To be so angry sorting out my parents stuff

You are right, my dad wasn't in Costa, he was in the pub every weekday lunchtime and every Saturday afternoon with his B&H.

It's complicated just like it is easy to tell OP to just get a house clearance company is. The reality will be different for everyone. For me I was working, bringing up children and caring for disabled husband. If buying some bits made him happy why not let him. It grew but I had boundaries so nothing in the living room kitchen hall or landing. He has his own study you can hardly move in, a double garage the same, lofts over house and garage and shed. I avoid those places except the times when he was going to sort it all out and I helped. Of course in the end nothing gets sorted just moved.

If he dies first I will sort it as I don't want kids to face it. If I die first I suppose they will just get it cleared.

To be fair to him he has the eye for it, we have at times sold stuff and made thousands, if only he'd do more but it's too late. I don't feel able to go as he couldn't manage alone. Pathetic isn't it.

And why on earth do people not realise that things degrade? And electrical and other safety standards change? Especially children’s items. When we had DD my parents had already been through this realisation with other grandkids, so thankfully they then knew better than to try to give us all the baby stuff they’d been keeping in the loft for thirty to forty years (it’s still there though, as far as I know…) But MIL was desperate to give us all the unsafe cots, bouncers, foam mattresses, highchairs, toys and carseats she had been keeping since the 80s. All rusted, yellowed, cracking, dangerous and wildly out of date. Why did she think we would be able to use them?

Electricals and computers seem to be a particular thing that pensioners/boomers can’t let go of. The mobile coverage-blocking sunbeds upthread make me laugh! When my grandmother died she still had three bag vacuum cleaners from the mid-century, none working, that she’d taken through several house moves just in case someone could “make use” of them…they still had two pin plugs from before three pin plugs came in. Fuses and wires all rusted away. Basic logic would have said these couldn’t be used; but it’s as if everyone of that generation thinks of their loft as an important historical archive for the Geffrye Museum of the Home, rather than a repository for broken junk.

The thing is, as the OP says below, whatever you think you might get from it on eBay or whatever is a bit of an illusion. First because those kinds of collectibles are overpriced on eBay and don’t sell for the prices they are put on at anyway. Easy to get excited because people have their mum’s Lilliput Lane collection on eBay listed at £300; but if you look at what actually sells, the ones that sell make a couple of quid. Everyone’s doing the same, and just waiting for that sucker who wants that exact thing and will pay that exact price, but in reality there’s not really a market for this stuff so you could be waiting for years.

Second, because eBay selling generally takes ages - months or years to clear stuff like that, and in the meantime you have to store it, so it’s cluttering up your space instead which you try to sell it. Then if you cost your time in photographing, listings, managing your eBay account, packing things up and trips to post office, etc., it takes up a huge amount of both time and mental headspace. Often the money you make, after PayPal fees and so on, is not really worth your time listing and selling it. If you had no job and nothing else to do all day it might be worth doing for the money, but if you don’t have much time, it isn’t cost effective to spend it doing this for little joy and very little return.

Third, as above, it’s a long process that takes up your time and mental load for ages in contacting dealers, cleaning and storing things, listing them, waiting to sell them, in the meantime taking stuff to charity shops and the tip and everything else. It’s a slog; exhausting! You could spend a year clearing a house of things like this (and probably at a time when you need to get a house sold for either probate or care home fees, and just haven’t got that time.) In the end you might as well give it all or throw it all away, because the money you’d make compared to the time and effort you spend, and the emotional and physical stress of having all of this fill up your own mind and time.

It really is falling right into the same trap to think you can recoup money for stuff like this. That what led to it all being hoarded in the first place! And then all that stuff is just going to occupy your house, and your life, while you try to fruitlessly make tiny bits of money back from it. A recipe for your parents’ folly and their hoarding dominating your own life for years from beyond the grave. Awful!

If you want to smash it or just chuck it, go for it. It's not your fault you've been lumbered with valueless crap, and it's better you don't burden a charity shop with the costs of disposal.

We had a heck of a job clearing out my late in-laws place. It took us over a year and we still had to call in a house clearance company at the end. Even then it took them over twelve hours of constant work. Again, it was a huge amount of “stuff” and pretty much every gadget from the 70s onwards. On the plus side, we did finally work out why the mobile signal was so terrible in certain places, turns out that loft based 1980’s sunbeds are great call blockers 😂. I’m determined that I won’t put our son through similar, because it was draining.

Exactly!!

Omg the amount of times I've encouraged my DF to just try and start clearing out or even just indicating which things were or weren't valuable, wanted etc. honestly, you've got NO idea

Dinner sets omg no. I’m stuck with 4 box’s of over 100 pieces of the royal Albert country rose set. It’s now worth pence. -
saucers - loads of em - all really old pieces but yet again now worth next to nowt
slyvac pottery - box’s of it- once was valuable not anymore.
Staffordshire pottery - omg these 2 dogs are down right creepy had them valued worth something but nobody wants them.
other random pottery some bits are a good 70yr plus old but year again it’s just clutter now that nobody wants.
iv box’s with all sorts in and no idea what to do with it- can’t sell it so might just go on a smash de stress spree with it all.
singer sewing machine can’t even give it away. Due to age and size of it. - it’s one of the treadle ones.

