Posted on 04/14/2016 12:27:24 PM PDT by metmom
Parents of grown children, please sit down. I have some harsh news for you. Your kids don't want your stuff. Don't take it personally. It's not that they don't love you. They don't love your furniture.
The china hutch, the collectible figurines, your antique map or thimble collection, the sideboard, all those family treasures may hold many precious moments for you, but for your kids, not so much.
Ouch. Yes, I know you think you're being generous. Yes, I know you paid good money for these things. Yes, I know kids can seem unappreciative. Yes, I know it was part of your family's history. And, yes, I know it still contains some useful life. I also know that deep down, you believe your kids will change their minds.
That is pure fantasy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
I laughed out loud when the author referenced the 12-foot mahogony table. What must something like that even weigh?
I had to del with my MIL’s house. I had a burn barrel and it burned 24/7 for several weeks. I have the good stuff in a20X20 storeroom for the SILs, I want none of it.
I went home after that and purged my house and storeroom, I kept some family history but I pared it way down. I kept my antique glass for me, the Indian artifacts for the boys and some things that can be turned into cash immediately if need be.
We have thrift shop that helps the poor and I took a whole pick-up load and they were ecstatic.
But I've already told him they are going to be sold and the money invested in his granddaughter's trust fund. He is OK with that and I even have a standing offer from a movie prop supplier my BIL hooked me up with (He works in costuming in the movie industry and has screen credits on movies like John Adams and The Mockingjay (Hunger Games) he is the one that informed me of their value.
Well I’ve been told that dining rooms are passé...
When my daughter & her husband moved into a house with a great room “concept” her dad offered MY dining room furniture to them (early 90s scrubbed pine Sears Open home collection). Fortunately she politely declined...but my DH is still fighting a war against both dining rooms, the furniture made for said rooms and dishware (NOTE: not “China”) that is stored in such furniture.
They are going to carry me OUT (when my time comes) on MY dining room table.
We won’t even discuss his opinion of my Longaberger baskets...
Tastes, styles, change. If things go bad...the heavy dark woods of “early American” will come back in favor for their ruggedness. It’s all circular.
Once my kids move out, my goal is to get rid of as much stuff as I can and downsize. In my line of work I can work from anywhere and I plan on “Going Mobile” like The Who song.
As I observed in a later post, one of my mother’s friends wanted to give me a table and 12 chairs. I’d love to have it, but aside from the Florida-to-North Carolina transport cost, I don’t have a room in my house that’s big enough for it.
I got rid of a lot of my stuff when my 2 granddaughters left for college and moved into different houses. I told them not to bring anything back when they are done with it give it away or sell it.
unfortunately I think your post is very insightful....
It's also sad.
bump
I have told my parents that I do not want/need an inheritance. It is their money/assets, they earned them. I did not. I told them they should enjoy life and not be trying to put money away for me. It is ridiculous and entitled to me, for children to expect their parents to subsidize their lives.
I tossed all scenery pictures, those that were blurry or you really couldn’t see the people. I kept the professional-type pictures and the 100 odd year old pictures. I have the snapshots still and will some day go through them and toss a bunch and scan the rest and then toss them.
I know
I think a lot of this really goes to the libertarian/conservative divide. Sometimes (often) we all see eye to eye.
But eventually...there is a BIG difference between conservatives and libertarians.
It's not just in the UK. I've heard that comment in this country.
Yup. People who already have a life established don’t tend to have the room for somebody else’s stuff. My grandmother had some amazing stuff (great classic metal survived the war and will survive the next one desk, china cabinet, oct-table) when she died, but we had no room, some of the family got some stuff but for the most part it went to charities. I’d have loved to have taken it all but then I’d have had to get rid of my stuff.
And then there’s the stuff that really defines the person, she loved animal picture, her office was festooned in them, posters, paintings, stuff clipped out of magazines, it was kind of creepy actually. The stuff that might actually be saleable for a couple bucks went to charity, all the rest went into the trash. None of us were animal picture obsessed. Chucking those was hard, it felt like throwing her out, but it was that or tuck them into a box to gather dust for the next decade, nobody was going to hang them.
Good points, I don’t expect my kids to want to keep everything, but there are just a few very old family pictures and memorabilia, not furniture, that I hope someone will keep. There’s always someone in the family that is a history buff that will want them.
I may need his number.
We never had pets in the house and it was well done (mom was an architect), so it looks new.
We're going through that now. Trying to clear out our clutter. A few years ago it took us a couple years to clear the clutter from my wife's mom's house, mom was a packrat. Mostly useless trash. So as seniors we're finally getting around to clearing out our "junk", before we die so our adult kids won't suffer. Just sold off a bunch of stuff at a flea market last week, been getting rid of stuff for the last year. Stuff that hasn't seen the light of day for 25 years.
Keep the family pictures.
See if any of the grandkids/nieces/nephews/cousins needs/wants anything else. Ditto church or local charity. We donated a bunch of my grandmother’s stuff that wasn’t family heirloom to a local church charity store.
We basically set everything out sort of sorted in boxes on the floor and called in the extended family to see if there was any memento they wanted or could use. Stuff like towels, sheets, dishcloths, cookware, silverware, etc. Most of that sort of stuff was snatched up by great nephews who were on their way to college the next year.
Then we called in church members and neighbors and close friends.
Everything else went to the church bazaar store.
I got the duncan dining room set, my kid brother got the 4 piece bedroom set, my cousins got other furniture sets. Stuff we needed at the time. I ended up with all the cast iron cookware. Not sure what I did good in a past life to deserve that, I use it every single day. I also managed to get the saladmaster stainless cookware, I’m pretty sure only because my cousins didn’t know exactly what that was.
But don’t throw out the pictures. They are family history that once gone will be lost forever. And you’ll be depriving future generations of that stuff. Especially if any of them are generational in nature (grandmother, great grandmother, wedding photos, baby pictures, etc especially if they’ve got handwritten notation on the back). Everything else you listed isn’t an ‘heirloom’. Sell, give, donate, etc that stuff. Save the pictures.
I think many of them keep ties to their heritage and traditions, but you need to make sure those ties aren’t an albatross. Some of the stuff we’ve gotten rid of when relatives died had been in the family for generations, but it meant nothing to us. It was bought by relatives we’d never met, to fill some purpose we never had, and had had plants on it as long as we could remember. It was part of grandmas house, with no real room or use for it in ours. The things I chose to keep as part of that connection could all fit in a shopping bag, tchotchkes I had interacted with, things that had meaning to me BEYOND merely being stuff in grandmas house.
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