We’re going through this right now.
The article is dead on and the comments at the end are great.
Me too.
Clearing out a 1776 farm house and items back to 1948 plus the farm stuff thats been here since day 1 .
Other sibs don’t want anything unless it will bring in a decent $$$ when they flip it.
Screw all that.
The auction guys coming with a truck,50/50 done deal.
Check divided by 4
Case closed
LOL! A lot of my older friends don’t understand this. Furniture, china, silver, etc., were the status and security items for their generation. Things have changed!
Don’t know.
My mom’s house is 100% authentic mid-century modern.
Spudnick chrome lamps.
Leather furniture with chrome legs.
1960s contemporary abstract wool rugs.
Several really nice Picasso lithographs (original, hand-signed ones — probably worth more than her house) and just a general great collection of original Cubist art.
I hated it as a kid.
It’s now so unhip, it’s become super cool again.
To be honest, I don’t want a lot of my stuff, either.
But when it comes to papers, I dislike the pain of sorting through, and figuring out what to keep, and what to throw away.
In some ways, I’m glad my mom kept stuff. She recently sent me a couple of newspaper clippings that had my different honor rolls and high school accomplishments. But on one of the was also was also the accomplishments of a friend who unfortunately passed away in her mid-20’s from cancer. It was a good reminder of those I have lost over the years.
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.
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
maybe this is a North American thing.
Even now in the UK, “he had to buy his own furniture” is still a sneering upper class putdown of a financially successful arriviste.
http://www.economist.com/node/7289005
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.
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.
AMEN!
I have 5 kids in their 50’s and they all have furniture of mine/of course they were antiques. A few I paid over 800 dollars for. OOPS one got rid of everything and sold his house, business and is living on a 54 foot sail boat in Florida...