To be so angry sorting out my parents stuff

[DazedorBemused]

I've just cleared another carload of stuff from my parents attic. They were born either side of WW2, and talked. Talked so much about rationing, poverty, striking, unions, etc.
My brother was occasionally ill as a child. To compensate he had fancy Lego, computers when they first came out, hand held video games.
The contrast between his pricy toys and my enjoy your family board game type stuff is obvious.
Then my parents got into collecting stuff - porcelain, dinner services, up scaled their Christmas decorations again and again.

I'm sorting through all this stuff and finding receipts for expensive trivial stuff in the early 90s when I was at uni, working two term time jobs and full-time in the holidays and I'm a 50 year old woman upset at having to go to the tip again.

I'd like to reply to everyone but I really have to switch off for a bit. And I also don't want to repeat my parents voices which are pretty loud at the moment.
They would consider the will fair it's 50/50.
Nothing individual for my 20 something kids, the only GCs.
When I got married, they paid for my dress and a buffet (2k) and gave my brother 10k for a house deposit because he didnt have a deposit saved and his then girlfriend they adored and wanted to settle down. It didn't work out.
They then gave him a similar amount for the next girlfriend. I was apparently fine because my DH was a steady earner ( although a low paid sector) and we'd already bought a part share.
Five years ago, it all fell apart again and yes bro needed a considerable amount because his employment was so bad he couldn't get a mortgage.

This is not addressed in the will, instead I get the privilege of the house clearance and the grey area if I keep or declare the proceeds from the limited edition clock plates.

I feel I should warn anyone thinking of dating a 50 something Manchild with the sun shining out his arse to run away.

That’s not true though, is it? I didn’t call OP irrational at all.

I said Im not sure grief is ever entirely rational though, and brings up emotions that have been buried deep. I hope you’re OK OP..

You are either reading something very different into it, or just trying to pick a fight. I really don’t think the latter is appropriate.

Well there you have it. He is the Golden Child and you are the Utility Child. You are expected to take care of yourself and also your parents and brother . Your time and energy are also for them to use. You must be useful. He is loved and gifted with things because he matters.

Can you keep of note of your mileage and expenses and charge to the estate - after all your golden child brother isn’t bothering himself to do his half of the work in sorting and clearing

Hurling the junk china into a skip would be so satisfying!

I agree with choosing what you/others may want to keep and house clearance company for the rest.

We have just been helping DM after her husband passed away. Wardrobes and wardrobes of clothes, boxes of papers. He spent a mint on holidays but it was his money to spend, and DM got to go places she wouldn't have otherwise.

We took about 12 bags to the local hospice charity shop last week.

Shredded years of paperwork too.

I think there's an awful lot I don't know and I'm going to ask DH to handle the bank statements from the last few years. I can't change any thing.

And I just repeat, they were a product of their time, never easy, took decisions based on what they knew at the time. And I am still angry. And sad.

It has made me a better parent to my own kids. And I fully embrace Swedish Death Cleaning principles with a hefty dose of minimalism

Her parents were born either side of WW2 so 1930s 40s. Boomers is a misnomer.
It covers far too wide a span. Children born 1940s would have been wrenched from their families and evacuated to live with strangers. 1940s chidren experienced real shortages and traumatised parents. University education was rare. Many unis discriminated against women e.g. Oxbridge, Medical Courses. School leaving age had just risen from 14 to 15. The vast majority of children went to Secondary Moderns and had no opportunity to take exams at 16, let alone A levels or Degrees. There was a huge shortage of teachers, partly because a lot if men had died in WW2 or were traumatised and also because the policy pre WW2 was to sack women who married. Women couldn't get mortgages or fill in their own tax form if married. My cousin taught uncertificated in Salford. Uncertificated teachers were supposed to only have half a class. She had 90. My class in supposedly one of the best primaries in Manchester had 56 children.
The past is a foreign country.

It was used more by boomers than any other generation - to do quals part-time, for women, for retraining, just for interest and for the sake of education (I know; how quaint!) - but also it was the easiest and most affordable way to do a lot of vocational training diplomas in, for example, social work, policing, accounting, all sorts of stuff, often not necessarily degree level but higher vocational, and these courses were often paid for by employers rather than the student.

For boomer-age women in particular it was fantastic as a route for re-entering the workplace when older.

And it was very affordable until the full tuition fees rise: since then it charges the full £9+k cost like any other university.

Good grief talk about cold. I would do the solicitor for executor. Leave it all to good causes and none of it to them!

Me too!

My DPs died within 12 months of each other. They had a 4 bedroom house that was full of papers (they were both academics & I had about 60 years-worth of papers, theses, research papers etc to get rid of) clothes, books, photographs and general STUFF. It took months to sort through and get dispose of. I only discovered Wills 6 months after they died as they were in a pile of general papers and, if I hadn't been so careful about sorting through, I'd have thrown them away.

I am gradually sorting through my stuff getting rid of things that will be of no interest to my DS. I have categorised, dated, labelled the photos and filed them into a smallish box getting rid of duplicates and pictures of people who he wouldn't know of, sorted through clothes that I no longer have a use for & sent them to charity shops and am now selling the majority of my Art Deco ceramic collection on EBay. I have all my important documents in a file clearly labelled.

