To ask if you would bin this stuff from my mother house

[SinisterBumFacedCat]

Sorry, this is very long. My DM has Alzheimer’s and moved into a care home last year. It’s been heartbreaking really. I’ve been all over the Dementia and Elderly parents threads over the last few years looking for advice. For a long time she was like my best friend, we used to go clubbing together even. However my brain has shut off a lot of my old memories of the nice times and all I can associate with her now is stressful visits and her sharp decline. It’s horrendous.
Meanwhile I have been clearing her house out for possible renting/selling to help pay for care costs. I feel like it’s taken me ages to do, I‘ve had all sorts of health issues and Covid twice. Also Mum was the world’s tidiest hoarder so the first chunk of sorting was generally getting rid of rubbish she’d refused to throw away and things she’d brought multiple times. I also had to clear out a lot of my deceased stepdad’s stuff she’d never gone through. The furniture has finally gone off to good homes. I’m now down to the most emotional stuff that I’ve purposefully left till last, a lot of it I can’t bring myself to chuck out of guilt however I’m limited on space in my house, I have enough of my own life admin to go through and chuck out. I keep imagining my son going through all my stuff one day and thinking, why did she keep all this junk?! So I wanted to ask what you would keep if it was your Mum? Baring in mind, she is still alive, and although she’s not going to make some miracle recovery and return home it’s not the same as clearing out a dead relative’s possessions, so what would you do with the following:

Old diaries-going right back to when she was a child to just before she got ill.

Old school books and projects of hers.

Projects she did for fun as a kid (little books/unfinished short historical stories)

Letters between my teenage parents (cringey but also very sweet) old long dead family members and friends she lost touch with over the years, plus lots of letters from an ex boyfriend.

Letters and telegrams from my Nans correspondence with long dead relatives from many years ago

My Nans collection of greetings cards! Actually some of these are properly beautiful 1950’s Christmas cards I definitely want to keep

Film negatives of photos, no idea if I have the prints but it would be a big job to match up

A crate of notes my Mum made whilst researching her family history. She produced a final document for everyone in the family with all the important information in. But this crate is full of folders of notes (all in pencil), maps, old documents that feel exhausted looking at.

Amongst this stuff I have found a few gems, letters from my paternal grandfather who died when I was a baby, so I have no memory of but he sounded so lovely. Postcards of old seaside towns in the 1980s that take me right back to childhood holidays. But I’m very aware that one day my DS will be sorting through my stuff and wonder why I’ve kept 3 generations of stuff. Would you chuck it all or keep any of the above?

I kept all the things that you describe until she passed away. She had my Dad's diaries, some letters and ornaments in her room in her nursing home. The rest I had a few large boxes and just stacked everything in there and kept it. I was really worried in case she suddenly wanted something. She also really deteriorated but I still worried she would want something of her in a lucid moment.

However, when she passed away I just kept a very few special things. A couple of pieces of jewellery that I'll pass on to the my DC, I kept her diaries as one of my son's wanted them to read family history, some photos, that sort of thing. For myself I kept 1 ornament that really reminds me of her, and that was it. I didn't keep Dad's letters to her, they felt too private (didn't read them, it felt too personal). It's about 2 boxes worth.

My mum and I really enjoyed looking through these sorts of things after my nan died of alzhemiers. It was really nice once she was gone to look through these memories and was a reminder of who she really was before we lost her brain and personality to dementia. When she was alive it wasn't possible to remember the old (real) her. But when she had died we were able to forget those last years and look back at the person we used to have and these sorts of things really facilitated that. Personally I'd box them up and maybe put in storage until she has passed away. Then you can look at them, re-remind yourself of your mum without dementia (right now doing that is heartbreaking but once she's no longer with you I promise that will be a pleasure to do). You can always destroy them after that. Just my personal experience though.

When my mother died I couldn't bear to throw personal things out. I've returned to them every now and then and binned things and shredded all the personal things in bits and pieces.

I've framed it as not knowing people involved or being nothing to do with me or if things were mine I wouldn't want others to read them..

Ten years later I still feel a pang but it's all for the best.

I’m sorry I would keep all of that. Come on! Your mum’s diaries!!!
Research of your family history!