I can assure you we have tried and my parents, like many others, were sold and believed this lie. Reinforced by daytime TV. And yet still I try.

Wow I had no idea about this but it makes sense.

It’s a bit of a wake up call for me, I have a tendency to hoard clothes and home/kitchen paraphernalia.

I need to start a clear out.

You might recoup some of the money that you feel you were wrongly deprived of.

It won't recoup the sense of hurt and unfairness though.

Not to sound insensitive OP, but are you sure you're doing the right thing in taking all the stuff to the tip? A lot of the retro 90's toys, computers etc can be worth a lot of money. Wouldn't it be better to check how much the stuff is worth and then sell on eBay etc? You might recoup some of the money that you feel you were wrongly deprived of.

This. I have a huge amount of sympathy for anyone having to deal with this. But the reality is my DM preferred belongings to people and memories. It makes me very sad when I think about it.

Agreed. My dm and a couple of friends have no problem sending items to me that I don't want and charity shop or bin but wouldn't part with them otherwise. It's like they need a middleman, as though they're not really letting it go if they give it to me, even though they'll never see it again.
Dm agonised over getting rid of a purse i bought her years ago that she used once. I told her I bought it thinking it would be useful to her, but obviously it wasn't as she didn't need it (as evidenced by its one time use) and why would I buy her something so she could feel bad every time she looked at it- pass it to someone who will!

Except several posters have tried to help parents before they were too old and when they were and haven't been allowed. It's frustrating for people even if you havent experienced it or felt that way if you have.

Please have some sympathy for the partners of hoarders.

I have a lot of sympathy for them, but I do sometimes wonder why they stick around. Setting aside the physical discomforts, it can't be very life-enhancing when the person who is supposed to love you won't prioritise you over a bunch of stuff.

My mother passed last Oct. She had never been part of my life due to refusal to parent. I was an inconvenience to her. So after an interesting phone call from the police in another county. I went down to sort out her mess. The house was a 1970 time warp. There was nothing new in it this side of the 80s. It was horrible, but what broke my heart the most was. My dad died over 30yr ago when I was a teen. After years of asking for photos and things of his she told me she had nothing of his. For they were divorced not long after I was born. What did I find but thousands of photos of my dad that she had told me for my whole life they didn’t exist. She had blatantly lied to me. I’m still trying to get rid of the last of the crap. At some point in time it’s was all classed as valuable antiques but now it’s just worthless crap cause nobody likes it anymore.

Show them Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon on the Beeb.

@Waitfortheguinness the issue is they shouldn’t have let it get that bad in first place and decluttered while they were able to do it. My MIL has been saying since her mid 50s she’s downsizing and will die living in a horribly cluttered mostly uninhabitable house. She hasn’t let us in for years. She’s resistant to any offers to help eg we’ve offered to get a skip. BIL took time off work and she faffed and procrastinated.
My mum in contrast takes a bag to charity shop regularly by bus, donates to church or school sales eg unwanted toiletries and often says to me she’s sat sorting paperwork if it’s been too bad weather to go out.
No one is saying sit in bare house but one person doesn’t need piles of stuff often broken or inaccessible. Better to have a few nice things they can see and enjoy than boxes upon boxes of stuff often damp and deteriorating.
Plus quality of life. If you can’t go home after a fall as you can’t use a walker due to clutter or refuse to let nurse in it’s so sad and unnecessary.

Please have some sympathy for the partners of hoarders. I've been telling my husband for years that I won't always be able to crawl around in the loft getting stuff for him. I've spent years trying to sort things out but I've realised I'm doing the equivalent of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I honestly don't know what to do, I can still get up in the loft but I'm in my 70s and won't be able to do it forever.

My plan, if I outlive him, is that I will hire a local handyman who has done a few jobs for us to come and empty the loft and garages and shed and help me put the majority of stuff in a skip and I will then try to sell the other stuff. Even that has a time limit on it. I have to be honest and say I try not to think about it as it is so depressing.

Some people really struggle with the idea that an item doesn't have any value. They use charity shops and reluctant relatives to try and assuage their guilt about throwing things away.

I counted 17 dusty bottles of bubble bath in my (perfectly capable of carrying things to the bin) mum’s bathroom the other day.

I do know people who have decided to have a clear out but do so by palming their stuff on to other people. One, in particular, was very insistent that their things were going to be useful to the person they wanted to take them and she was quite upset when the person said that there was no way they had room for it. It's easy to overestimate how valuable or useful something will be to someone else (like a set of encyclopedia) - particularly if they cost quite a lot.