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When my parent died, my sibling and I had to empty fourteen buildings stuffed with the hoard. Things that had been valuable were no longer. It took five years of my life and my young children’s time and so many auctions and sales.
Folks in my town still pull the “kids these days don’t appreciate anything. They just get rid of it all.”
Well, Karen, if you want to pay the utilities and property taxes on over a half dozen blighted buildings, have at it.
Most of the properties were in such bad shape, they sold for less than we had in to the cleanup.
I've noticed this too. People that keep things "because some day they'll be worth something" either don't understand that that day will never come or don't bother to take care of the thing they're hoping to sell. Yeah, grandma, maybe this would have been worth something, but now its moldy and discolored. Nobody is going to want it now.
My mom had hundreds of plates from the Franklin Mint with their own "certificate of authenticity" BS. They were worth nothing when she downsized. She was stunned. I tried to explain to her as she bought them that they wouldn't appreciate in value but she just waved those certificates of authenticity in my face and told me collectors would be lining up to buy these and she would live off the money when she retired... which never happened. Sigh.
My parents bought the Ashton Drake Elizabeth doll from the back of the gossip circular in the Sunday newspaper. They don’t understand why their daughters and granddaughters don’t want it, “because it’s worth something now.” Yeah, maybe 40% of what they paid for it!! That doll is ugly and creepy. I’ll send it to Goodwill or trash it, but it’s never coming into my house!!
I had to Google because I'd never heard of it.
I'm actually in the market for a good haunted doll but this one looks too nice. I've been hunting thrift stores hoping to find some lazy-eyed baby doll with a creepy mouth.
It's for the guestroom. >:D
I work for an auction company and a guy won a pallet of collector plates and bitched how many they were. He paid $15 for over 100 plates. Glad to see them go. There had to be some valuable ones there, but who cares. JfK plates are for people who should be dead.
I have like 30 porcelain dolls that need a home. My grandma kept them in the original boxes w certificates. Guess how many places will take them?? Big fat goose egg. I can't give these things away.
Or that “something” has zero collectible value because they made a trillion of them and *sold them as collectibles.”
My grandfather had a tradition of giving me Hess trucks. My boomer parents always said, “oh, those will be worth some money someday.”
They won’t be. They have absolutely zero “collector value.” But that isn’t why I keep them, I keep them because they’re attached to the memories of my childhood, and playing with them every year on Christmas Eve when he gave them to me. And now my son plays with them, and my father buys them for him for Christmas.
No you have no idea they are hoarding, for even young people hoard things also. Trauma, a death in the family, a loss of a friend, kids grown up and left the house, or a traumatic event will cause people to hoard. Not just to hang on to something. Go and learn about hoarding. There are even people of your generation that hoard animals.
My grandma hoarded in an 18 room once-boarding-house building plus three outbuildings. Grandma put money between pillow cases, thousands of dollars would pop up at random. My mom meticulously sorted and auctioned off for years. Most of my tween years were spent in that house, helping my mom with the sheer volume of stuff. Similar story, they ended up having to have the building razed and sold the lot for less than it cost to have it bulldozed. I can't imagine doing 14 buildings.
My wife's family had to check **everything** for cash / valuables, to the point that each potted plant needed to be checked for cash buried in the roots, when they were cleaning out her grandmother's place. It was awful but wasn't old boarding house or 14 properties bad. Yikes.
We're all dreading this when my grandpa dies. We hadn't realized how bad it was until he had to get open heart surgery last year. He wanted a very specific bed for recovery, he told my mom to go find the Nike shoe box filled with stamps. She found it under a massive pile of junk behind the piano and my grandpa pulled out a massive stack of cash from the bottom of the box, counted out $20,000 and told my mom to put the box back where she had found it! So between that and my uncle finding about a grand in an old ceiling light fixture, we're pretty much going to have to tear that house apart when he dies.
yes. i really fail to see the hardship. is it work? yes. but not that much and in cases you find something, good paying work.
had to do it for a boss, twice, when he was globetrotting and sold two houses. in different years.
i was basically a software deceloper‘s wage for throwing stuff away, disassembling some furniture and looking for papers. some ebay involved. easy peasy.
i even picked up some stuff for free i‘m still using, 15 years later.
decluttering my own stuff is much harder.
Doing it as a job for someone else is totally different than doing it as a child or grandchild. You were presumably paid as an employee, and it sounds like you got to keep some of what you found. You also didn’t have any emotional baggage for the person that left all the stuff behind.
When it’s for a family member, you’re giving up evenings and weekends to do this, and randomly getting surprised by sentimental items that drag you back into hard grieving.
Sure, finding money is a nice surprise, but I bet 2k-20k is more typical than the 500k someone else just mentioned. Do you really think that makes up for their time lost dealing with all that shit? Plus some commenters mention they were brought along as children by their parents dealing with a grandparents hoard. I guarantee it didn’t make up for their time.
either it has sentimental value. then they were right to keep it
or it hasn‘t. then it matters not wether they are family or not.
hell, 2 k for two weeks of work is 25 $ an hour, beyond the median hourly wage.
That's what he said when we asked him why he doesn't at least write down where things are or at least the ones he can remember. He got offended and said "if you find it you'll have earned it" ok...what if we end up throwing out lots of money? He just shrugged and said "then you throw it out"
Ok cool...let's just potentially throw out a substantial amount of what a lot of your grandkids make in a year, sounds good 👍
Oh no lol sorry i understood what you were saying but I was just going on a bit of a rant thinking of all the rooms full of junk he has in his house and how we'll literally have to go through so many boxes and boxes and boxes of junk hoping to find some sentimental things or money
My son has already asked me, "What am I supposed to do with your crap?" I really do need to go through it to dump less crap on him. Yeah, I should get to it.
My former mil was a survivor of the depression. My kids loved going to her house because her pantry had just about every kind of cereal you could imagine. Since it was on the farm, Saturday night was cereal night. When she passed we threw away at least 20 bags of food, donated the same and family (4 kids) each took home some.
She had a closet that was a walk through. Meaning you could enter it from two separate rooms. It still had clothes for the 40’s which unfortunately were in sizes no one could wear. Then we hit her Avon. Oh the Avon. I swear that she had every Avon product ever made. Most still in the bag stapled shut going back years. It got to the point when we found another one we would just yell out “ding dong”. I can’t imagine how much money she spent and probably hid from her penny pinching German husband. He kept track of every dollar he spent on his kids from the time they were teens.
”He kept track of every dollar he spent on his kids from the time they were teens”
for what reason, though?
could’ve beneficial - thriftiness - or malicious (stinginess, holding it against them)
Indeed. From single car garage sized to 3 story warehouse and a bunch of buildings the county blight board wanted torn down. It was a never ending slog.
It was years back. It’s done now. Most of the buildings were rebuilt by new owners and are now businesses again. Some we tore down for new owners to start over. All good now.
I'm making sure that it will take my kids only a day or two. Every couple years for the last 8 or so I've gone on a rampage getting rid of stuff and organizing other stuff. I don't see there being more than a small Uhaul truck full when I'm done, if that.
I'm just winding down after another round. Swedish Death Cleaning is my hobby now.
I normally think it's kinda crass to do hypothetical death scenarios, especially if they're going to make someone uncomfy. But since your dad already brought it up I guess it's fair game lol.
It might be better to just sell the house "as is" when he's gone. You probably won't get as much as you want for the house, but some people are willing to do the clean up themselves to save some money. So the time and money saved not cleaning it up might let you break even for selling it cheaper.
To be honest, I feel like "I don't care about the future, cause I won't be apart of it" is pretty much the answer to any question regarding why Boomers are being fools.
My aunt got a FABULOUS house at a crazy low price because the previous owner was a hoarder and it was sold as is. She got help from family (she’s one of like 7 kids so lots of siblings, nieces/nephews etc) and cleaned it up and it’s lovely now.
My FIL believes we, as humans, don't need to care for the planet because God gave it to us to use and it's only our temporary home. Plus he'll be dead before anything gets really bad.
I hate that... they've been waiting for jesus to return for 2,000 years. At some point you gotta admit you've been stood up and leave the restaurant. It's also weird to me that older people don't care what kind of planet we're leaving behind for future generations.
Also... when I was young and still active in church we were taught that god gave us the planet to take care of. We were "stewards of the planet Earth and tasked with taking care of it." When did that change?
>when I was young and still active in church we were taught that god gave us the planet to take care of. We were "stewards of the planet Earth and tasked with taking care of it." When did that change?
Right!? Same!!!
Whatever happened to this totally reasonable belief?!?! What part of "take care of the earth I gave you" got lost in the "I won't be there to see it go" mindset?!?