If any of it could be of historical value, your local archives might be interested.

This - absolutely.

I think it will bring you immense comfort.

I'd keep it. You might want to go through it all properly at a later date and you can probably scan most of it into digital format. Maybe a retirement project.

Your dc might be interested in the family history themselves later on.

I would keep the journals and love letters..

Take photos of the rest and then bin them.

Let’s be honest, if you don’t bin it your children will. Unless there’s anything of particular significance you could donate to a museum I’d just get rid of it in one lot, you’ll feel guilty for a little bit but I doubt you’ll look back in 10 years and say ‘I wish I had those old negatives of people I never knew’.

I don’t think I would have the heart to throw a lot of that away.

I would love to read through things like this of my grandmother etc.

I don't think you can just assume the next generation won't be interested - lots of people love tracing their family trees and finding out about their long-dead relatives, otherwise Ancestry and all those programmes about "who are you" wouldn't be popular.

I had exactly the same, OP after my DM died. Don't feel you have to do all this at once. At the very minimum keep her diaries (fantastic), letters and cards, and photos. Taking them to yours does not mean they will necessarily be there forever, but it will give you more time to process your loss of your DM as she was. I wouldn't rush these decisions. It took me a long time to deal with all my DM's personal stuff - give yourself a break and come back to it next year or the year after. You will do it long before your DS will be looking at your stuff!

Would you bin diaries of your grandparents going back to their childhoods?! Perhaps dating from a century ago or more? Surely not. I would throw out any amount of my own recently purchased “stuff”
to make room for something so individual and irreplaceable.

Of course we don’t know the OP’s children but it’s genuinely impossible for me to imagine anyone binning something like that.

Go away.

Please don't bin! Have you got a space you can keep them until you feel ready to look through them and decide more objectively what you want to keep? It feels painful at the moment but it will help with your memories of her one day. Ps I should say I am brutal with belongings and definitely not a hoarder but these are special things.

I've got a box full of photos of my Victorian great grandparents, great aunts, and uncles who were killed in the war, none of whom I knew, but they are incredibly precious to me. My daughter and two nephews all ask to look through them from time to time and I'm certain they will be valued once I've died.

Not only would I but I have! There was something that was part of local history and that was donated to the local library, but otherwise it all went, we didn’t know the people in the photos or where they were taken and where does it end, will my great grandchildren have to have a storage locker for 200 years of diaries and photos?

Ah no I couldn’t, I’d keep it all. Apart from the notes relating to the family tree.

Deleting this as I replied to myself while meaning to reply to another poster 🤦‍♀️

This. This thread is eye-opening to me. I thought I had struck gold by finding artefacts from some ancestors, including all the kinds of things mentioned here. It literally never occurred to me that many other people had struck gold in the same way, or even more so, and got rid of it all.

With OP it’s her mother, still living, and the OP is currently in grief so it’s not the same situation. But I am certain someone in her family will one day value these things, even if they’re too close for comfort to the OP herself.

Wow I read the items and think they sounds lovely. I just couldn't bib then, not whilst she is alive. Let her browse them at her care home.

Photos maybe if you couldn’t identify them, but were the diaries not of interest as documents of daily lives from the past? And if they were your grandparents you did know them probably?

We are all just very different I guess! I would personally kill to have a storage locker of 200 years’ worth of family diaries and photos 🤓But I am realising from this thread there’s a very wide range of opinions on this.

I’m afraid I would too OP. I was all set to say bin it to every item but those are real treasures.

Why not go through it with your son and then he will know exactly what it is and won’t have the job of sifting through it all alone. Up to him if he decides to move it on but you haven’t left him with an onerous job.

Worst case scenario some of it must be interesting to folk museum type places. I can see those school books being displayed in a recreation of a period schoolroom. Please don’t bin them anyway.

Oh God I massively disagree with some of the posters. I absolutely wouldn't bin her diaries and letters. No way. They're so special. They tell you who she was.

Tbh I wouldn't chuck any of what you've listed. And I am in no way a hoarder. But some things are too special. That's your mum. You'll be able to imagine her voice as you re read the diaries one day.

If your kids want to chuck them one day that's their decision but I think you'd regret it.