Hoarder in-laws want us to inherit their stuff

That is so sad.

Absolutely this, get a house clearance/auction house to take the lot,you won't have to do a thing,it will be auctioned and sold they take commisions etc,but worth it that you don't have to touch it !
I would make this very clear yo them before they pass

Just smile and nod. After the last inlaw passes just go with DH and look to see if there is anything sentimental he might want to keep. Look for photos from his childhood. Then call in as removal company. They will charge you to remove it but the cost can be set against their estate. If there are larger things you like but don't have room for just take a photo of them.

YRNBU! Just make it absolutely clear to your husband you're not having anything from that house after they pass away. I made a mistake of accepting my in laws trash (old mechanic junk) and that led to me being a monster if I say no to more "memorabilia".

Absolutely not! No! Nyet! Nain!

Those saying "decline the inheritance" and the landlord has to take responsibility: isn't that as morally questionable as leaving the mess in the first place? So the hoarder abrogated their responsibilities in terms of cleaning up their mess, and then you are abrogating your responsibility as next of kin and leaving a stranger to sort it out.

Yes, for most people it’s clutter.

The elderly friend that I mentioned above keeps her flat spotless…but there is literally no place to move in her living room. She has to remove the items in her bath before she can use it.

Her kitchen worktops are covered with non-kitchen items - a doll’s house for example. She used to make dioramas and doll’s houses for charity, but cannot bear to give them away.

We have seen that dynamic play out several times. I think most of us are pretty astute at working out the energy from all parties!
Looking after stuff takes energy and 100% in our anecdotal survey I see men not taking responsibility, just piling on guilt.
Do what you can and plan to accelerate later.
I would absolutely love to inherit 2 of every side plate that my parents ever owned could you persuade DH that everything else can go?
That the camping stuff/kids toys/old tools should be in use, else where now?
We should have had my dad's shed contents 15 years ago, it would have been genuinely useful. He could have borrowed it back. Instead we bought stuff and our kids are too generation rent to need it for another decade.

I answered earlier about getting a clearance company as other people have suggested.
However, I notice from later posts that there is confusion between real hoarders who live in total squalor, and elderly people who have a lot of clutter.
As a retired person myself, I keep telling my DH and DC not to keep buying us stuff, and that I want to try to de clutter in readiness to move to a smaller or retirement house (hopefully not yet a care home). But my DH is still in denial about his age, though he complains about others who died leaving a house full of clutter.
I have become more aware that items I may have accumulated over a lifetime mean nothing to my DC, and there's loads of stuff we no longer use.
But it is harder when there are two of you, and the other person does not see things the same way.

I grow seeds in mine. My response is the same though. If you don't want to be bothered to go through the stuff, get clearance in or decline the inheritance.

Do you have...... old royalist memorabilia from royal weddings etc? Super valuable.

I think MIL even has some very old whisky from one of those - that one might actually be valuable. I bet therefore she's actually thrown it away! hahahaha.

She's in the process of moving. I can't wait to see what actually turns up at her new place vs what she had removed by a clearance company!

Um, they will probably be inheriting the house with its contents. If the will says they get the contents but the house goes to the local cat home then I'd walk away, sure. Not usually the case though.

You might not want to deal with the contents, but for a six-digit sum you'll probably do it or pay someone else to. So there's little point in trying to "state clearly" anything here, as if you're in charge!

this

You are not being selfish. It is a huge job to clear a whole house and you do not have the space. You and your DH have already explained that you do not want the items. I would state clearly again that you cannot take responsibility for sorting or storing their belongings. What they choose to do with their things is up to them.

I am kind of confused about this, no one has to buy into their elders’ stories about their stuff, are people saying that their elders should change the way they live and their life choices while they are alive because their children want the to? Is it less sad to lose a loved one because they destroyed their old cheque books?

But the point, hidden in my rant, was alongside the physicality of the task but the emotions that some people, like my parents attach and share with beneficiaries.
The one leaving these hoards often aren't silent about them.
I mean I love my le crueset saucepan but I'm not telling the kids a full on emotional journey including the future I have dreamed for it during generations yet to be born.
My in-laws have enough precious items with complicated back stories and future dreams for multiple HBO box sets.

Buy them a copy of 'Nobody Wants Your Shit: the art of decluttering before you die' by Messie Condo

Having had to clear out my Dad's belongings after he died (including such things as cheque book tubs going back to the 1950's, ordinance survey maps of every area of the country, copies of Scientific American also going bakc to 1950's etc.) I promised my kids I would never leave them with that kind of task, It is utterly depressing to have to go through all this stuff when you are grieving and brings up all sorts of emotions, sadness and guilt.

My Dad was a POW and I think it instilled in him a felling of every little thing has to be saved just in case of emergencies, but I have no excuse and as I get older i find I need and want less and less 'stuff' . Ultimately I would be very selfish to leave it all for my kids. (My XH when we were married brought home virtually the entire contents of his mum's house when she died and insisted on putting out all her old ornaments, using all her cutlery and bed linen. I felt as if my home had been totally invaded and wasn;t my place any more.

We had a hoarder in the family. They died recently and so much has had to be given away to charity shops. It’s very time consuming. The stuff they thought would sell was worthless. I am clearing as we speak.

It took about 5 years and only got sorted because she went into a home.

"It was no more hassle than we were willing to allow"

This is it in a nutshell. Either you huff and puff about how hard work it is, you get on with it yourself with a skip and a van, you pay someone else to do it or you can walk away from the whole lot any time you want. No one is obliged to clear someone else's stuff up.

I spent best part of a day clearing someones house while another relative who was "there to help" spent all the time huffing and puffing about how crowded it was and how dirty it was and how much of a hoarder the person was while spending all their time drinking coffee and doing the square root of fa.

Meanwhile I just got on with smashing up (crap) furniture and putting stuff in a skip and got the whole lot sorted in a day pretty much single handed.

Most of these things are as much of a problem as you want to make them.

But you didn't have to do that.

It's not even the quantity of stuff. It was the nagging memories of parents talking at me about their previous possessions that did my head in.
It wasn't the joy of finding one of every dinner service plate they'd owned. It was looking under a king-size bed and finding it absolutely stuffed along with the sideboard, the other cupboard and the garage with 12 sets of midwinter, 16 of pyrex, 8 eternal beau, 40 plates from various spode., the previous stuff, the rere stuff, the it was a present, I never liked it comments. It was the cake stands, the cruet sets and gravy boats for entertaining that never happened because tidying the house was so much effort.
It was being told by my parents, and people on the internet, that it was worth a lot of money.
The space would have been worth more, me earning money, rather than wasting leave googling how much then driving it to auction houses and charity shops and having to book the tip.

You need a car and time to respectfully clear a house. I just want to grieve my parents, not argue with siblings over who was promised something or who suddenly has the fondest memories.

My parents never enjoyed the ridiculous number of boxes piled up in every cupboard and wardrobe
Turning their home into a depository made their day to day life harder without doubt.

oh so they did help but it took a while?

It took absolutely ages. Years in fact.

Collecting or even owning a lot of one type of item because it is your interest (like I said above DVDs, books, vinyls) is NOT the same as hoarding. Nor is owning a lot of things if you have a big house.