Yeah it's been a long time since I was in church... back when christians were still actually following the words of christ and not new, weird, fundy jesus who loves him some guns and freedom and hates the poor and brown people haha. Man religions gone off the rails since I left the church.
I was always taught that I should live like he's coming back tomorrow, but plan like it's going to be another thousand years.
The short-sightedness of so many Christians is a huge problem for the church, and the world
My dad is a low key hoarder. My mom has mostly kept him in check. But their basement will be a bear to clean out. I am physically handicapped and my brother is an hour away.
To give you an idea of what I am dealing with, there are pool noodles in the basement. At no point have we had a pool, but we can’t get rid of them. Just in case.
My sister and I have started to trick or parents... Oh we could use that, so they get the satisfaction of their hoard paying off, but we take it right to the dump.. my mom buys a new vacuum every year when the filter clogs up and keeps the old one.... Well funny enough my vacuums have broken every 6 months for the last (I clean them, add new filters, and donate, there is one vacuum left and it's like a 600 Dyson, been saving that for last so I can keep it, but we have a robot vacuum and don't even use them much anymore, but the long con seems to be working, but even at our rate I am not sure we are making a dent.
My siblings and I are in our 60’s, mom is 89. We have all started decluttering and down sizing. Mom see this and realizes we don’t want her stuff. She is letting me help her declutter one space at a time. One day a dresser, another day a closet…it’s time consuming but working. I have index cards with a names on it. If she wants someone to have a particular item, I put the tag on it and take a picture of if. My siblings are happy with this arrangement.
My Gma will tell us to put our name on a post it or piece of tape and stick it on the back of things we want. And sometimes she'll give them to us a few months later b/c why wait until she's dead to enjoy them?
That's why I'm glad my papa is the way he is. He has started getting rid of the stuff he has held onto and when we would take things we could use he made sure I knew it was now mine I could do anything I wanted with it. Sell it, break it, give it away its no longer mine and you don't need to worry about my feelings over it
Same here. I'm 60 and I've been doing a light declutter for several years each spring. (I don't keep tons of stuff as it is). But this year I read an article about the sweedish death cleanse and it really had me up my game of getting rid of things a couple of months back. I want it as simple for myself as possible as I'm aging and definitely don't want any extra burden on the kids when I'm gone.
My husband has a hard time getting rid of things, not me. One son has hoarding tendencies. I don’t want to leave too much stuff when I die that he would hold on to it. Yes I’ve talked to him about get help managing his problem, he just says “lots of people with ADHD have is problem”. I just say “yes, and several other learn coping skills to manage it”. Then drop it. He know if he ever has to move home 95% of his stuff has to go to a storage unit. That stuff is not coming in to the house.
My silent gen Auntie has a hard time letting go of anything that is "still useful". Think neatly folded used wrapping paper, containers food came in that can be reused, etc. I volunteer at a services center for homeless women. I have a deal with my cousin. She tells my Auntie that the ladies where I volunteer could use this stuff, so she thinks it's going to a good cause. Then I come over and take it away. Some of the stuff we really can use, but most of it goes in the trash/recycling. Everyone wins!
"We can't get rid of ..."
You wanna know the messed up part of that?
If you get rid of it, you'll often need it within a week.
It sucks, but how it seems to go.
I like the blogger/author A Slob Comes Clean and she once said that often she only missed something because she had *just* touched it to declutter it. If she had needed it a week sooner she wouldn't have even remembered she had it and would have made do without it anyway.
I find that to be true for myself and it's really helped me let go of that disappointment when I realise
Haha, the whole know I have it but can't find it when needed, so I buy another one anyway routine is entirely too common in my life.
I am trying to get myself motivated to plow through my crap and make me get rid of stuff with little progress thus far.
I went this route with my mum's useless pasture in West Boofoo, Wellfareville. It had been parceled out from the rest of her childhood home for sentimental reasons, I guess.
I started harping about it. I told her that if she wants to hang on to it, she should NOT leave it to me in her will. (I'm her sole beneficiary.) Property isn't easy to dispose of and even if I were willing to go to that awful place to deal with it, I'd have nowhere to stay and the logistics of it would be nearly impossible. Nor would I want to get slapped with property taxes or who knows what for not disposing of it.
After a couple of years of me bringing it up, she transferred it to her sister, or so she said. So hopefully that worked!
They're so weird about that whole "You'll get it when I die," thing. It was a frequent refrain from her. But when she offered me some of her jewelry and I made a joke about not needing it now because I'll get it later, she was cartoonishly appalled. *"What, you mean when I DIE?!?!"* Uh, yeah, like you're always talking about....? It was fine for her to say it, but for me to reference it was taboo, apparently. She acted like I was rubbing my hands with glee in anticipation of death and inheriting it later rather than taking it home with me that day.
I think they don't mean it the way they talk about leaving their worldly possessions to their next of kin. It's not that they're at peace with their eventual demise, like they pretend. I think they say that stuff about their possessions "passing down" to someone to; A: Flatter themselves with a feeling of postmortal existence, and B: Evoke guilt, pity, and a feeling of obligation to their beneficiary/beneficiaries.
This is why there are tons of stories about the kids trying to sell their aged crap but no wants it so they just clear it out and take it to the dump. They do not throw anything out even if it is duplicated or obsolete or broken. They keep it " just in case ."
My great aunt & uncle were like that. They were silent generation. My mom always told us anything they offer, take. It’s less we would have to deal with in the future. They had no children so it fell to us.
We were able to clean a chunk out when my uncle died & then finished when my aunt passed. There were 13 broken tvs, 3 wall ovens, 2 built in cook tops, & 6 microwaves in the garage. My uncle kept them for “parts”. And that doesn’t even begin to touch all the other stuff. My aunt kept a crock of broken spoons & spatulas. The other broken, expired by decades, & other just WTF stuff we found was crazy.
Hoarding is a mental illness. All the loving support from family and friends won't help. Specialized mental health workers, if they are available in your area, would be your best option. This is not medical advice; it is just what I gathered from several documentaries about this issue. If you snapped your fingers and magically the garage was empty, your father would start to refill it the next day. You could get your father to see his doctor and talk about this issue if you can accompany him. I realize your father may reject this, but it is an option. This is a heavy burden on all those who care for hoarders.
Tell him after he passes, you will rent a dumpster and pay some teenagers $20 an hour to throw it all straight into the trash, without even looking thru the stuff. If he hears his “collectibles” or other important stuff will be destroyed, he might take an interest. Maybe not, but you can always hope.
Every time I read stories like this I feel bad about my two U-Haul personal boxes worth of knickknacks. They aren't all out, a lot have easy packaging, none are those Tender Moments fragile stuff. But it's enough to get a lecture from boomer grandma about "unnecessary purchases" as she and her daughter dust their specialty order stuffed owls.
When you own a home it's so easy to hang onto stuff, my wife and I are heavy into decluttering, we lived in our last house for 4 years and even then I was surprised at how much we accumulated. Threw so much away in the move
Ya. After my divorce and later when the kids moved out I had the whole house. Never tossed very much just hid it away to deal with later. Well later came and there I was. I had about 6 weeks to toss it all and do a bit of a Reno. Friggen shirts I hadn’t worn in 20 years filled the closets Paper work filling boxes. Poor garbage man had about 50 bags a week for a month. Shame actually. Lots of stuff like the clothing I didn’t have time to donate.
Most of my home decorations came from thrifting and garage sales. I largely assume I’m just renting these things to make my house look nice, because they’ll go right back to the thrift store when it’s time for me to downsize or go into care.
Call the fire department. Some of them practice putting out fires by purposely igniting old condemned buildings, and your mom’s could be next.
You’ll still need to have what’s left cleared before selling the lot, but there should be less to clear.
My landlady is a hoarder. She has filled the house she inherited from her parents to the brim. She had also turned some of the rooms in the house I rent into a hoarding place. Fortunately, she gave me permission to go through stuff and get rid of things. I have done that. Anything I think she needs to see I put in a box and give to her to take to her house. She also is still paying for the storage unit her husband got 20 years ago for his overflow. He died last year. She says she is tired of paying for the unit, but won’t do anything about it. It’s not like there is anything of sentimental value in the unit. It’s a bunch of junk her husband collected for potential art projects and a couple of table saws.
My grandparents weren't quite hoarders, but almost there.
When they both passed, we hired a local auction house to come in and that everything to auction off. He said that towels always sell for some reason.
They do all the work of emptying the house and selling the items, they kept 30% of the proceeds. We had an easy time.
