To be so angry sorting out my parents stuff

Thanks. Yes, that’s a consideration…but I’ve no real option if no one wants to take on being executor. (The weird thing is that it’s been suggested that my cousins’ kids could be my POA, but they’re firm about not wanting the responsibility of being executor.)

There might be the option of someone from my late DH’s family being prepared to do it. It’s a long story…DH only found his birth family late on in life.

My elderly dad is alive and well living in an horribly cluttered but large house. He has eased up on hoarding since we did a little clear out a few years back after a hospital stint. This was necessary to move a bed downstairs temporarily and the only way we were allowed access. We found spice jars 14 years out of date, 3 bags of gift bags all damp and showing shop brands 20 years closed, 2 refuse sacks of yoghurt cartons, to name but a few items in 1 room. We have tried and tried to get him to declutter but he refuses all help. We now know when he dies we have a massive job ahead of us and as the only one local it will fall to me.

I've somehow made peace with it but the way he lives has made me so angry over the years. The one item that saddens me the most is the baby stackable bricks that light up when all in place, they are still in the box as he was afraid DS would break them. 7 grandchildren later and the box is still on the shelf over the TV never opened. It's the one room we have access to, i can only imagine what lurks in the other rooms. Sadly it's a common situation.

Yes I had 3 jobs - few mornings a week serving breakfasts in a hotel, a bar job and 2 nights a week behind the bar in a nightclub. I didn’t get a grant as my mum earned too much but I didn’t get a penny! So I took the loan and had to earn the extra at £3 an hour.

Yes, I'm no lover of Blair but you'd think people would understand that higher education and university are not synonymous!

I hope people read this post and the various responses underneath. It's a curse having to clear through other people's dross when they pass away / go into a home. I can honestly say I've probably spent a total of six months of my life engaged in activities relating to clearing houses belonging to my grandmother and then father. Also a friend who moved countries and gave me a load of really useful (not!) stuff she didn't want to throw away. Fortunately Dad downsized significantly and has been forced to sell various antiques he's keen for us to have that we don't like at all. Worst though are all the papers and small bits of ceramics, containers, full collections of magazines (think 7 years worth of farmers weekly). GM was a hoarder - multiple skips and visits to the tip.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I’m aware from other threads that you aren’t anti Labour; but that doesn’t stop people on the left from coming out with the same cultural myths about university education that the right wing press were so successful for years in putting about (my boomer parents are left wing and do it all the time too, completely forgetting all the polytechnics and all of postwar education policy including all the early 90s reforms by Clarke and Major).

You see the “Blair wanted fifty percent of kids to go to university” myth absolutely everywhere despite the fact that literally NOTHING about that is true.

(I myself always voted Labour until the last election when I felt I could not vote for any party, even Labour.)

I have the memory of what happened when a childless great uncle died.

Three of us were delegated to take his savings book to the building society, to see whether there was enough to bury him. Turned out he had a second account with 200k in it. (This was the ‘90s.)

When we got back to the (council) house to tell them, my mum’s cousins went mad tearing the place apart, looking for a will.

That’s stuck with me.

GU did get a proper funeral, but some of the beneficiaries didn’t attend. (GU died intestate. Once the tax was paid, the rest was split equally amongst his nephews and nieces.)

Just over half of University students have term time jobs currently, it was 45% in 2022 and less than 30% in 2012.

And there you go again. You've assumed I will be anti-Labour. In the great majority of elections I've been eligible to vote in I've voted Labour and I've never voted Tory. I haven't lived in a Tory constituency since I was 18.

Your figures are very interesting and I will try to remember them, but it is undoubtedly true that those of us who did get to go to university, polytechnic, art college etc with no loans, no tuition fees and reasonably generous maintenance were very lucky indeed. We know it. We know things have changed a lot since.

If you ever visit Agatha Christie's house in Devon you would find that her and her husband loved to collect clutter.

It's the main thing I remember from visiting 15 years ago. Just little collections of cigarette boxes and silverware and vases and many more things. Thousands of books!

Nonsense - loans weren’t, but the maximum loan was 1/3 of the recommended lowest living amount - your parents were expected to make up the rest, and if they were low income you qualified for a grant, which was around another 50-30 percent of the total (it decreased from 50 percent around 1990 to 30 percent in the mid-90s before being cut completely around the late 90s).The rest was expected to be made up from your parents, even if they were low income, or from part-time work. So your parents were normally expected to contribute all the rest if you didn’t have a grant, and something even if you did.

I see those "collections" in my local thrift shop all the time, each piece priced at 50c or taped together randomly and priced at 5/$1.

