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.

Feel angry
Feel sad
Congratulate yourself for being a better parent
Go out, smash some plates and treat yourself to something frivolous.

This really resonates with me. I get a lot of guilt from DM about how privileged I am (and relatively I am, I know I am!) but I also think there's been a bit of a cross over. Her childhood was tough but as an adult, they could live off just DF's salary, have a good life, and retire early.

For a lower quality of adult life DH and I both have to work FT and it breaks my heart that DC don't have what I had growing up, and are always in wraparound care to boot.

I'm run ragged, exhausted, and mentally stressed. But it's ok for DM to expect me to deal with all the stuff she can't be bothered to sort out. And I do mean can't be bothered. She mumbles about it occasionally, but can't face it. So she's consciously not doing anything about it.

When the time comes, we're screwed. What do I do? Use precious holiday to even get the basic admin done? I will have to go through things because I do want some of DF's things (which she won't give me now).

Hi OP, your parents are both gone? I just went through this. War babies, same house for almost 60 years, nothing thrown away. I hired a company to clear the attic, the garage, and some crap from the garden, and it was the best 550 pounds I've ever spent. A whole crew came and did it in a day. It would have taken me two weeks.

I'm sorry to hear this. I too am an only child and worry about how I will sort out my parents house. My mother is a hoarder. She could be doing a lot now to sort things out, but she isn't. She doesn't like the 'guilt' of throwing things out, so she will leave it all to me. I am not sure how I will cope with it all on top of the bereavement.

@MaggieFS @Ginghamsheep
I've decided to stop asking them. I brought it up gently a few times and then much more explicitly three or four times over the past couple of years. They agree with the principle and say they'll do it, but nothing happens - and they clearly feel I am nagging them. I've realised I can keep bringing it up and upsetting myself and them, or just leave it - the result will be the same either way. Perhaps they don't like being forced to confront their mortality, and I have sympathy for that. But it does make me seethe when they say they've been "too busy" and then talk about a dozen 6-part drama series they've been watching and express surprise I haven't had time to sit down and watch them...

@ProcrastinatorsAnonymous You're completely correct. Although in my case it's always DM who brings it up. As if saying she's thought of it and then done nothing is supposed to make things better?
And "too busy" makes me cry. She has quite literally never worked FT since she had me. She has no idea. I don't want to make it seem like a Competiton, it isn't, but I need to guilt tripping at every turn to go away.

Don’t do anything hasty. As others have said there could be valuable stuff in among the tat. Do your research. EBay, local auction house should help. And say nothing to your brother if he’s just left it all in your lap.

The death of a parent and being responsible for clearing their home can be devastating.
My sister and my BIL cleared my Mum's flat when she died - I was in another part of the country, seriously ill and had no-one to take my then babies (twins) to help - and it was devastating for her.
Mum's home was filthy (my sister described it as squalor and littered with painful memories from our childhood via photos
It's a shit, triggering situation.

OP give yourself permission to be angry, rage at the unfairness. I've read all your posts on here and feel your frustration.
After the anger, feel it more to the point you feel bored of it. Their lack of care, their lack of interest... become bored in the pair of boring blinkered people they were.
Plan for future fun things with your DH and adults DCs. Maybe ask your DCs for new ideas, be the person who is equally interested in their DCs and learns from them. Your brother...well let him take his needy arse to the next girlfriend looking for a substitute child!

I’m only in my 40s, younger than the OP! But I’m a historian, and 20thc. British history of education is one of my research specialisms.

It’s always amazing to me how much people forget about the past, even the past they lived through and you would think would remember more clearly. And depending on the reason the same people will half the time be telling you how everything was worse in the past, and half the time that everything was better, and never notice the contradiction 😆 Education in particular is always says to be dumbed down compared to the past, until people want to argue that they didn’t have enough of it, and then everyone today has it so much better!

You have my sympathy OP. Partly because The Game of Life is really shit.

On a certain level your parents were right that you could manage your own life and your brother needed their help to get by. However, if they could never acknowledge how capable you were then of course it hurts. Step back from all your parents' stuff and employ someone else to do the clearing. If you miss something of value so what?