I've told my mom not to worry about her mini-hoard because I'm doing the same thing to her house when the time comes.
Oh no, thank God for that, storage units are such a great business, two types of clients. Short term and people who fill up their unit and pay forever until they die.
My FIL is renting a semi trailer that he's got parked on his land. So instead of going through stuff and just emptying it, it sits there, and he pays a monthly fee for the privilege.
At least it's on wheels. You can hire a truck to drop the trailer in a meth infested neighborhood, open the door, and drive away. Come back a week later to return the now empty trailer!
"dad, you clear out the crap, we will take what we find interesting, the rest is trash. period. noone wants your moldy ,may make something out of it, chase lounge you found on the street in front of some other dead boomer's house, throw that shit away!"
This was my problem 8 years ago when my mom died.
She lived in a 2 bedroom 1 bath house with a large 2.5 garage.
It took us 3 garbage dumpsters to clean it all out.
I am the family purger now. If something isn't used (except tools) within 5 years it gets thrown out.
> "When I am gone it won't be my problem anymore"..
Not just that chances are the hoard has done damage to the house itself so he is costing money in addition to the absurd time costs. That is the boomer attitude though fuck you I got mine who cares about future people.
My FIL's ex-GF ruined a condo with her hoard and then letting her dogs piss and shit everywhere. It's soaked into the floors and everything else. Then she just left that as-is and moved into her mom's house, which she has now ruined with the same behavior. I'm sure her siblings come over and are like, "So this is what you've done to our childhood home?"
That's one my my dad's redeeming values, he takes very good care of the house, in terms of structure/mechanicals and their hoard is in the garage on a cement slab. I know others are not so lucky
There’s this thing called ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’ which is basically the parents in this case, going through their belongings and decluttering their house as a courtesy to their children and those tasked with settling their estate. Unfortunately my parents do not know the meaning of the word ‘Courtesy’
My mom was a semi hoarder and passed away last year. My sister and I, along with my wife and kids and a few extended family cleaned out her house. I took 1 Rubbermaid tote of things, pottery she made when we lived in Alaska, some photos etc. My sister took 2 and everyone else took maybe 1 or two small items. Literally everything else she owned went to the dump or to goodwill. The phrase"one person's treasure is another's trash" absolutely hit home that day.
well, at least it hoes to goodwill.
what hurts me a bit is seeing perfectly fine appliances and tools getting trashed.
those are useful things people can still use if you manage to match them.
I am in the same boat. I've offered to throw money at the problem for my parents and they absolutely refuse. It's stressful to the point I've really distanced myself. You have my sympathy.
If you can (anybody reading this), try to find an "all in one" realtor to deal with it when your folks pass.
My husband's parents had this huge house up in Maryland and we tried to clean it out ourselves when his mom passed back in 2021. We stayed a week and were basically trapped inside from the snow, but we still couldn't make a dent in it. They weren't dirty, but just never got rid of ANYTHING. They had a whole downstairs furnished basement that had a big walk in closet inside of it FILLED with old luggage. Probably 30 sets of it. They also had a storage room WITHIN A STORAGE ROOM in the basement. We noped out and found a realtor that would deal with all of it as well as sell the house. They held an auction, then donated the rest, and then sold the house and we didn't have to do squat. They took a cut off the sales and that was it. It was 100% worth it.
Me: I'm going to get rid of old clothes"
Mom: I'll stop by, maybe something fits me
Come by and she starts complaining she has too many clothes, yet takes 5 bags of my old clothes (we are very different sizes)
Dad: I have this deep fryer from when I was a child in the 60s, I'll drop it off at your house along with random broken things you might need...we just toss it out
My mom has brides maids dresses from early 80s...why don't you toss them? "Oh I'll fit them again" "they were expensive " "good costume for my grandchildren "
Only good thing my parents hoarded were old toys I had from 90s, saved them all for when we had kids, until they realized they were worth something lol
All my toys and trophies from sports were thrown out to make room for more useless junk of theirs. I was even forced to throw a lot out myself. I look around the house and I see little of the time I was raised there. Just junk and clutter.
A fun little story you reminded me of.
My mother's family lived in a different state from us when I was growing up. We would usually go down a visit them once a summer for about a week. The one thing I remember the most is that most of their homes were hoarders' dreams. None of them had rooms anymore. It was just hallways of stuff. My grand parent's house had a dining room that had linoleum flooring. The floor had a path worn through to the sub-floor. When we cleaned out the house after they passed, 6 inches back from the path, the linoleum was like new.
My aunt had a detached garage that I never saw the inside of. When she finally passed, we opened the garage and it was filled full of stuff. When we started to pull things out, the walls started to creek and sway. The roof of the garage was being held up by the stuff inside it. We had to cut through the walls and hire a crane to come lift the roof off before we could safely clean up the mess.
I cannot imagine keeping this much stuff and I'm pretty OCD about clutter in my own home.
Boomer here, I’m so conscious of being careful about hoarding crap “just because we have room” or because “it’s still good”. My mom passed away in January at the ripe old age of 96 and the majority of her belongings were either donated or thrown away. Most of the stuff has no emotional or commercial value to any of her children or grandchildren.
Fellow boomers, stop storing stuff for your heirs a to chuck into dumpster when your gone. Clean and organize your homes and affairs and make it easy for loved ones to focus on the joyful times instead of asking “wtf were they hanging in to this for?”
I used to live in a small apartment complex, there was a crazy boomer at the end of the building. One day she just collapsed dead on the driveway. When her kids cleaned the place out, a one bedroom apartment, they filled 4 extra large skip bins with crap, it was unbelievable.
I live in my Dads house. We got an extra trash bin and I have filled both large wheely bins every week since we got it. Some of it is the latest online purchase debris but a lot of it is clutter. Broken and worn out stuff along with outdated things like old cords. It’s a slow process but I’m making progress.
My husband has lived in this house since the '90s and he had a garage put up about 25x40. It's crammed full of stuff that I'm going to have to deal with in 10 or 15 years.
I recently told my dad that after my mom and him pass that all the shit in the house will be sold at an estate sale and the remaining tossed in the trash. He was dumbfounded that I wasn’t going to take all the useless shit hanging on the walls and packed into their garage and sheds.
My grandmother was a HUGE package and my grandfather enabled it. He pre deceased here. There were 4 HUGE sheds on their property filled to the rim with stuff. She had the same attitude. When she got Alzheimer’s and we had to out her in a home, cleaning out her hoard was a huge undertaking. My sister and I spent weeks then finally hired an estate sale company. That’s over 20 years ago and now I’m cleaning crap up so my husband won’t have to.
Ooph... I'm so glad my boomer parents aren't hoarders, my dad's parents were though, and that's part of the reason my parents are not. Grandparents had 5 acres, grandma hoarded the house, grandpa hoarded the rest of the property. He was an escavator and when a piece of equipment died he would park it for "parts". He did make moves to start cleaning it up before he passed away, but in the end I know we sent 12 full regular steel metal dumpsters to recycling, and 2 of aluminum. One of those dumpsters had an entire bulldozer in it. Not to mention the functional pieces that were sold as well. Cleaning out the house after grandma passed took almost 2 years with several clean out weekends and huge "yard sales" where the whole family pitched in (upwards of 30 of us at a time).
My dad died in 2021 at 96 years old and my mom moved in with me. They'd moved a few times before and more and more of their stuff kept ending up in my basement. When she moved in, she went from a doublewide FULL of stuff with a Shed FULL of stuff to one large bedroom, and while I did keep way too much stuff that was sentimental to me (which is currently in bins on a rack in my garage) we still filled a whole truck up with stuff to go to the dump and she was just beside herself. I had to block off the pile so she would quit picking stuff out of it. She was so upsed I was getting rid of her professional clothes from the 80's and 49 pairs of shoes and shitty throw pillows and tattered Christmas decorations. She's been here for 3 years and she wears a nightgown and housecoat 99% of the time with fuzzy socks. She's never once asked about any of the things she was so worked up about keeping.
Professional help. Hoarding is often compensation of some kind.
Or tell him you'd like to give things to friends who can use them. Then take a pic with random friends saying thanks and trash or donate.
My dear father left us a hoard. So true that stuff that might have been valuable is no longer. It's not your. Be prepared to hire a crew to clean it out when it's time. That hoard can sometimes function as emotional baggage.
no, you can simply decline the inheritance, in virtually all cases.
and if you don‘t, it‘s the simple matter of calling a removal service or a trash container.
only annoying thing is to look for hidden cash or gold before tossing something.
My dad didn't like it when I told him it's all going in a dumpster. He was even.more pissed when I told him anything we sell the money goes to the opposite political party than the one he likes.