It's all crap that used to be advertised at the back of the Sunday supplement in newspapers along with coins, polyester trousers with elasticated waists, and hideous slippers, with a mail order form you could cut out and send with your cheque.

They are not worth the effort of schlepping them anywhere. Drop them from a bedroom window into a bin placed below.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I’ve done educational research in this area, and actually the university thing is a complete myth.

When you add university students together with the students of the postwar period who had free tertiary education (including bursaries and grants) to attend polytechnics, further ed, vocational colleges and other forms of tertiary education and training that would now be done via a degree (eg nursing training, teacher training, and other forms of similar work-based and vocational training), the proportion of that in total in the boomer generation is around 40 percent - not that far below the current level of tertiary participation. And before you begin, the 50 percent target was developed by Major in the 90s, and NOT Blair, and was only ever a target of 50% tertiary, not university, education (and as such not actually that more than the total percentage of tertiary level education particupation in the 80s, which was around 42 percent already by the time the polytechnics were turned into universities).

All these talking-points boomers come out with on the regular were all created as anti-Labour right wing myths peddled by the press in the 2000s.

@FartyPrincess that's a serious amount of money.

It's hurt that her brother was given nice stuff while she wasn't, hurt that they never considered her financial struggles while they spent money on piles of useless crap, and now she's the one left dealing with it all.

We are clearing my mother’s house. It’s exhausting. I asked her, gently, when she was still alive if we could maybe get rid of some of the old furniture in the garage, and her dinner service with 24 place settings. She said I could do it when she died.

I knew she lived very frugally, and had a tiny pension, and assumed she didn’t have much money. One of my cousins used to send her vouchers for her local supermarket. I was astounded when she died to be left over £1 million. I wished she had spent it on making her life better when she was alive.

Her point was that she worked to fund her place, but they paid for her brother.

Maintenance grants were certainly based on parental income in the early 1980s when I went to university. You only got a full grant if you were from a low income household. We were not well off, but my parents' income came in a bit above the limit, so I was very fortunate that they made up my grant to the full amount. Not everyone had that good luck. It was unusual in my day for students to work in term-time, but most of us worked in the summer. Of course, the vast majority of my generation never got to university at all, or even did A levels, so those of us who did get there were very fortunate indeed.

Gosh, that sounds hard, OP. Hard at the best of times to clear out parents' house.

And it sounds like you're dealing with a lot of old feelings, too. A lot to sort through. I hope you find the process cathartic and ultimately healing.

My sibling whispered in elderly parents ear and inherited the house and contents. I was permitted a scrabble about and take a few bits.

Uttlerly devastating. Sorry OP.

I understand your resentment about being treated unequally with your brother. I wonder whether that shaped the way you treat your own DC? It did for me. Not inequality but a general lack of interest in me and my sister.

There is an alternative to house clearance companies. When mum died we got a small local charity who were happy to take virtually everything.
We kept a small box of photos and papers and got rid of everything else.
There was porcelain and other "valuables" , essentially worthless. Neither of us could be bothered with the trouble of selling it though. It was just a relief to get rid.

I'm now pretty ruthless about keeping stuff. Not quite Swedish death clearing but in that direction. I've got rid of 1000s of books, tons of clothes. I hate niknaks and clutter anyway.

You've said what I was going to say, and eloquently.

OP, there's a good deal of unpacking in every sense in the task you're dealing with. Maybe you'll eventually see the work you're doing now as the start of drawing a line under it all, and move forward.

If you find it's affecting you badly and you can't shake it off easily - if it still hurts months from now - try to find a counselor.

Don't feel guilty for feeling the way you do, or for feeling angry, or any other feelings you might perceive as negative or mean spirited. Don't judge yourself.

Agreed. I’m 60 and I couldn’t get the grant as parents were expected to help. Mine wouldn’t so I ended up working in an evening and nights job. I was knackered and got a very ordinary degree as a result.

I think you've inadvertently made OP's point.

She mentions that her parents were born either side of the war, so while rationing, etc, was definitely a "thing" during that time, it wasn't a "thing" that directly affected their purses, but their own parents.

They have, however, made a lifetime of moaning about it, even though it likely didn't actually affect them, yet then had enough disposable income to be frivolous with it, spoiling her DB and latterly themselves, while she juggled working with Uni to make ends meet, thinking that her DPs finances were in a worse state than they were.

Tbh you say about the piles of tut she has accumulated over the years with them one day being ' worth something ' , and mentioned Franklin plates .
As someone who has worked in a charity shop , we groan when they come in , as they takes ages to sell and only go for a £1 or two .
Advice , you have fun smashing them up as you've suggested .