy all photos and private papers, they can then get in house clearers and leave it to them.

I go along with this. We downsized four years ago and got rid of loads of stuff, things which had moved house to house with us, but remained in boxes in the attic and a lot of paperwork. I also decluttered photos, the unknown misty mountains, wonky sea views, choosing the best of multiple copies and ditching the rest. I redistributed my offspring’s possessions to their own homes unless they didn’t want it. Book were winnowed out to those which would be read or consulted or had a sentimental meaning.

Funnily enough, one of my daughters went off bearing lots of our discarded things. She likes the lived-in look so has taken possession of her childhood bedroom furniture and kitchen goods I no longer have room for.

Our children like coming ‘home’ to us and I want our house to be a cosy, welcoming place for them, not somewhere that looks as though the last packing case is about to be nailed down and all character stripped from it.

My mother was a thrower-out of things, all my childhood toys & books were disposed of without me being told. I got home from school one day and they were gone! After my father died, all his clothes and so on were gone from the house by two days after the funeral. When she went into a care home 15mths ago, I sorted her small house out. I saved the books she wanted and the rest was condensed into five medium sized boxes. Some music CD’s, a few trinket ornaments, photos and family documents and a few pieces of art work. Even her clothes would all easily fit into a large suitcase! The rest was taken by house clearance.

Enjoy all the pretty things that you have acquired throughout your life.

Display them to your liking maybe if possible get someone to keep the precious things nice and clean - but if they are too much to cope with you can sell them or donate to a charity -so someone else can enjoy them.

Not everyone is obsessed with minimalism. It is just a boring fad.
As for making it easier for one’s offspring well as long as you’re not living in squalor they will cope.

It is difficult for those born post 1980s to understand why people would hoard broken down electrical stuff for decades, but these things were once prohibitively expensive for some and the “throwaway” society was only born because things became cheaper, much much cheaper.

It was the last time my siblings and I got together in my family home. It was a couple of days, a van, a car load here and there, dressed in our scruffs but there was laughter and reminiscing too.

knspol

eddiecat78

Today we took delivery of some replacement cushions for an IKEA chair. OH has insisted on boxing up the old cushions and putting them in the garage "in case we need them".
Give me strength!

This is me exactly!

😂 I’m a bit like this as well.
Thanks 4allweknow for the Men’s Shed tip.

eddiecat78

Today we took delivery of some replacement cushions for an IKEA chair. OH has insisted on boxing up the old cushions and putting them in the garage "in case we need them".
Give me strength!

This is me exactly!

nexus63

i have had the talk with my son, no funeral, no service, just a straight cremation, the house, take anything you want and then get a company to come in and clear it, plain, simple and no fuss.

This is exactly what my parents did, and it will be the same for me. It really doesn’t need to be a hassle.