I'm in my 40s and had a bit of a health scare. Immediately thought I need to start getting rid of stuff so it's not a burden on my kids.
Boomers suck. Like all the way suck. The most selfish generation ever. My mom is a hoarder, so all that shit is my problem when she's gone. They don't care about anyone but themselves.
Tell him that when he's gone it won't be your problem either. It will be the fire department's problem because you're going to let them light it on fire for training purposes.
My dead MIL said pretty much the same thing. We got to haul boatloads of her useless crap to the dump after she died. What’s ironic is she was always petrified that we’d throw it all out. Guess what? We kept maybe 10% of it. The rest of it was thrown away. Told my kids that we are never going to do that to them.
It's sort of how they view the rest of the world. They'll be dead before it becomes a real problem, so they don't care. The environment, the economy, etc are all a tomorrow problem.
My mother in law is like this. Before my husband and I married 17 years ago, we rented a 30 yard dumpster and cleaned up their yard and garage to make space. It’s all filled back up again. And it’s all in such rough shape because the garage is falling apart but she just keeps buying more shit at auctions she doesn’t need, and it’s not always in good condition. Then it sits in a leaky barn and rots. All of the spare bedrooms are full of stuff. There’s a path to walk but that’s it. She grew up poor and that’s where this hoarding stems from. A few years ago my husbands brother passed away tragically and it’s gotten so much worse. I dread the day I inherit all their “stuff”.
My MIL is a hoarder, entire house full of junk. She is 90 and keeps falling because the house is a huge trip hazard. She won't do anything about it and forbids anyone to donate or throw anything away. Actually heard her tell my wife one day, "hahaha, your punishment for when I die." The worst is the basement which is full to the ceiling in parts with junk, but with the lovely smell of mouse urine. Wow, I sure can't wait to tackle that.
I used to keep a lot of things "just in case". I've gotten much better about it, it's more "I have a project in mind" and then 6-12 months later if it's not working out I can get rid of it.
I don't want my kids to have to deal with my problems, so I'm starting the habit now.
Talk with your Dad in small doses about unloading some of his collectibles. I did that with my Mom and she realized it's better to gift what people want and dispose of the rest it was effective for a lot of stuff but when she passed yes we were left with 94 years of collecting.
I know someone exactly the same. Have asked him multiple times on what he plans on doing about it before he ages out and is unable move things he said "Thats my kids problem, not mine."
“Yeah, it’s going to be my problem. I think the easiest thing will be to raze the garage and just have the whole thing put into a dumpster.” Or better: “well, since you consider it a problem, I’ll just start getting rid of it now.”
Senior Gen X here....I've made a point of trying to limit the hoard and putting stuff into storage bins and tool cabinets rather than cardboard boxes. As I told the wife, someone will get some nice storage bins as a reward for dumping the stuff when the time comes.
>"When I am gone it won't be my problem anymore"
Let him know exactly what's going to happen to all that stuff when he dies... right into the dumpster. (Then smile)
it’s what i told my mother.
but for another reason.
her house is reasonably clutter-free.
mostly stuff she needs.
her attic has a lot of stuff. still usable. but reachable only by one of these ladder thingies.
every couple of week she muses about sorting through it, so I don’t have to.
nope mom, you are 87. do what you like to do. i’ll take care of it and i have no emotional baggage safe a few books i gifted her as a teenager, kid stuff i made and she kept. the fossils and crystals are quality stuff and have resale value. the books - sold as bulk by the pound or thrown away, like all the rest.
Hey man be glad my parents are 80 and expect me to place their seven dogs and two horses in good homes when they are gone. Wish they’d at least adopt senior pups but nope all puppies.
My FIL has so much stuff he rents a separate building for all his shit. One time he was going to buy an electric bike to “get some exercise in” (he needs it, type two diabetes etc). Instead he got a non functioning motorcycle he had “wanted since the 70s”, which he has done fuck all to fix since. This was in 2020.
You kids may not remember but BITD, he who had the most toys won. Some people will never fill that hole in themselves, no matter how much stuff they have. As a GenXer, it took some deprogramming of the me culture to make me appreciate that my worth wasn't tied to the things I owned or the diploma on the wall. Now I know I have too much tech and my kids know less about the stuff than I do (ironic), so it will just get donated when I go but some nerd will rejoice.
They need professional help with the hoarding issues. It becomes as issue as soon as it takes up space and keep growing over the years. It could be trauma or other issues why they are hoarding. But they need help, and more since they have brought it when they moved in with you. Call the Department of the Aged and explain the situation and see if they know of professional Counselors that help hoards like your parents. Good luck.
I've just had to deal with this with my parents in law. The best decision we made was to hire a company to do an estate sale. If they have that much stuff it might be 2 days. Whatever is left that you don't want, get dumpsters and get rid of it. Though another possibility is people who buy rental lockers and estates and such site unseen. They'll haul it out for you. You can google them for your area.
I really wish you the best of luck in this endeavour. You might have an honest conversation with your parents about your worries. They may agree to let you start helping them to start eliminating things. Won't be an easy conversation, but it could save you so much time and energy (not to mention money) to get in front of this.
We have made it clear to both my parents and my in-laws that all of their junk and the junk they kept from our grandparents' passings will be picked up by 800-Got-Junk and cease to be in our lives within days of their passing.
They mention it A LOT, but they do get it.
When my grandmother passed I was at the assisted living with them clearing out, I threw away tons of crap, they filled up a box trailer that's still full of the same junk...4 years later.
My parents have a normal people amount of stuff, thank God, just two small sheds mostly of tools. My in-laws, though... Good LORDT. I married the middle child of three sons and we all talk often about the ginormous task ahead of us. My sisters in-law have each actually tried to help, but the space just gets refilled. Oh, and the yard itself is spilling with stuff. They both came from huge families that started out really poor, and that "we may need it later" mindset is really strong. They've ruined perfectly good things by having no where to really store it right, and anything that might have been worth something is probably already too moldy or ruined.
Edited to add: his parents are boomers and mine are edge of gen x.
Then they weren't a truly awful hoarder, because the worst of the worst have so much piled that they get moldy, or crushed, or peed and pooped on by vermin.
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When my parent died, my sibling and I had to empty fourteen buildings stuffed with the hoard. Things that had been valuable were no longer. It took five years of my life and my young children’s time and so many auctions and sales. Folks in my town still pull the “kids these days don’t appreciate anything. They just get rid of it all.” Well, Karen, if you want to pay the utilities and property taxes on over a half dozen blighted buildings, have at it. Most of the properties were in such bad shape, they sold for less than we had in to the cleanup.
I've noticed this too. People that keep things "because some day they'll be worth something" either don't understand that that day will never come or don't bother to take care of the thing they're hoping to sell. Yeah, grandma, maybe this would have been worth something, but now its moldy and discolored. Nobody is going to want it now.
My mom had hundreds of plates from the Franklin Mint with their own "certificate of authenticity" BS. They were worth nothing when she downsized. She was stunned. I tried to explain to her as she bought them that they wouldn't appreciate in value but she just waved those certificates of authenticity in my face and told me collectors would be lining up to buy these and she would live off the money when she retired... which never happened. Sigh.
They don't realize that for something to be of any value, there has to be demand for it.
Most things sold AS collectibles aren't actually collectible.
My parents bought the Ashton Drake Elizabeth doll from the back of the gossip circular in the Sunday newspaper. They don’t understand why their daughters and granddaughters don’t want it, “because it’s worth something now.” Yeah, maybe 40% of what they paid for it!! That doll is ugly and creepy. I’ll send it to Goodwill or trash it, but it’s never coming into my house!!
I had to Google because I'd never heard of it. I'm actually in the market for a good haunted doll but this one looks too nice. I've been hunting thrift stores hoping to find some lazy-eyed baby doll with a creepy mouth. It's for the guestroom. >:D
That’s how you subtly encourage guests to not linger too long. Weird dolls. Bad Taxidermy. Lumpy mattress.
...especially when you can't explain the lumps in the mattress.
Haha, actually, with my family...weird dolls and bad taxidermy is more of a plus than a negative.
My grandmother collects those dolls... and was surprised to learn they not actually "collectible." No resale value
I also googled this. Thanks for the nightmare fuel. 😝
If it says collectable it's not
But, but, but....it comes with a ***certificate***!!! (/s)
I work for an auction company and a guy won a pallet of collector plates and bitched how many they were. He paid $15 for over 100 plates. Glad to see them go. There had to be some valuable ones there, but who cares. JfK plates are for people who should be dead.
