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.

Stuff is so meaningless, it is heartbreaking to choose expensive tat over supporting a child through tough times.

One of my children trained as a nurse during covid and practically her first job on her first placement was to put a deceased ladies stuff in the incinerator as there were no relatives to claim it. It was an expensive handbag and purse, scarf, gloves etc. My DD said the woman had been lonely and difficult and very proud and possessive of her stuff in hospital. My DD cried for her as she fed it in - ‘precious’ stuff is actually worse less than the sum of fuck all compared to friends & family.

Maggyfs
a generational thing
Not in my house it isn’t. I’m 78 with 3 daughters. I hate stuff and toot
I don’t hoard anything and I’ve never owned one of those awful glass cabinets 😱
My daughter and my granddaughter love most of my clothes, of which there aren’t enough to fill a 3rd bedroom like some people Ahhhhh!!!
They might fight over my Jack Vettriano paintings, though.

My brother too put his head in the sand. All he was interested in was 'his books' (my parents always said that he would get the books, me my father's collection off Staffordshire figures - most of which were damaged beyond being of any value because he had dementia and would drop them).

My brother rarely visited my parents (despite being only about 50 miles away motorway all the way) and, because I lived within walking distance of their house I did all the caring - taking them too/from medical appointments, arranging medications, calling in to make sure they were OK, doing their shopping etc etc. So he said that as long as I didn't touch his books all the rest was up to me and refused to have anything to do with clearing the house as it would upset him 😡I packed the books into boxes & told him when they were ready to collect. He took some and then told me that he had taken what he wanted & I could get rid of the rest. Thanks mate - more for me to do(!) Oxfam bookshop were very grateful. 😉

My mum has just had this with my Nan. They always pleaded poverty. Make a big show of not being able to afford nice groceries. Recently mum found out they have many thousands saved in numerous bank accounts. House paid off. Shockingly much better off than any of their five children who have been helping them!

I was at Uni then too. The maintenance grant was reduce in line with your parents earnings. I got no maintence grant. If your parents earning reasonable money but chose not to give you anythng, you would certainly need to work. In fact it was potentially worse then than now as there was no (or minimal - like £200) student loan.

I specifically remember that my parents gave me £800 per term. I think that was what you got as a grant if your parents wer low income. I didn't get a grant and didn't take the loan as it was pretty much too small to bother with in 1990-93. and I didn't really need it. I actually did manage on £2400 a year with some vacation work, no term time work. But I lived very very frugally! And to be honest probably benefitted from an older employed boyfriend!

Some books and games can be worth giving to a charity shop. You can barcode scan the ISBNs of books into amazon or similar if you want to go through quickly and see whats worth passing on/what needs to go into a skip (must be an app for this somewhere).

I often buy vintage games at our local charity shops (I'm a tutor so I use them in my job).

A local second hand book shop will also usually come to the house and value/collect and give you something if there are any sellable titles they want.

China = skip

Otherwise house clearance as suggested by others.

But check pockets to make sure there isn't a cool 16k knocking about in there.

It's a sad and thankless task OP.

Probably easier to do it for someone else's family rather than one's own, as no bitter or happy memories - it's just stuff.

Sorry to hear of the favouritism, that does rankle. Hope that once you're through and out the other end of house sorting you will find some peace. You deserve it.

What an amazing woman your mum was! You must be so proud.

But that’s entirely different, you were brought up in poverty because I presume your parents were poor. They weren’t hiding secret bags of cash and buying loads of pointless stuff, presumably?

I'm also in my 70s and hate stuff. I love my photos of kids and GC, I spend little on clothes and gave my books away when I got my kindle. I wish my husband was the same.

Should've just hired a clearance company to do it.
I did for most of my father's, but did quite a lot of trips to a charity shop.
My sister thought I was going to list and handle selling all of it on eBay FFS, or traipse round auction houses - but of course only came to the flat once to "help".

After a morning of "sell this, sell that..." I suggested she make a list of what she was going to organise the sale of, but she'd have to get a move on because I wanted to get the flat on the market.

She was exactly the same with my mum's stuff, although I was less involved, her dad's, and then her step mum's (and from the sound of it her brother got equally hacked off. And with every subsequent death, her house gets more and more full of stuff that she is going to arrange to sell🙄

@Juliagreeneyes
Only arounbd 10 percent of students went to univeristy, until there was a massive expansion by Tony Blair.
It was also much easier to sack people / make redundant than it is now.
I am retired, so a late baby boomer. My brother left school at 14 (OK, his birthday is in August, so in his 15th year)
Normal secondary modern schools did not even take main stream exams such as 'O' levels, the precursor to the GCSE exam.

I was brought up with the idea of not wasting anything, and distinctly remember untying the string from parcels to be used again. (But who uses string these days?)

I did not mind going through my parents stuff (though this happened when my widowed mother went into a home, as the house was sold to pay for her care).
A lot of things had memories, but in my case, the memories were mainly positive. We kept some items (China), distributed others, and then disposed of others with a clearance company. I presume they would probably know which itmes were valuable (antique), which could be sold on, and which were rubbish.

However, I admit we are ourselves now trying to declutter, but have taken the precaution of offering stuff/artefacts to our DC before disposing of them.

