To be so angry sorting out my parents stuff

I specifically remember that my parents gave me £800 per term. I think that was what you got as a grant if your parents wer low income. I didn't get a grant and didn't take the loan as it was pretty much too small to bother with in 1990-93. and I didn't really need it. I actually did manage on £2400 a year with some vacation work, no term time work. But I lived very very frugally! And to be honest probably benefitted from an older employed boyfriend!

I was at Uni then too. The maintenance grant was reduce in line with your parents earnings. I got no maintence grant. If your parents earning reasonable money but chose not to give you anythng, you would certainly need to work. In fact it was potentially worse then than now as there was no (or minimal - like £200) student loan.

My mum has just had this with my Nan. They always pleaded poverty. Make a big show of not being able to afford nice groceries. Recently mum found out they have many thousands saved in numerous bank accounts. House paid off. Shockingly much better off than any of their five children who have been helping them!

My brother too put his head in the sand. All he was interested in was 'his books' (my parents always said that he would get the books, me my father's collection off Staffordshire figures - most of which were damaged beyond being of any value because he had dementia and would drop them).

My brother rarely visited my parents (despite being only about 50 miles away motorway all the way) and, because I lived within walking distance of their house I did all the caring - taking them too/from medical appointments, arranging medications, calling in to make sure they were OK, doing their shopping etc etc. So he said that as long as I didn't touch his books all the rest was up to me and refused to have anything to do with clearing the house as it would upset him 😡I packed the books into boxes & told him when they were ready to collect. He took some and then told me that he had taken what he wanted & I could get rid of the rest. Thanks mate - more for me to do(!) Oxfam bookshop were very grateful. 😉

Maggyfs
a generational thing
Not in my house it isn’t. I’m 78 with 3 daughters. I hate stuff and toot
I don’t hoard anything and I’ve never owned one of those awful glass cabinets 😱
My daughter and my granddaughter love most of my clothes, of which there aren’t enough to fill a 3rd bedroom like some people Ahhhhh!!!
They might fight over my Jack Vettriano paintings, though.

Stuff is so meaningless, it is heartbreaking to choose expensive tat over supporting a child through tough times.

One of my children trained as a nurse during covid and practically her first job on her first placement was to put a deceased ladies stuff in the incinerator as there were no relatives to claim it. It was an expensive handbag and purse, scarf, gloves etc. My DD said the woman had been lonely and difficult and very proud and possessive of her stuff in hospital. My DD cried for her as she fed it in - ‘precious’ stuff is actually worse less than the sum of fuck all compared to friends & family.

I feel for you, I really do. My parents are both still alive, but not in good health so its making me think forward. My brother is the golden child, but doesn't want to help them with day to day stuff, which I sort of get. But his kids are older and he likes an hour closer.

The relationship between our parents is breaking down and I don't know how to help it, they are both being stubborn. But I can see him 'helping' to clear the house by removing things he sees as valuable then leaving me to do the heavy lifting on wading through all the junk.

I must be heartbreaking seeing all the things your parents spent so much money on reduced to peanuts in the charity shop

Except it’s muddled, and confuses a lot of prewar and postwar life. Education, health and the welfare state changed several times between the silent generation and the late boomers, and lots of that post has jumbled up everything from the 30s to the 70s. In reality, if you were born just before the war your experience was much more like the boomers than the silent generation. And only urban children were evacuated, and not all of those - those that were evacuated were largely born in the twenties and early thirties.

OP is talking about her parents’ behaviour to her when she went to university in the EARLY NINETIES. At that point the war was FORTY SEVEN years earlier, and her parents had accumulated money, a house and tons of stuff. At what point do we say that someone’s behaviour nearly fifty years after WWII is no longer excused by the war? Come off it everyone with the Blitz spirit like so many of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen. The war stopped them giving her cash in 1992? After 47 years of them then experiencing the longest economic boom conditions in modern history?

I would be raging too in your shoes.

But I wonder if the experience of WW2 and rationing had an impact on their spending and collecting habits. I only say that because my MIL was born before WW2 and lived through terrible poverty in her childhood and youth. She used to bulk buy things like tins of fancy biscuits and fruit cakes, and store them in an upstairs wardrobe. No one ever got to eat them because they'd be years out of date. She wasn't a hoarder in general, just this one aspect and we put it down to her going hungry in her early years.

Possibly a similar manifestation from your parents, because logically it just doesn't make sense.

xxx

My ILs were academics as well… huge house and so many books and clutter the house walls were affected, bulging outwards. It was hoarding.
It made me think about not wanting to inflict such a task on our DCs.
I’ve made a start but need to do more.

I get it. I'm sorry you've got all this to process and deal with.