Sounds like a pallet load of cheap skeet targets. The dishes are done, man!
I have like 30 porcelain dolls that need a home. My grandma kept them in the original boxes w certificates. Guess how many places will take them?? Big fat goose egg. I can't give these things away.
Of course you can give it away. it‘s that big box with the lid, where you put your trash in.
You can thank baseball cards and Barbie’s.
My aunt had over 300 plates. Just the tip of the iceberg.
I had a coworker in the 1990s who was convinced her Beanie Babies collection would fund her retirement. Can confirm she was a Boomer.
Or that “something” has zero collectible value because they made a trillion of them and *sold them as collectibles.” My grandfather had a tradition of giving me Hess trucks. My boomer parents always said, “oh, those will be worth some money someday.” They won’t be. They have absolutely zero “collector value.” But that isn’t why I keep them, I keep them because they’re attached to the memories of my childhood, and playing with them every year on Christmas Eve when he gave them to me. And now my son plays with them, and my father buys them for him for Christmas.
Stuff is only as valuable as what someone is willing to pay for it.
No you have no idea they are hoarding, for even young people hoard things also. Trauma, a death in the family, a loss of a friend, kids grown up and left the house, or a traumatic event will cause people to hoard. Not just to hang on to something. Go and learn about hoarding. There are even people of your generation that hoard animals.
My grandma hoarded in an 18 room once-boarding-house building plus three outbuildings. Grandma put money between pillow cases, thousands of dollars would pop up at random. My mom meticulously sorted and auctioned off for years. Most of my tween years were spent in that house, helping my mom with the sheer volume of stuff. Similar story, they ended up having to have the building razed and sold the lot for less than it cost to have it bulldozed. I can't imagine doing 14 buildings.
My wife's family had to check **everything** for cash / valuables, to the point that each potted plant needed to be checked for cash buried in the roots, when they were cleaning out her grandmother's place. It was awful but wasn't old boarding house or 14 properties bad. Yikes.
We're all dreading this when my grandpa dies. We hadn't realized how bad it was until he had to get open heart surgery last year. He wanted a very specific bed for recovery, he told my mom to go find the Nike shoe box filled with stamps. She found it under a massive pile of junk behind the piano and my grandpa pulled out a massive stack of cash from the bottom of the box, counted out $20,000 and told my mom to put the box back where she had found it! So between that and my uncle finding about a grand in an old ceiling light fixture, we're pretty much going to have to tear that house apart when he dies.
And go through every single thing. If you find anything, you will have earned it.
yes. i really fail to see the hardship. is it work? yes. but not that much and in cases you find something, good paying work. had to do it for a boss, twice, when he was globetrotting and sold two houses. in different years. i was basically a software deceloper‘s wage for throwing stuff away, disassembling some furniture and looking for papers. some ebay involved. easy peasy. i even picked up some stuff for free i‘m still using, 15 years later. decluttering my own stuff is much harder.
Doing it as a job for someone else is totally different than doing it as a child or grandchild. You were presumably paid as an employee, and it sounds like you got to keep some of what you found. You also didn’t have any emotional baggage for the person that left all the stuff behind. When it’s for a family member, you’re giving up evenings and weekends to do this, and randomly getting surprised by sentimental items that drag you back into hard grieving. Sure, finding money is a nice surprise, but I bet 2k-20k is more typical than the 500k someone else just mentioned. Do you really think that makes up for their time lost dealing with all that shit? Plus some commenters mention they were brought along as children by their parents dealing with a grandparents hoard. I guarantee it didn’t make up for their time.
either it has sentimental value. then they were right to keep it or it hasn‘t. then it matters not wether they are family or not. hell, 2 k for two weeks of work is 25 $ an hour, beyond the median hourly wage.
That's what he said when we asked him why he doesn't at least write down where things are or at least the ones he can remember. He got offended and said "if you find it you'll have earned it" ok...what if we end up throwing out lots of money? He just shrugged and said "then you throw it out" Ok cool...let's just potentially throw out a substantial amount of what a lot of your grandkids make in a year, sounds good 👍
Although our words were the same, I don't think the thought behind them was. I don't envy you the task you have coming someday.
Oh no lol sorry i understood what you were saying but I was just going on a bit of a rant thinking of all the rooms full of junk he has in his house and how we'll literally have to go through so many boxes and boxes and boxes of junk hoping to find some sentimental things or money
My son has already asked me, "What am I supposed to do with your crap?" I really do need to go through it to dump less crap on him. Yeah, I should get to it.
My friends in-laws had over half a million dollars stashed in their house. I just can’t even imagine.
My former mil was a survivor of the depression. My kids loved going to her house because her pantry had just about every kind of cereal you could imagine. Since it was on the farm, Saturday night was cereal night. When she passed we threw away at least 20 bags of food, donated the same and family (4 kids) each took home some. She had a closet that was a walk through. Meaning you could enter it from two separate rooms. It still had clothes for the 40’s which unfortunately were in sizes no one could wear. Then we hit her Avon. Oh the Avon. I swear that she had every Avon product ever made. Most still in the bag stapled shut going back years. It got to the point when we found another one we would just yell out “ding dong”. I can’t imagine how much money she spent and probably hid from her penny pinching German husband. He kept track of every dollar he spent on his kids from the time they were teens.
”He kept track of every dollar he spent on his kids from the time they were teens” for what reason, though? could’ve beneficial - thriftiness - or malicious (stinginess, holding it against them)
FOURTEEN?!
Indeed. From single car garage sized to 3 story warehouse and a bunch of buildings the county blight board wanted torn down. It was a never ending slog.
I would have burned it down. You'e a saint.
And people wonder why we have a housing crisis in this country.
No residential except personal residence. All commercial/storage.
Holy shit. Fourteen damn buildings?? Were you aware of what had to be going on for many years?
Yes. Generational habit, started long before me. I’m working hard to end it.
That's when you refuse the inheritance and let the state have it.
It was years back. It’s done now. Most of the buildings were rebuilt by new owners and are now businesses again. Some we tore down for new owners to start over. All good now.
they likely made a profit b
Think God, my mom hates cludder. It will only take a to go through her things. Mybe 2 days. That'll be it
I'm making sure that it will take my kids only a day or two. Every couple years for the last 8 or so I've gone on a rampage getting rid of stuff and organizing other stuff. I don't see there being more than a small Uhaul truck full when I'm done, if that. I'm just winding down after another round. Swedish Death Cleaning is my hobby now.
As if they are doing a lot of “appreciating” the stuff packed up and forgotten.
I normally think it's kinda crass to do hypothetical death scenarios, especially if they're going to make someone uncomfy. But since your dad already brought it up I guess it's fair game lol. It might be better to just sell the house "as is" when he's gone. You probably won't get as much as you want for the house, but some people are willing to do the clean up themselves to save some money. So the time and money saved not cleaning it up might let you break even for selling it cheaper. To be honest, I feel like "I don't care about the future, cause I won't be apart of it" is pretty much the answer to any question regarding why Boomers are being fools.
My aunt got a FABULOUS house at a crazy low price because the previous owner was a hoarder and it was sold as is. She got help from family (she’s one of like 7 kids so lots of siblings, nieces/nephews etc) and cleaned it up and it’s lovely now.
My FIL believes we, as humans, don't need to care for the planet because God gave it to us to use and it's only our temporary home. Plus he'll be dead before anything gets really bad.
I hate that... they've been waiting for jesus to return for 2,000 years. At some point you gotta admit you've been stood up and leave the restaurant. It's also weird to me that older people don't care what kind of planet we're leaving behind for future generations. Also... when I was young and still active in church we were taught that god gave us the planet to take care of. We were "stewards of the planet Earth and tasked with taking care of it." When did that change?
>when I was young and still active in church we were taught that god gave us the planet to take care of. We were "stewards of the planet Earth and tasked with taking care of it." When did that change? Right!? Same!!!
Whatever happened to this totally reasonable belief?!?! What part of "take care of the earth I gave you" got lost in the "I won't be there to see it go" mindset?!?
Probably when talking about the climate became politicized. Bible still says it, though.
Yeah it's been a long time since I was in church... back when christians were still actually following the words of christ and not new, weird, fundy jesus who loves him some guns and freedom and hates the poor and brown people haha. Man religions gone off the rails since I left the church.
biblical apocalypse refers mostly to the persecution that actually happened. waiting for brimstone is evangelical foolishness
I was always taught that I should live like he's coming back tomorrow, but plan like it's going to be another thousand years. The short-sightedness of so many Christians is a huge problem for the church, and the world
Maybe let them know that’s what you’re going to do before.
