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 ...
/sarcasm, unless they really pi$$ me off. Don't have a reverse mortgage now, but I turn 62 shortly.
Well, Shakespeare said ‘brevity is the soul of wit’!
Our best piece is a massive corner solid walnut china cabinet that my MIL found in a barn. It was being used for roosting chickens. She spent a year getting it ready to move into her house.
We do have some type of fireplace something that is supposedly brass(painted black now) and was supposedly a piece from Polar Forest(Jefferson’s summer home http://www.poplarforest.org/) but those things are hard to verify.
Mine did too and those we’re keeping but all the utility bills from 30 years ago that were in storage and they paid a storage unit fee to keep?
I’ve spent weeks of my life clearing things out and throwing out dozens of bags of trash.
After we’re done settling her estate, I’m going through my stuff. I will NOT inflict that on my kids.
Exactly!
Maybe I'm weird. I go to estate sales, partly hoping to find something really special, but just as much to develop a sense of the person who lived there.
The article is about kids that don’t want their parents stuff, not parents that don’t want them to have it.
” Don’t have a reverse mortgage now”
Don’t do it. It’s a bad gimmick.
Photos and good stuff are stored different from their papers for a reason. I will throw it all away, it does not apply to me.
Yep. Same here. My dad passed in '13 and we just laid my mom to rest last week. My 45-year old younger brother had been caring for my mom since my dad passed as I live out of state. What to do with all of her stuff?
My mom was bi-polar and during her manic phases, she loved to buy things. Lots of things. We have boxes of DVDs, many still in the wrapper. CDs, lamps, furniture, art supplies, endless knickknacks. She collected everything under the sun. Who my mom learned her toddler grandson liked "Thomas the Tank Engine" she went out snd spent thousands on HO-scale electric trains that nobody wants. This is the type of stuff we're dealing with.
The hardest are the photographs, particularly framed family photos. We don't really want to take them but we don't feel right throwing them out either. My brother put his foot down about it though. Either take it or he's tossing it. We all grew up in clutter in a home packed floor to ceiling with stuff and none of us want to relive this.
I thought your comment was to donate all your children’s inheritance to the animal rescue.
Oh, they're status oriented all right. For many, though, status is signified by always having the latest electronic gadget. Which becomes obsolete in a year or less ... and nobody will want in 5 years or less.
And just for a grounding in reality to all: They're your kids. You raised 'em.
Kids don’t want stuff because they don’t have a house, they live in your basement.
This scenario depends on quite a bit
It’s not one size fits all
I’ve closed out in my lifetime two grandparents and a vacation home and both parents and my wife’s dad
My mom had very valuable stuff and all of it is in my home or warehouse I own
The vacation home sold with contents
One grandmother all liquidated except photos and guns
The other again nice stuff and split between 5 kids and 17 grandkids
Father in law...we kept photos and his medals
So it really depends
I find such comments shocking. What on earth is so compelling about the suburbs that they'd pay $600k (if they could) for a house there? Can't they find a suburb where housing is cheaper? Obviously the DO live in 700sf by choice, it's just not a smart choice.
Oh, I well know it. And it’s been further stoked by growing up in the “internet” age, where everything has been transmitted to them technologically. They generally don’t identify with owning or possessing ‘artifacts’ or collectibles.
It goes along with the increasing ‘disconnect’ towards all sorts of other things, even things like understanding and valuing our national heritage, or things like the Constitution or rule of law. It’s actually a broader and more disconcerting phenomenon than just children not wanting their pop’s coin collection.
It’s all too true. What families used to pass down because the memories were precious now are tossed aside as if life happens in a vacuum
We have a vase that she bought at 16 with her first paycheck! And even just a few days before she was dieing she could remember everything - so we would bring something out and she would tell stories to her kids and grandkids. We were very fortunate. My Dad was always buying silver stuff for her for presents, so she had all sorts of silver services, platters, etc. Nobody wanted to keep that stuff. I think we all grabbed a platter as a keepsake and sold the rest. I'm guessing all those treasures got melted down for the silver. Mom was okay with that. "Oh it is real nice stuff - but nobody uses silver anymore. It's too much work!"
And her old furniture looked like new! (I have had the desk she bought my dad as a house-warming present for their first home in 1941 for about 20 years now). Sadly - it doesn't look so new anymore.
She had a shiny black makeup desk with matching small tables and a embroidered bench. My one daughter loved it - but where to keep it for the next 10 years when she has a place to put it!?
She did get the large embroidered chair. My grandmother did the embroidering - I'm guessing that would have been from the 30’s.
I get the feeling the author did not come from a tight knit family.
I love all the things that we have inherited from our parents but the photos are driving me nuts. I am not someone who enjoys putting together albums and now my family photos are mixed up with his family photos and our photos are in there too. It is a nightmare!
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