My DM (born 1940) was very proud of being one of the first OU students - her student number was 00030. Her father didn't believe higher education for daughters was worth the money as they would only get married, have children & give up work. She did her A'levels, and paid her own way through teacher training (then not a degree profession). She also helped to finance her sisters through university because their father refused to do so. So, as soon as she could, she enrolled into the OU, did several degrees through them and ended up being awarded her PhD at the age of 72. 😇

I want to thank everyone for these fascinating posts. My 92 year old parents have a lot that needs dealing with and this has caused me to reflect on the importance of downsizing at some point myself (64) so my dds don’t have to deal with it. My father has a large collection of actual antiqities which he hasn’t been able to sell off and which I can’t afford the taxes on. This has rather focused my mind on the uselessness of everything.

I think i went into house owning and decorating rather naively—my dd’s generation will have smaller spaces and less security. My “stuff” —no matter how beautiful—will have nowhere to go and no easy resale value.

Thank you, another very interesting fact I've learned today!

@DazedorBemused
I am totally in awe of you! I have just sorted my parents estate and sold their house. Same generation as your parents. I couldn't do the house clearance it was too emotionally draining.
I paid someone a lot of money to do it for me.

I did have to go through about 10 years of bank statements for inheritance tax reasons. I started to get annoyed that my parents had so much money and never offered me anything like a deposit for a flat. They didn't work hard for their house they were given it. My mum had more money in her current account when she died than I have ever had in savings. And Holy Moley her income from pension was a decent amount.

It's a tricky thing doing what you have you are much stronger than I was.

Talk to a local house clearance company, not all that stuff should go to tge tip. Even if you get a few £00 for it, it'll be better than endless trips to tge tip.

Also, you're not the only one whose parents favoured one kid over you. Your child is hurt, but to move on you as an adult need to move past it. Remember, lingering anger is only hurting you - you are the only person that feels and suffers your anger, occasionally those you're angry with might sense it, but they def don't feel it or suffer it.

Sending a hug from a middle child who like you got shafted for an older brother and younger sister all their life! But I'm fine with it, it's not on me it's on them....

Sorry for your loss OP. Go and get some therapy, it really works. My parents are a similar age as yours and still alive, they were both brought up in very privileged homes and have spent everything. Lots of holidays, never had mortgages so didn’t have ‘big jobs’ just enjoyable ones. Didn’t save for their own futures and just spent their inheritances. I’ve not had any money, no house deposit, paid for both my very small weddings myself. I’m not bitter though. I am very independent and self sufficient, of course they now want me to do the care heavy lifting which I will do. I’ve worked through all my resentment of my older sibling being the golden child and everything that goes with it. I have also just found out that the sibling is in line for another massive inheritance which I am excluded from as that’s ’our culture’. I feel hurt but I can’t do anything about any of the past and I just focus on my future with my little family. You can move past this.

@ElizaMulvil what an interesting post.

Take Care dear OP. Julia Samuels talks some sense about grief.

As an aside , boomer her. Skint boomer with an adult child reappeared in the house. Beware silly generalizations.

Me too!

My DPs died within 12 months of each other. They had a 4 bedroom house that was full of papers (they were both academics & I had about 60 years-worth of papers, theses, research papers etc to get rid of) clothes, books, photographs and general STUFF. It took months to sort through and get dispose of. I only discovered Wills 6 months after they died as they were in a pile of general papers and, if I hadn't been so careful about sorting through, I'd have thrown them away.

I am gradually sorting through my stuff getting rid of things that will be of no interest to my DS. I have categorised, dated, labelled the photos and filed them into a smallish box getting rid of duplicates and pictures of people who he wouldn't know of, sorted through clothes that I no longer have a use for & sent them to charity shops and am now selling the majority of my Art Deco ceramic collection on EBay. I have all my important documents in a file clearly labelled.

I don't want to leave the kind of mess for my DS that my DPs left for me.

Good grief talk about cold. I would do the solicitor for executor. Leave it all to good causes and none of it to them!

It was used more by boomers than any other generation - to do quals part-time, for women, for retraining, just for interest and for the sake of education (I know; how quaint!) - but also it was the easiest and most affordable way to do a lot of vocational training diplomas in, for example, social work, policing, accounting, all sorts of stuff, often not necessarily degree level but higher vocational, and these courses were often paid for by employers rather than the student.

For boomer-age women in particular it was fantastic as a route for re-entering the workplace when older.

And it was very affordable until the full tuition fees rise: since then it charges the full £9+k cost like any other university.

Her parents were born either side of WW2 so 1930s 40s. Boomers is a misnomer.
It covers far too wide a span. Children born 1940s would have been wrenched from their families and evacuated to live with strangers. 1940s chidren experienced real shortages and traumatised parents. University education was rare. Many unis discriminated against women e.g. Oxbridge, Medical Courses. School leaving age had just risen from 14 to 15. The vast majority of children went to Secondary Moderns and had no opportunity to take exams at 16, let alone A levels or Degrees. There was a huge shortage of teachers, partly because a lot if men had died in WW2 or were traumatised and also because the policy pre WW2 was to sack women who married. Women couldn't get mortgages or fill in their own tax form if married. My cousin taught uncertificated in Salford. Uncertificated teachers were supposed to only have half a class. She had 90. My class in supposedly one of the best primaries in Manchester had 56 children.
The past is a foreign country.