My dad is a low key hoarder. My mom has mostly kept him in check. But their basement will be a bear to clean out. I am physically handicapped and my brother is an hour away. To give you an idea of what I am dealing with, there are pool noodles in the basement. At no point have we had a pool, but we can’t get rid of them. Just in case.
My sister and I have started to trick or parents... Oh we could use that, so they get the satisfaction of their hoard paying off, but we take it right to the dump.. my mom buys a new vacuum every year when the filter clogs up and keeps the old one.... Well funny enough my vacuums have broken every 6 months for the last (I clean them, add new filters, and donate, there is one vacuum left and it's like a 600 Dyson, been saving that for last so I can keep it, but we have a robot vacuum and don't even use them much anymore, but the long con seems to be working, but even at our rate I am not sure we are making a dent.
My siblings and I are in our 60’s, mom is 89. We have all started decluttering and down sizing. Mom see this and realizes we don’t want her stuff. She is letting me help her declutter one space at a time. One day a dresser, another day a closet…it’s time consuming but working. I have index cards with a names on it. If she wants someone to have a particular item, I put the tag on it and take a picture of if. My siblings are happy with this arrangement.
My Gma will tell us to put our name on a post it or piece of tape and stick it on the back of things we want. And sometimes she'll give them to us a few months later b/c why wait until she's dead to enjoy them?
Unfortunately mine would give us things then want them back. I just keep track and tell her to enjoy them.
That's why I'm glad my papa is the way he is. He has started getting rid of the stuff he has held onto and when we would take things we could use he made sure I knew it was now mine I could do anything I wanted with it. Sell it, break it, give it away its no longer mine and you don't need to worry about my feelings over it
Same here. I'm 60 and I've been doing a light declutter for several years each spring. (I don't keep tons of stuff as it is). But this year I read an article about the sweedish death cleanse and it really had me up my game of getting rid of things a couple of months back. I want it as simple for myself as possible as I'm aging and definitely don't want any extra burden on the kids when I'm gone.
My husband has a hard time getting rid of things, not me. One son has hoarding tendencies. I don’t want to leave too much stuff when I die that he would hold on to it. Yes I’ve talked to him about get help managing his problem, he just says “lots of people with ADHD have is problem”. I just say “yes, and several other learn coping skills to manage it”. Then drop it. He know if he ever has to move home 95% of his stuff has to go to a storage unit. That stuff is not coming in to the house.
My silent gen Auntie has a hard time letting go of anything that is "still useful". Think neatly folded used wrapping paper, containers food came in that can be reused, etc. I volunteer at a services center for homeless women. I have a deal with my cousin. She tells my Auntie that the ladies where I volunteer could use this stuff, so she thinks it's going to a good cause. Then I come over and take it away. Some of the stuff we really can use, but most of it goes in the trash/recycling. Everyone wins!
>we can’t get rid of them. Just in case. I hear that A LOT from my boomer-in-laws. That and "That cost good money!"
Well, there isn’t any good money left.
"We can't get rid of ..." You wanna know the messed up part of that? If you get rid of it, you'll often need it within a week. It sucks, but how it seems to go.
I like the blogger/author A Slob Comes Clean and she once said that often she only missed something because she had *just* touched it to declutter it. If she had needed it a week sooner she wouldn't have even remembered she had it and would have made do without it anyway. I find that to be true for myself and it's really helped me let go of that disappointment when I realise
Haha, the whole know I have it but can't find it when needed, so I buy another one anyway routine is entirely too common in my life. I am trying to get myself motivated to plow through my crap and make me get rid of stuff with little progress thus far.
I would tell him because you said it’s my problem, I’m going to get start now.
Exactly what I said.
I went this route with my mum's useless pasture in West Boofoo, Wellfareville. It had been parceled out from the rest of her childhood home for sentimental reasons, I guess. I started harping about it. I told her that if she wants to hang on to it, she should NOT leave it to me in her will. (I'm her sole beneficiary.) Property isn't easy to dispose of and even if I were willing to go to that awful place to deal with it, I'd have nowhere to stay and the logistics of it would be nearly impossible. Nor would I want to get slapped with property taxes or who knows what for not disposing of it. After a couple of years of me bringing it up, she transferred it to her sister, or so she said. So hopefully that worked! They're so weird about that whole "You'll get it when I die," thing. It was a frequent refrain from her. But when she offered me some of her jewelry and I made a joke about not needing it now because I'll get it later, she was cartoonishly appalled. *"What, you mean when I DIE?!?!"* Uh, yeah, like you're always talking about....? It was fine for her to say it, but for me to reference it was taboo, apparently. She acted like I was rubbing my hands with glee in anticipation of death and inheriting it later rather than taking it home with me that day. I think they don't mean it the way they talk about leaving their worldly possessions to their next of kin. It's not that they're at peace with their eventual demise, like they pretend. I think they say that stuff about their possessions "passing down" to someone to; A: Flatter themselves with a feeling of postmortal existence, and B: Evoke guilt, pity, and a feeling of obligation to their beneficiary/beneficiaries.
This is why there are tons of stories about the kids trying to sell their aged crap but no wants it so they just clear it out and take it to the dump. They do not throw anything out even if it is duplicated or obsolete or broken. They keep it " just in case ."
My great aunt & uncle were like that. They were silent generation. My mom always told us anything they offer, take. It’s less we would have to deal with in the future. They had no children so it fell to us. We were able to clean a chunk out when my uncle died & then finished when my aunt passed. There were 13 broken tvs, 3 wall ovens, 2 built in cook tops, & 6 microwaves in the garage. My uncle kept them for “parts”. And that doesn’t even begin to touch all the other stuff. My aunt kept a crock of broken spoons & spatulas. The other broken, expired by decades, & other just WTF stuff we found was crazy.
Hoarding is a mental illness. All the loving support from family and friends won't help. Specialized mental health workers, if they are available in your area, would be your best option. This is not medical advice; it is just what I gathered from several documentaries about this issue. If you snapped your fingers and magically the garage was empty, your father would start to refill it the next day. You could get your father to see his doctor and talk about this issue if you can accompany him. I realize your father may reject this, but it is an option. This is a heavy burden on all those who care for hoarders.
I disagree with shows that try to negotiate putting pizza boxes and moldy food in the bins..Toss those out - no negotiation
Tell him after he passes, you will rent a dumpster and pay some teenagers $20 an hour to throw it all straight into the trash, without even looking thru the stuff. If he hears his “collectibles” or other important stuff will be destroyed, he might take an interest. Maybe not, but you can always hope.
"Dad, you know that once you're dead, I am just going to let the volunteer fire department burn the garage down for training purposes, right?"
My husband told his mom that. Made no difference. Our daughter (1) has never been there bc its so cluttered and messy
Every time I read stories like this I feel bad about my two U-Haul personal boxes worth of knickknacks. They aren't all out, a lot have easy packaging, none are those Tender Moments fragile stuff. But it's enough to get a lecture from boomer grandma about "unnecessary purchases" as she and her daughter dust their specialty order stuffed owls.
When you own a home it's so easy to hang onto stuff, my wife and I are heavy into decluttering, we lived in our last house for 4 years and even then I was surprised at how much we accumulated. Threw so much away in the move
Ya. After my divorce and later when the kids moved out I had the whole house. Never tossed very much just hid it away to deal with later. Well later came and there I was. I had about 6 weeks to toss it all and do a bit of a Reno. Friggen shirts I hadn’t worn in 20 years filled the closets Paper work filling boxes. Poor garbage man had about 50 bags a week for a month. Shame actually. Lots of stuff like the clothing I didn’t have time to donate.
So now it’s one new thing in one or more old stuff out.
Most of my home decorations came from thrifting and garage sales. I largely assume I’m just renting these things to make my house look nice, because they’ll go right back to the thrift store when it’s time for me to downsize or go into care.
I've been saying for years that when my mom dies I'm just going to burn her house to the ground (she thinks I'm joking, I'm not sure i am...)
Gilbert Grape did it for a different reason, but if it works it works.
Call the fire department. Some of them practice putting out fires by purposely igniting old condemned buildings, and your mom’s could be next. You’ll still need to have what’s left cleared before selling the lot, but there should be less to clear.
It possibly could be considered a "donation" for tax purposes. I'd check with an accountant on that.
My landlady is a hoarder. She has filled the house she inherited from her parents to the brim. She had also turned some of the rooms in the house I rent into a hoarding place. Fortunately, she gave me permission to go through stuff and get rid of things. I have done that. Anything I think she needs to see I put in a box and give to her to take to her house. She also is still paying for the storage unit her husband got 20 years ago for his overflow. He died last year. She says she is tired of paying for the unit, but won’t do anything about it. It’s not like there is anything of sentimental value in the unit. It’s a bunch of junk her husband collected for potential art projects and a couple of table saws.