Nah, all that collectible tat is just garbage, and after doing a lot of research and putting the rest up online you might realise a hundred quid or so.

Not everyone's elderly parents had an eye for the really valuable stuff. Original Star Wars figures in their boxes, never played with, ancient Lego models, all intact, with the instructions - maybe. But "previously loved" toys wouldn't be worth the effort.

Haven't that generation been coined 'The Me Generation'? With good reason I suspect, although there are of course exceptions. I too have watched incredibly (and I mean millionaire level) asset and cash rich parents of that generation see their offspring struggling to make ends meet and do nothing. And while I understand the sentiment that it's their money and they can do what they want with it, there is a bit of a sting when realising that they actually do care more about 'stuff' than people.

Although I wonder if it's not so much a generational trait but just that they happen to be the first generation to have widely/significantly out-earned their offspring. I guess we may have seen similar behaviour from previous generations if they had been in the same position.

This is my future too. She made token noises about clearing up and downsizing in her 50s-60s as her aging mother was stuck in an unsuitable old house until she died at 90. Did nothing practical about it and is now mid-80s and stuck in her own unsuitable, deteriorating old house.
We now have inherited fine china sitting there unused for 20+ years since it was moved in. DF's stuff is still untouched 30+ years after he died.

I have a full house, so I will only be able to accomodate a carefully chosen range of small items. We've already got bits and pieces from MiL. Fortunately she was fairly minimalist.

DM was a war child. While she was very young, her early memories are of the war years including being bombed out. The affect on her father who saw active service had traumatic repurcussions on the family in the years after the war. Aside from the trauma which is a common cause of hoarding disorder, there was the rationing and "waste not want not" messaging.

Abundance didn't come until the 1980s, and she just wasn't mentally equipped to deal with it. She also wasn't equipped to teach me how to be organised and tidy; these are skills I've been working on in adulthood. I wasn't allowed to clear out items from long-grown older relatives, didn't have appropriate storage from the random ramshackle ancient or aquired furniture. The house still contains "doom" bags of stuff gathered up in panic tidies. Logically, the stuff in them is decades old and should all be junk now, but because there is no organisation there, there could end up being items (most likely documents) of use caught up in them. Any attempts to clear out fashion magazines from 30 years ago will be met with protests such as "I haven't read the horroscope yet"

Daytime TV doesn't help with endless shit like Bargain Hunt feeding misguided notions of value for retro collectables/ crap. Or endless scaremongering about fraud and scams (she won't let any paperwork with an address on leave the house because she's convinced that will result in her identity being stolen)

The value of stuff dwindles because either it goes out of fashion or deteriorates if stored poorly. Collectables only have value when they're matched with people prepared to pay that value. To anyone else it's worthless.

At the weekend I went to a place with garden centres, craft village, ceramics type place and thought that it is substantially filled with crap targeted at older people. Younger generations tend to be more minimalist or at least more selective about what they buy in. DH and I went down the buying general purpose crockery rather than the "for best" route unlike our older relatives and most people of our age have done the same. Partly storage space, partly just wanting to use the nice stuff rather than it being on standby for 360 days of the year.

I haven't even got to the grief and dealing with it stage yet, but it is a concern and the amount of stuff and broken furniture is a barrier to our relationship. Travelling to go somewhere where you can't even sit down because the sofa collapsed some time around the millenium is not enticing.
When the time comes, I suspect that the best strategy will be to pick through and try to find the important bits (most likely in DM's room) and let a clearance company deal with the rest.

I honestly think that it was always pretty obvious that “collectibles” were a load of rubbish, and that veneer repro chairs and Lladro porcelain doodahs were not going to be the same as priceless antiques. They were always obviously a fashion thing that people got caught up in (just like nobody really ought to have been claiming that digital pictures of apes were the new failsafe investment vehicle…) My great-aunt “collected” Swarovski crystal animals at astonishing prices and it was always obvious that they were just sparkly tat.

