House clearance heartache

Oh some of these stories are heartbreaking 😢

@antelopevalley you must still be in shock.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow the individual crumbles 😢

My mum moved house this year to something more manageable, she's in her 80s and is generally in good health but she can get a bit confused and forgetful.

We did all the house moving stuff for her and I'm ashamed to say I did get frustrated as she couldn't make a decision about anything when I asked if an item was "to keep or to throw out". My lovely OH took me aside and said "just pack everything and don't ask her, it's too much emotionally for her to cope with". He was right. That's what we did, the plan being that she or us can work our way through boxes when there is less pressure.

Feeling motivated to sort my own home I set about it all guns blazing when I got back but I've stalled, it's so bloody hard!!!! So many sentimental things I want to hold onto. Solidarity to all of you on this thread.

Oh, @ArseInTheCoOpWindow , it's little personal things like that that just kill you. 😢

It’s awful. I have a ‘crying’ box in the loft full of stuff from my mum’s house.

The hardest thing was throwing away the little individual apple crumbles she’d made for herself in the freezer. That and her scones😢

I have a box of Mum's diaries and don't know what to do with them either. They take up space. I have read them and find them fascinating fond memories starting the year I was born. I have nobody to pass them onto so guess I will have to shred them one day, just not yet. She has been gone 8 years but I still find comfort in reading her thoughts.

Janice Turner's account is incredibly loving and moving - it mirrored my own experience almost exactly, and I found it really helpful during the weeks of sorting and remembering and trying to discard.

OP, do what you need to do to get you through it. DSis and I ate a LOT of Lindor.

Oh, I finally found the Lionel Shriver column -- it was in The Telegraph on Oct 3 and pops up if you do an internet search for her name, the newspaper and that date.

There's also a nice column by Janice Turner on "the pain of clearing my parents’ house" from 19 September 2019 in The Times.

Oh my goodness, how tragic. I can't imagine the grief.

My mum died 5 years ago. She kept a diary for years and years. I have them all in a box in the loft. Don't really want to read them - but have dipped in and out. I don't know what to do with them as they are so personal.

It is awful. My parents both died in a car crash earlier this year. We had to clear it in two weeks as it is a council house, literally the day after they died we had to start. I am still not over it.

It’s the most awful thing to have to do, I’ve kept quite a few of my parent’s things that are no good to me really but I can’t bring myself to throw. I’m trying to be brutal with my own stuff so my boys don’t have the same problem.

Sis and I did this two years ago when mum died.
All the furniture and contents were donated to a local charity .
The personal stuff.
Mountains of photos.
I guess most young parents no longer have printed photos?
I kept the historic ones, my parents youth, grand and great grandparents. The bulk of it though was thrown away. Pictures of dogs, holidays and grandchildren.
The sentimental things are difficult because our first born's first shoes really only matter to the parent. So I got rid of all that.
I kept her butterfly broaches and the house name that was carved into a rock from Iona.

DH and I are planning to move next year and I will take the opportunity to declutter.

I have found this thread comforting. My god have i felt guilty at vetting rid of things.

OP - just sending you some solidarity. I'm in a very similar situation - my mum kept everything greetings card, letter and photo. It has been so much and I've had to throw 95% of it out. It's so hard.

Sending you lots of virtual hugs. (((((()))))) I had to do this earlier this year and it was heartbreaking.

Try to keep reminding yourself that you have already got the most important things your parents were able to give: love, family stories, memories, recipes perhaps. (I emphasise "were able": some weren't very able, but they're not going to be more able to give at 92...)

In some ways I thought it helped that I had to do it alone and very fast. Though my siblings wouldn't help, at least we didn't argue about who got what or how to handle things.

But on top of everything else, I really felt like a thief for taking the (few) valuable items and a destroyer for breaking up the house... Lionel Shriver, who wrote We Have to Talk about Kevin, had a column about just this in the Times about a month ago which reminded me so many of us do go through this and so many of us find it upsetting.

Had to do the same a couple of years ago when my mum went into a home.

Got masses of stuff in boxes in my loft that I've no use for but just couldn't face getting rid of , we are not big on photos so there's only a couple of albums that are in the sideboard .

I tried to detach myself from it all when I was clearing the house out but then you find something and it gets very emotional for a bit

I was left with a huge cardboard box full of a lifetime's photographs and only one had anything written on it so I knew who it was - or, to be precise what it was. I have no clue who owned Otto the dog though.