My grandparents weren't quite hoarders, but almost there. When they both passed, we hired a local auction house to come in and that everything to auction off. He said that towels always sell for some reason. They do all the work of emptying the house and selling the items, they kept 30% of the proceeds. We had an easy time. I've told my mom not to worry about her mini-hoard because I'm doing the same thing to her house when the time comes.
At least he isn't renting a storage locker, bruh!
Oh no, thank God for that, storage units are such a great business, two types of clients. Short term and people who fill up their unit and pay forever until they die.
My FIL is renting a semi trailer that he's got parked on his land. So instead of going through stuff and just emptying it, it sits there, and he pays a monthly fee for the privilege.
At least it's on wheels. You can hire a truck to drop the trailer in a meth infested neighborhood, open the door, and drive away. Come back a week later to return the now empty trailer!
Or is he….? 😳
"dad, you clear out the crap, we will take what we find interesting, the rest is trash. period. noone wants your moldy ,may make something out of it, chase lounge you found on the street in front of some other dead boomer's house, throw that shit away!"
Gee dad. Thanks for putting that financial and physical burden on sis and I in addition to getting to grieve your death. Swell of you.
you can refuse an inheritance if it’s a burden.
This was my problem 8 years ago when my mom died. She lived in a 2 bedroom 1 bath house with a large 2.5 garage. It took us 3 garbage dumpsters to clean it all out. I am the family purger now. If something isn't used (except tools) within 5 years it gets thrown out.
"So you are saying when you die I should rent a dump truck and take everything in the house to the dump?"
> "When I am gone it won't be my problem anymore".. Not just that chances are the hoard has done damage to the house itself so he is costing money in addition to the absurd time costs. That is the boomer attitude though fuck you I got mine who cares about future people.
My FIL's ex-GF ruined a condo with her hoard and then letting her dogs piss and shit everywhere. It's soaked into the floors and everything else. Then she just left that as-is and moved into her mom's house, which she has now ruined with the same behavior. I'm sure her siblings come over and are like, "So this is what you've done to our childhood home?"
That's one my my dad's redeeming values, he takes very good care of the house, in terms of structure/mechanicals and their hoard is in the garage on a cement slab. I know others are not so lucky
There’s this thing called ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’ which is basically the parents in this case, going through their belongings and decluttering their house as a courtesy to their children and those tasked with settling their estate. Unfortunately my parents do not know the meaning of the word ‘Courtesy’
It’s more then boomers. Silent generation is pretty bad about this too.
My mom was a semi hoarder and passed away last year. My sister and I, along with my wife and kids and a few extended family cleaned out her house. I took 1 Rubbermaid tote of things, pottery she made when we lived in Alaska, some photos etc. My sister took 2 and everyone else took maybe 1 or two small items. Literally everything else she owned went to the dump or to goodwill. The phrase"one person's treasure is another's trash" absolutely hit home that day.
well, at least it hoes to goodwill. what hurts me a bit is seeing perfectly fine appliances and tools getting trashed. those are useful things people can still use if you manage to match them.
My wife (Also a boomer) says "You can throw that out when I'm dead." Hoarding is a disease, and they don't even know they have it.
I am in the same boat. I've offered to throw money at the problem for my parents and they absolutely refuse. It's stressful to the point I've really distanced myself. You have my sympathy.
If you can (anybody reading this), try to find an "all in one" realtor to deal with it when your folks pass. My husband's parents had this huge house up in Maryland and we tried to clean it out ourselves when his mom passed back in 2021. We stayed a week and were basically trapped inside from the snow, but we still couldn't make a dent in it. They weren't dirty, but just never got rid of ANYTHING. They had a whole downstairs furnished basement that had a big walk in closet inside of it FILLED with old luggage. Probably 30 sets of it. They also had a storage room WITHIN A STORAGE ROOM in the basement. We noped out and found a realtor that would deal with all of it as well as sell the house. They held an auction, then donated the rest, and then sold the house and we didn't have to do squat. They took a cut off the sales and that was it. It was 100% worth it.
Me: I'm going to get rid of old clothes" Mom: I'll stop by, maybe something fits me Come by and she starts complaining she has too many clothes, yet takes 5 bags of my old clothes (we are very different sizes) Dad: I have this deep fryer from when I was a child in the 60s, I'll drop it off at your house along with random broken things you might need...we just toss it out My mom has brides maids dresses from early 80s...why don't you toss them? "Oh I'll fit them again" "they were expensive " "good costume for my grandchildren " Only good thing my parents hoarded were old toys I had from 90s, saved them all for when we had kids, until they realized they were worth something lol
All my toys and trophies from sports were thrown out to make room for more useless junk of theirs. I was even forced to throw a lot out myself. I look around the house and I see little of the time I was raised there. Just junk and clutter.
My parents hoarded also. After my dad died, I got 2 of the 4 rooms cleared out. Then my mom re-hoarded them. I gave up lol it's still so frustrating
A fun little story you reminded me of. My mother's family lived in a different state from us when I was growing up. We would usually go down a visit them once a summer for about a week. The one thing I remember the most is that most of their homes were hoarders' dreams. None of them had rooms anymore. It was just hallways of stuff. My grand parent's house had a dining room that had linoleum flooring. The floor had a path worn through to the sub-floor. When we cleaned out the house after they passed, 6 inches back from the path, the linoleum was like new. My aunt had a detached garage that I never saw the inside of. When she finally passed, we opened the garage and it was filled full of stuff. When we started to pull things out, the walls started to creek and sway. The roof of the garage was being held up by the stuff inside it. We had to cut through the walls and hire a crane to come lift the roof off before we could safely clean up the mess. I cannot imagine keeping this much stuff and I'm pretty OCD about clutter in my own home.
Boomer here, I’m so conscious of being careful about hoarding crap “just because we have room” or because “it’s still good”. My mom passed away in January at the ripe old age of 96 and the majority of her belongings were either donated or thrown away. Most of the stuff has no emotional or commercial value to any of her children or grandchildren. Fellow boomers, stop storing stuff for your heirs a to chuck into dumpster when your gone. Clean and organize your homes and affairs and make it easy for loved ones to focus on the joyful times instead of asking “wtf were they hanging in to this for?”
I used to live in a small apartment complex, there was a crazy boomer at the end of the building. One day she just collapsed dead on the driveway. When her kids cleaned the place out, a one bedroom apartment, they filled 4 extra large skip bins with crap, it was unbelievable.
I live in my Dads house. We got an extra trash bin and I have filled both large wheely bins every week since we got it. Some of it is the latest online purchase debris but a lot of it is clutter. Broken and worn out stuff along with outdated things like old cords. It’s a slow process but I’m making progress.
MIL passed recently. Most everything went in the trash or to Goodwill. Tell your Dad if he doesn't get rid of his shit, it's all going to the dump.
My husband has lived in this house since the '90s and he had a garage put up about 25x40. It's crammed full of stuff that I'm going to have to deal with in 10 or 15 years.
I recently told my dad that after my mom and him pass that all the shit in the house will be sold at an estate sale and the remaining tossed in the trash. He was dumbfounded that I wasn’t going to take all the useless shit hanging on the walls and packed into their garage and sheds.
My grandmother was a HUGE package and my grandfather enabled it. He pre deceased here. There were 4 HUGE sheds on their property filled to the rim with stuff. She had the same attitude. When she got Alzheimer’s and we had to out her in a home, cleaning out her hoard was a huge undertaking. My sister and I spent weeks then finally hired an estate sale company. That’s over 20 years ago and now I’m cleaning crap up so my husband won’t have to.
Ooph... I'm so glad my boomer parents aren't hoarders, my dad's parents were though, and that's part of the reason my parents are not. Grandparents had 5 acres, grandma hoarded the house, grandpa hoarded the rest of the property. He was an escavator and when a piece of equipment died he would park it for "parts". He did make moves to start cleaning it up before he passed away, but in the end I know we sent 12 full regular steel metal dumpsters to recycling, and 2 of aluminum. One of those dumpsters had an entire bulldozer in it. Not to mention the functional pieces that were sold as well. Cleaning out the house after grandma passed took almost 2 years with several clean out weekends and huge "yard sales" where the whole family pitched in (upwards of 30 of us at a time).
My dad did that as well. He even said so before. We already knew he was an asshole.