My 12 y o DD has recently got into a craze for those Lilliput Lane cottages that people spent a fortune on in the 80s. She likes their “cottagecore vibe”, as gen Alpha puts it 😆 The prices of those things at the time! Now I pick them up for £2 each on the local Facebook groups. What a waste of money people spent on plaster tat!

Your parents were entitled to spend THEIR money on whatever they wanted to. I couldn't have cared less what my parents did with their money.

I'm not in the UK, but it's quite common here for uni students to work several part-time jobs during term and full time during the holidays - no matter how wealthy their parents are, it's called having a bit of independence. Maybe it's time to grow up and stop acting hard done by.

@NattyTurtle59 and OP is entitled to feel angry sorting through their rubbish remembering how much support her brother received compared to her.

@Juliagreeneyes I remember Lilliput Lane cottages! I’m charmed and amused that the kids find them “cottage core” 😂

I wonder how having “for best” crockery died out in the space of generation? My parents had a huge, heavy dresser full of fancy plates with a leaf pattern, cut-glass wine and cocktail glasses (neither of them drank much alcohol), candlesticks and fancy serving dishes which only came out at Christmas and for dinner parties. In-laws are the same. We have plain white crockery that gets used for everything, and nice but functional wine glasses (heavily used!) It wouldn’t occur to me that they weren’t good enough for guests!

I feel very sad reading this thread, so many people complaining about their parents clutter. I’m assuming many of the posters will then benefit from inheriting a house from their parents too. Unfortunately the war generation came from austerity and when they finally had money were encouraged to collect and surround themselves with things. In time these things fell out of fashion and became worthless. Younger generations don’t do this but they do head off on holidays, meals out, events etc. I imagine you could leave copies of all the receipts for these in the attic and your children will complain that you spent all that money on treating yourself instead of helping them out. The main lesson to learn is not to leave a similar mess for your children. It took my sisters and I a long time to clear mum and dad’s possessions at different times, mainly worthless but also didn’t cost much either. This motivated me to clear much from my own house, it took a year or so during Covid and was very hard work. Most of my friends haven’t even started yet (we are all on our sixties now). I’m proud of the fact that I’ve done this already and hope my children don’t have too much to do when the time comes.

DD loves all that kind of 80s tat to be honest! Porcelain figurines, pot pourri, lace swags, decorative plates…Her dream bedroom would look like the 1987 Argos catalogue exploded in it 😆

Maybe gen Alpha will react against minimalism, and then in ten years’ time all the collectibles can just pass directly to them….

Forgive me for quoting before reading the full thread, but I'm indignant on your husband's behalf and I want to know if he can recuse himself.

@nouveaunomdeplume I may have entirely dreamt this, but aren't executors allowed to bill the estate a reasonable amount for their time? A solicitor obviously if they are appointed. In the situation described, that's exactly what I'd do, plus use a clearance company.

@Brownowling you put it very well and it's kind what you have done. I am having a bit of a whinge, but need to be clear I don't begrudge what DM has chosen to spend money on. Yes, I am envious there was the cash to do so on top of holidays, a decent life and not working, but that's just how things worked out.

What bugs me is the fixation that simply everything is of value but that it will fall to me to do something about it. @BogRollBOGOF is spot on with her mention of bargain hunt. DM has a broken sofa in her spare room. Now replaced because it's not suitable for her anymore anyway, but waiting for her to submit it to The Repair Shop.

The previous comments of keeping things for best sitting in the cupboard for 360 days reminds me that my great grandparents had a whole ROOM kept for Sundays. The front room was only for certain callers who didn't come in the back door and for Sundays. Can you IMAGINE having the luxury of so much space or the ridiculousness of squidging yourself into the rest of the house the remainder of the time (and for them I gather it was the latter!).,

I have no idea, never having been one. It just seems rich to me that DP is expected to clear out 3 houses/flats, dotted inconveniently around the UK nowhere near us, none of which are actually being left to DP.

Surely the “fancy” crockery came out only on special occasions because it broke easily? A perfectly set dining table was something to aspire to.

I have my Granny's wedding china, and it gives me a sense of connection to her and my auntie.