I don't want to leave the kind of mess for my DS that my DPs left for me.

Take Care dear OP. Julia Samuels talks some sense about grief.

As an aside , boomer her. Skint boomer with an adult child reappeared in the house. Beware silly generalizations.

@ElizaMulvil what an interesting post.

Sorry for your loss OP. Go and get some therapy, it really works. My parents are a similar age as yours and still alive, they were both brought up in very privileged homes and have spent everything. Lots of holidays, never had mortgages so didn’t have ‘big jobs’ just enjoyable ones. Didn’t save for their own futures and just spent their inheritances. I’ve not had any money, no house deposit, paid for both my very small weddings myself. I’m not bitter though. I am very independent and self sufficient, of course they now want me to do the care heavy lifting which I will do. I’ve worked through all my resentment of my older sibling being the golden child and everything that goes with it. I have also just found out that the sibling is in line for another massive inheritance which I am excluded from as that’s ’our culture’. I feel hurt but I can’t do anything about any of the past and I just focus on my future with my little family. You can move past this.

Talk to a local house clearance company, not all that stuff should go to tge tip. Even if you get a few £00 for it, it'll be better than endless trips to tge tip.

Also, you're not the only one whose parents favoured one kid over you. Your child is hurt, but to move on you as an adult need to move past it. Remember, lingering anger is only hurting you - you are the only person that feels and suffers your anger, occasionally those you're angry with might sense it, but they def don't feel it or suffer it.

Sending a hug from a middle child who like you got shafted for an older brother and younger sister all their life! But I'm fine with it, it's not on me it's on them....

@DazedorBemused
I am totally in awe of you! I have just sorted my parents estate and sold their house. Same generation as your parents. I couldn't do the house clearance it was too emotionally draining.
I paid someone a lot of money to do it for me.

I did have to go through about 10 years of bank statements for inheritance tax reasons. I started to get annoyed that my parents had so much money and never offered me anything like a deposit for a flat. They didn't work hard for their house they were given it. My mum had more money in her current account when she died than I have ever had in savings. And Holy Moley her income from pension was a decent amount.

It's a tricky thing doing what you have you are much stronger than I was.

Thank you, another very interesting fact I've learned today!

I want to thank everyone for these fascinating posts. My 92 year old parents have a lot that needs dealing with and this has caused me to reflect on the importance of downsizing at some point myself (64) so my dds don’t have to deal with it. My father has a large collection of actual antiqities which he hasn’t been able to sell off and which I can’t afford the taxes on. This has rather focused my mind on the uselessness of everything.

I think i went into house owning and decorating rather naively—my dd’s generation will have smaller spaces and less security. My “stuff” —no matter how beautiful—will have nowhere to go and no easy resale value.

My DM (born 1940) was very proud of being one of the first OU students - her student number was 00030. Her father didn't believe higher education for daughters was worth the money as they would only get married, have children & give up work. She did her A'levels, and paid her own way through teacher training (then not a degree profession). She also helped to finance her sisters through university because their father refused to do so. So, as soon as she could, she enrolled into the OU, did several degrees through them and ended up being awarded her PhD at the age of 72. 😇

I get it. I'm sorry you've got all this to process and deal with.

My ILs were academics as well… huge house and so many books and clutter the house walls were affected, bulging outwards. It was hoarding.
It made me think about not wanting to inflict such a task on our DCs.
I’ve made a start but need to do more.

I would be raging too in your shoes.

But I wonder if the experience of WW2 and rationing had an impact on their spending and collecting habits. I only say that because my MIL was born before WW2 and lived through terrible poverty in her childhood and youth. She used to bulk buy things like tins of fancy biscuits and fruit cakes, and store them in an upstairs wardrobe. No one ever got to eat them because they'd be years out of date. She wasn't a hoarder in general, just this one aspect and we put it down to her going hungry in her early years.

Possibly a similar manifestation from your parents, because logically it just doesn't make sense.

xxx

Except it’s muddled, and confuses a lot of prewar and postwar life. Education, health and the welfare state changed several times between the silent generation and the late boomers, and lots of that post has jumbled up everything from the 30s to the 70s. In reality, if you were born just before the war your experience was much more like the boomers than the silent generation. And only urban children were evacuated, and not all of those - those that were evacuated were largely born in the twenties and early thirties.

OP is talking about her parents’ behaviour to her when she went to university in the EARLY NINETIES. At that point the war was FORTY SEVEN years earlier, and her parents had accumulated money, a house and tons of stuff. At what point do we say that someone’s behaviour nearly fifty years after WWII is no longer excused by the war? Come off it everyone with the Blitz spirit like so many of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen. The war stopped them giving her cash in 1992? After 47 years of them then experiencing the longest economic boom conditions in modern history?

I feel for you, I really do. My parents are both still alive, but not in good health so its making me think forward. My brother is the golden child, but doesn't want to help them with day to day stuff, which I sort of get. But his kids are older and he likes an hour closer.

The relationship between our parents is breaking down and I don't know how to help it, they are both being stubborn. But I can see him 'helping' to clear the house by removing things he sees as valuable then leaving me to do the heavy lifting on wading through all the junk.

I must be heartbreaking seeing all the things your parents spent so much money on reduced to peanuts in the charity shop