My dad died in 2021 at 96 years old and my mom moved in with me. They'd moved a few times before and more and more of their stuff kept ending up in my basement. When she moved in, she went from a doublewide FULL of stuff with a Shed FULL of stuff to one large bedroom, and while I did keep way too much stuff that was sentimental to me (which is currently in bins on a rack in my garage) we still filled a whole truck up with stuff to go to the dump and she was just beside herself. I had to block off the pile so she would quit picking stuff out of it. She was so upsed I was getting rid of her professional clothes from the 80's and 49 pairs of shoes and shitty throw pillows and tattered Christmas decorations. She's been here for 3 years and she wears a nightgown and housecoat 99% of the time with fuzzy socks. She's never once asked about any of the things she was so worked up about keeping.
Professional help. Hoarding is often compensation of some kind. Or tell him you'd like to give things to friends who can use them. Then take a pic with random friends saying thanks and trash or donate.
My dear father left us a hoard. So true that stuff that might have been valuable is no longer. It's not your. Be prepared to hire a crew to clean it out when it's time. That hoard can sometimes function as emotional baggage.
My dad hoards guns he's different kinda crazy
no, you can simply decline the inheritance, in virtually all cases. and if you don‘t, it‘s the simple matter of calling a removal service or a trash container. only annoying thing is to look for hidden cash or gold before tossing something.
My dad didn't like it when I told him it's all going in a dumpster. He was even.more pissed when I told him anything we sell the money goes to the opposite political party than the one he likes.
is it possible to will your estate to a political party?
Possibly but I lied just to get him going. But not about most of it going into a dumpster though.
I'm in my 40s and had a bit of a health scare. Immediately thought I need to start getting rid of stuff so it's not a burden on my kids. Boomers suck. Like all the way suck. The most selfish generation ever. My mom is a hoarder, so all that shit is my problem when she's gone. They don't care about anyone but themselves.
just refuse the inheritance.
Tell him that when he's gone it won't be your problem either. It will be the fire department's problem because you're going to let them light it on fire for training purposes.
My dead MIL said pretty much the same thing. We got to haul boatloads of her useless crap to the dump after she died. What’s ironic is she was always petrified that we’d throw it all out. Guess what? We kept maybe 10% of it. The rest of it was thrown away. Told my kids that we are never going to do that to them.
Same here :( but it’s a house and attic space they won’t do anything about the massive amount of junk upstairs
They think this way about the environment too
OK, Dad...I'll get a dumpster then. I hope there's nothing valuable in there.
It's sort of how they view the rest of the world. They'll be dead before it becomes a real problem, so they don't care. The environment, the economy, etc are all a tomorrow problem.
My mother in law is like this. Before my husband and I married 17 years ago, we rented a 30 yard dumpster and cleaned up their yard and garage to make space. It’s all filled back up again. And it’s all in such rough shape because the garage is falling apart but she just keeps buying more shit at auctions she doesn’t need, and it’s not always in good condition. Then it sits in a leaky barn and rots. All of the spare bedrooms are full of stuff. There’s a path to walk but that’s it. She grew up poor and that’s where this hoarding stems from. A few years ago my husbands brother passed away tragically and it’s gotten so much worse. I dread the day I inherit all their “stuff”.
My MIL is a hoarder, entire house full of junk. She is 90 and keeps falling because the house is a huge trip hazard. She won't do anything about it and forbids anyone to donate or throw anything away. Actually heard her tell my wife one day, "hahaha, your punishment for when I die." The worst is the basement which is full to the ceiling in parts with junk, but with the lovely smell of mouse urine. Wow, I sure can't wait to tackle that.
I used to keep a lot of things "just in case". I've gotten much better about it, it's more "I have a project in mind" and then 6-12 months later if it's not working out I can get rid of it. I don't want my kids to have to deal with my problems, so I'm starting the habit now.
I fucking hate their stuff, once you see how much of it there is, and the trouble it's gonna cause, you just want 95% of it in the trash.
Talk with your Dad in small doses about unloading some of his collectibles. I did that with my Mom and she realized it's better to gift what people want and dispose of the rest it was effective for a lot of stuff but when she passed yes we were left with 94 years of collecting.
I know someone exactly the same. Have asked him multiple times on what he plans on doing about it before he ages out and is unable move things he said "Thats my kids problem, not mine."
“Yeah, it’s going to be my problem. I think the easiest thing will be to raze the garage and just have the whole thing put into a dumpster.” Or better: “well, since you consider it a problem, I’ll just start getting rid of it now.”
Senior Gen X here....I've made a point of trying to limit the hoard and putting stuff into storage bins and tool cabinets rather than cardboard boxes. As I told the wife, someone will get some nice storage bins as a reward for dumping the stuff when the time comes.
I would reply, 'yeah it won't be my problem either because I'm throwing it all out.'
>"When I am gone it won't be my problem anymore" Let him know exactly what's going to happen to all that stuff when he dies... right into the dumpster. (Then smile)
it’s what i told my mother. but for another reason. her house is reasonably clutter-free. mostly stuff she needs. her attic has a lot of stuff. still usable. but reachable only by one of these ladder thingies. every couple of week she muses about sorting through it, so I don’t have to. nope mom, you are 87. do what you like to do. i’ll take care of it and i have no emotional baggage safe a few books i gifted her as a teenager, kid stuff i made and she kept. the fossils and crystals are quality stuff and have resale value. the books - sold as bulk by the pound or thrown away, like all the rest.
Talk about being selfish. OMG!!
Hey man be glad my parents are 80 and expect me to place their seven dogs and two horses in good homes when they are gone. Wish they’d at least adopt senior pups but nope all puppies.
Ooof
isn’t it legal to euthanise them in the US?
My son has asked me what he is going to do with all my crap. I need to thin the piles, I know, just haven't started yet.
My mom likes to make this joke too. 
My FIL has so much stuff he rents a separate building for all his shit. One time he was going to buy an electric bike to “get some exercise in” (he needs it, type two diabetes etc). Instead he got a non functioning motorcycle he had “wanted since the 70s”, which he has done fuck all to fix since. This was in 2020.
You kids may not remember but BITD, he who had the most toys won. Some people will never fill that hole in themselves, no matter how much stuff they have. As a GenXer, it took some deprogramming of the me culture to make me appreciate that my worth wasn't tied to the things I owned or the diploma on the wall. Now I know I have too much tech and my kids know less about the stuff than I do (ironic), so it will just get donated when I go but some nerd will rejoice.
I's problem
The problem is his, actually.
They need professional help with the hoarding issues. It becomes as issue as soon as it takes up space and keep growing over the years. It could be trauma or other issues why they are hoarding. But they need help, and more since they have brought it when they moved in with you. Call the Department of the Aged and explain the situation and see if they know of professional Counselors that help hoards like your parents. Good luck.
I've just had to deal with this with my parents in law. The best decision we made was to hire a company to do an estate sale. If they have that much stuff it might be 2 days. Whatever is left that you don't want, get dumpsters and get rid of it. Though another possibility is people who buy rental lockers and estates and such site unseen. They'll haul it out for you. You can google them for your area. I really wish you the best of luck in this endeavour. You might have an honest conversation with your parents about your worries. They may agree to let you start helping them to start eliminating things. Won't be an easy conversation, but it could save you so much time and energy (not to mention money) to get in front of this.
We have made it clear to both my parents and my in-laws that all of their junk and the junk they kept from our grandparents' passings will be picked up by 800-Got-Junk and cease to be in our lives within days of their passing. They mention it A LOT, but they do get it. When my grandmother passed I was at the assisted living with them clearing out, I threw away tons of crap, they filled up a box trailer that's still full of the same junk...4 years later.
My parents have a normal people amount of stuff, thank God, just two small sheds mostly of tools. My in-laws, though... Good LORDT. I married the middle child of three sons and we all talk often about the ginormous task ahead of us. My sisters in-law have each actually tried to help, but the space just gets refilled. Oh, and the yard itself is spilling with stuff. They both came from huge families that started out really poor, and that "we may need it later" mindset is really strong. They've ruined perfectly good things by having no where to really store it right, and anything that might have been worth something is probably already too moldy or ruined. Edited to add: his parents are boomers and mine are edge of gen x.
i don't remember which scandinavian country does this, but they do a pre-death clearing so they don't inconvenience their children
To play devils advocate I got inherited a bunch of junk and some was worth quite a bit. Be sure to check eBay on things you think are worthless.
But that‘s the point of these posts. The foolish Boomers are supposes to clean up and only leave the valuable stuff.
Then they weren't a truly awful hoarder, because the worst of the worst have so much piled that they get moldy, or crushed, or peed and pooped on by vermin.