I'm doing this at the moment. Currently sitting in my dads chair listening to his radio station flicking through his old work newsletters in case he’s in any of them. We’ve been able to take our time doing it all which is great. So glad we didn’t have to rush.

I live in the UK and family home is in Ireland. It will be really strange for me not to have this house to come back to. I left home in 1987 but have always had this as my ‘home’ even though my home is elsewhere. This always feels like home.

I did this earlier this year. My DSis and I had to dismantle our family home, which had also become the storage unit for our parents' parents' stuff. In some ways it was more emotionally bruising than their (sudden, separate) deaths: it took longer, it required immediate and impossible decisions, it felt like I was throwing away their treasures. I am glad beyond measure that I'll never have to do it again. and for you.

We're going though this at the moment, op. My dad died a few years ago and now my mum has dementia so trying to do bits like her paperwork while I can still go in and give her a kiss after crying. They left little notes to themselves about plans for the future, and mum had done a college course which involved her analysis of her feelings about certain tasks. She wrote so clearly and well and now can't write her own name properly. It really is heart-breaking.
She was a great collector of antiques and bits and bobs, and I can remember the stories behind them that she'd tell me about how she found them and what they were. How will I ever choose what to keep? Anything I get rid of will feel like a betrayal. 😪

I had to to do this for Uncles house. All photos and papers in one big storage box. When you start removing them from envelopes , plastic , it really does get smaller. Lots of ornaments, bubble wrapped and labeled. Use your discretion, fine china, keep , crap from Disney or Spanish holiday, dump.

Clothes , household goods , furniture can be donated . Not good enough ,? Dump in recycling .

When I had to clear my parents house during lockdown 1, 80 miles away, I rented a storage unit near me. Things then got divided into 4 groups - things my brother wanted for sure, things I wanted, things no one would want, and unsure/needed selling/paperwork/ needed sorting through. The last group all came back to the storage unit and then I could work through the boxes and boxes of photos and so on - then things only came into my house when I knew they were staying or going into the required paperwork files.
It was really hard though as they hadnt sorted from their parents and three of my great aunts so there was huge amounts of stuff

I had to clear my childhood home after DM's death (DF had died 2 years earlier). Thankfully none of the furniture was the sort I'd have wanted so it either went to the charity shop or the tip. We cleared the entire place in a weekend - which was no mean feat as there was over 50 years worth of stuff - they threw very little away.
All the photos and paperwork I put into big plastic tubs and brought home to sift through (night after night in front of the tv). I got rid of all photos of scenery from holidays they'd been on and of places I didn't recognise - so that got rid of quite a lot. I did keep one or two things that I remembered them having for many years (some were wedding presents I think) and they are still here at my house - but we've got the space for them. I imagine they'll go when we either downsize or die though as they won't mean anything to our DS.
It's a tough job but I think you have to be realistic. Taking photos of items so you still have the memories is a good tool - definitely did that with some of the ornaments.

I took a few photos to my Mum , in a tin. We had a good chat about the photos , family .
My Mum was (still is) a hoarder . Trying to get her to part with things was a nightmare . She's in a Residential Home so cannot have too many things .
We gave her her Wedding Bible (my Mum had dozens of Bibles , we found a huge trunk of them too !)

When we were trying to clear things and getting to the stage where we'd done enough for now , she used to joke "You can hire a skip when I;m gone"
I'd say "Make that 2"

We had to empty the house when Dad died , we're 8 hours away . My Brother did much of it .

Some things are easy to get moved on. Clothes can be recycled .
Momentoes and photos are trickier .

yes to this! Decluttering is not as easy as social media suggests, particularly when things have such a big sentimental and emotional attachment.

we were encouraged to take photos to elderly relative.
Also agree about paying someone to scan old photos for you.
And if there are sentimental things but have no place anyway, photograph those too. Just as we'd do with mountains of children's artwork apart from one or two really special ones. Then there's a record of it.
Also had to help elderly relative to pack up to downsize. So many things that took her so long to pour over that it became very upsetting for her to chuck it all or find homes for it to a deadline.
In the end we suggested that the stuff that needed "going thru" was moved into temporary storage.. so that she could get a box out regularly and go through it.
Maybe that is what you could do with things that could be sold or gifted. but would take too much time at the moment.

I have done this twice and it's so awful to do.

It encouraged DH and I to have a huge clear out at home and, a couple of years later, move to a nice modern and spacious flat.

Our adult children will be grateful.