Why not give it to charity?

And also, maybe this woman did not have friends or family but liked a decent handbag?

OP if you are still there, I get it, absolutely and totally get it.

I don't have any advice but you are not alone.

I was thinking of the posts about parents saying they'd been poor and then they died and there was lots of stuff. You can have known real poverty but be comfortably off at another stage in life.

No my parents were never well off. I was poor as a child, I was poor as a teenage mother, I was poor as a single mother but if anyone looks at what I have now and decides I was never poor they would be wrong.

I understand your frustration. Do be careful what you throw out...for example some Lego is worth 100s 😊
It may be a gold mine - check on eBay solds

@squirrelinajar it would be down to the hospital policy, which I expect is in place to prevent staff personally benefitting from deceased patients’ belongings (which would obviously be totally wrong) and to stop accusations of this happening from family or friends who eventually appear.

I’m sorry @DazedorBemused this is difficult stuff. I hope it’s over swiftly for you.

My parents’ house is stuffed full of mahogany veneer furniture, china figurines and “special edition” trinkets. However, I think they might have just started to see the light, partly because of the realisation that they won’t be able to shift furniture about and climb ladders in a few more years, and want some control over their possessions. It does make me feel annoyed about the wasted money, as they are not cash rich and could do with it now for essentials like dental work and car repairs. But I accept that they thought these things were genuine investments. I also think they are having to admit to themselves that buying all that stuff was an mistake, which can’t be easy.
My family has the favouritism thing for boys thing to boot, but I feel detached from it now. It’s like ancient history, and I’m only in my thirties!

Threads on this topic make me feel weird about life. We are only alive for a moment it seems, then everything goes in the bin!

My DM died last summer, at 89, quietly. The family have sorted her posessons out and have thrown out to charity shops everything none of the living wanted. So I took a half dozen sweaters, nice cashmere ones, because we're the same size and colouring, and a pair of boots that were a late buy. I am wearing that pair of boots every other day.

@milveycrohn please read my posts above debunking the university/Blair myth. It’s very tiresome to have it repeated on the same thread I’ve taken time to explain why that’s completely wrong.

Secondary modern schools, the last of which are abolished in the early 1970s, generally offered the CSE, which was merged with the O-level to make the GCSE, a combined qualification created from both. But before 1951 the qualification was the School Cert.

As I wrote, this was in a hospital at the start of Covid paranoia & DD was a first year nurse obeying instructions on practically her first day on placement 🙄

Yes the woman loved her expensive handbag but it just felt sad and poignant how worthless our beloved possessions really are.

@Juliagreeneyes there are not going to be many people on MN as old as you and me. Kudos for keeping up with the discussion.

When I applied for university places in 1973, Oxford and Cambridge top colleges still didn't consider female applicants unless for female colleges. So I applied for the most selective universities were open to m&f entrants.

@@Juliagreeneyes
My older brother took a couple RSAs but the younger brother had left the year he was 15 (the norm then, and actually age 14 as I said), and did not do anything at all. I believe my elder DB left at 15 as well, but he would have been 15, but I cannot remember exactly, but know the younger one did.
No one took CSEs.
I did not know anyone who went to university.
As I said, I am retired, left school in 1970.
Technically the secondary moderns were abolished, but this was after my DBs had left. The schools still exist and are now comprehensives. At that time they did NOT have education post 16.
Obviously, they have expanded since then and now offer a full comprehensive education.
However, I do not really like this pitting of one generation against another. Some things were harder back then, some things easier.
However, my point was really that we were brought up not to waste anything, and these are hard habits to break.

It was their money to spend how they wished.

You have completely and utterly missed the point haven't you.

Only child in my 40s here with mid-70s lifelong-disorganised, borderline-hoarder parents at the other end of the country who see me running myself into the ground with work and kids and repeat endlessly that "they wish they could do something to help" - yet refuse my repeat requests to organise their paperwork and scale down their attic, basement, garage and wardrobes which are all crammed with a lifetime of "keeping just in case".

They have been so careful with money all their lives and would be horrified by the idea of me skipping things rather than keeping or selling them, but when the time comes, all of my available time and energy will have to go on unpicking their chaos - meaning I'll have no choice but to use a house clearance firm.

It feels unsayable because they both had fairly unpleasant childhoods and did all they could to make mine nicer - they consider their lot in life to have been very difficult. But actually, when you break it down - mum never had to work full time, dad could access a semi-professional job without a degree (although could've got grants to study if he'd chosen to), they bought a house in their 20s and saw it climb in value, could afford two cars, final salary pension, their idea of a long day at the office was my Dad coming home at 8, they had time for hobbies, sat down to watch hours of TV every evening without fail, no health issues for either of them until the last few years. They would argue otherwise, but I would say they've had pretty easy adult lives!

I wish they would think about how little time I have, how exhausted I am, and the fact I'm an only child - and just do what they can to make the next stage a little easier. I worry that when I want time to grieve, I'll actually be on hold to a series of call centres trying to unpick utilities / insurance policies etc, feeling increasingly angry that they couldn't find a bit of time to organise things and write a few practical things down.