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.

@nouveaunomduplume I completely agree. In his shoes I'm not sure I'd do it!

@Juliagreeneyes just to add another example of middle aged children (me) with pre war parents - like a couple of others I am 52. DF was born in 1928 (now 96) and DM 1936 (88). They married in 1958 but they didn’t have me for another 14 years - they thought they couldn’t have children, and when I came along in 1972 apparently it was quite a shock.
I spent my whole childhood and teenage years seeing my parents as older than everyone else’s - not just in age but in attitudes as well. They were a different generation, both with clear memories of the war (DF was 15 at the end of it, both families had evacuees living with them), and it influenced their behaviour- similar traits of hoarding in my DM, and didn’t help me with Uni. I’m obviously an only child so the task of emptying their house will fall to me.

I remember talking to my DCs teacher who had spent a year or so clearing out her parents' house - finding the right place to donate old prescription glasses etc. It sounded like something she really wanted to get 'right' and was able to do slowly, but it's not always like that. My DH cleared out his dad's house and they had never thrown anything away, it was a huge job and a lot of it went to the tip. He did charge his siblings an hourly fee for the time it took, which came out of the eventual house sale. Not a huge amount but did make it more fair as neither were able to help for various reasons. They are the kind of family that can have robust discussions about things like money though!

We aren't hoarders and have moved a lot which has necessitated big clearouts so I am hopeful we won't put our kids in that position.

My parents have now left it too late to downsize and would no longer be able to manage the upheaval of a house move, so I think it will fall to me and my siblings and it will not be easy.

I'm sorry OP, it sounds really hard and I hope that by going through it you are able to work through your grief and anger as you complete the task and when you are finished and the house is out of your hands you give yourself a really lovely day.

He could always refuse to act as executor when the time comes.

Agree, Im 53 and my parents were born 1940/1941.

My grandmother did the same. There were 5 of them in a terraced house and the front room was kept for best.

Can I also suggest that those of you with elderly parents look for cash when you are clearing out? We found around £5000 in a drawer that contained tablecloths and napkins (hidden in the folds) and a further £2000 in a flour box in the fridge. An underwear drawer yielded $1000 and €500 was stuffed in a book.

My mum downsized from a large 4 bed house to a small bungalow after my Dad died. She simply brought everything with her instead of getting rid of it. So the garage is full of stuff like a dining table that seats 14, plus chairs, which would never fit in the house, garden furniture, tables and chairs for 20.

We found a charity called Anglo Doorstep collections that pretty much picked up everything except furniture from the doorstep. So everything went there rather than to the local charity shop. I can strongly recommend them if you’re in the South East.

@MaggieFS my grandparents had a front sitting room that was only used at Christmas and for when the solicitor called. They also had a dining room that was only used at Christmas. Meanwhile, everyone used to sit in the kitchen. They raised six kids in this three bedroom house, with two rooms that were hardly ever used and all the kids squashing in small bedrooms together.

But it is true? Why isn’t it ‘rational’ to grieve being treated differently to your brother your whole life?

What did you mean by it?

In some threads, the quality of the replies telling OP she's BU are an indication that the poster is in the right. This is one such example.

Firstly OP, I’m sorry for your loss, and I’m sorry that your parents treated you so unfairly. The value of what you might find probably isn’t worth the stress, take anything you want and then get house clearance in.

My parents weren’t hoarders but they had a lot of stuff. My mum had a china cabinet. I honestly had no idea whether most of the stuff was things that she loved, or just things people had given her that she’d put in there to be polite - holiday souvenirs, mugs etc. They didn’t mean anything to most of us so we just kept things we really loved. Most of it was of no value, and the fact that somebody else treasured something doesn’t mean you have to do the same.

I saw a friend and her sister driven to the edge by clearing their hoarder parents’ house and trying to find value in everything by doing boot sales or eBay. The money they made just wasn’t worth the energy and time it took.

I really came on here to say how much this thread is helping me, I have decluttered massively over recent years but still have too much stuff. No, I’m not sitting in an empty house, but I’m trying to only have stuff that I use. I don’t keep things for ‘best’ any more. I’m single and childless and I don’t want to burden my nieces with too much work (I can already imagine the lip curl as they pick things up and discard them!) - that candle I have kept for years and never burnt will mean nothing to them, those reference books that I never use will go straight to the tip and yes, I’d rather they didn’t read my diaries. This has given me a real impetus to get on and clear some more junk.

OP, as others have said you should congratulate yourself on being a better parent. Take a few things that give you happy memories and let someone else clear the rest.

Just as another data point: I'm same age as OP. Both parents born during the war. but their siblings were born as early as 1920's. Some uncles/aunts had memories of being WW2 child evacuees. My grandfather was born in the late 1880's - a victorian.
There was a very clear difference in generational attitudes. Those born pre-war were stoical and unassuming. A definition/cutoff I've seen elsewhere that rings true for me is that the boomer generation started with those who were too young to have any conscious memory of WW2.

Dishwashers may have something to do with it. My Mum has never seen the need for a dishwasher and has been perfectly happy to do all washing up by hand. I love my dishwasher and anything I have that can't go in the dishwasher doesn't really get used at all, so doesn't justify house room, whereas Mum has at least three complete fine china teasets in the house (couldn't tell you the last time any of them were used). I think mostly when we buy things we have to expect that that money has gone. Hardly anything any of us has could be resold for more than we paid for it, and a lot of stuff would go for less or nothing at all. (Houses are the big exception to this rule.) Another good reason not to buy so much stuff in the first place, which would be good for the environment too.

There's an Argos catalogue archive, it has the 70s and 80s
retromash.com/argos/

I find this attitude that other people should be expected to live their lives in a way that makes it easier for others to sort out when they die very selfish.

Ultimately people can live their lives how they want and take enjoyment from whatever they want. If that is storing mountains of tat so be it.

When someone dies, no you don't have to sort loads of stuff out if you don't want to. You can just get a skip in and pay someone to have a house clearance. It is entirely up to you. It is no hassle.

You can also walk away from the whole process and refuse to engage. The consequence of this is of course you might not inherit the money. I guess no one wants that though. Everyone wants piles of cash parachuted into their bank account, but no one wants to do any work for it.

When a relative died I looked on clearing out their place as a favour to them and thanks for what they had done for me during their life The money left to me more than compensated for the effort involved. I would have never demanded that they lived their lives in order to make my life easier, so I had to do nothing, as well as inherit a reasonable sum of money.

In purely financial terms, if I looked on the inheritance as payment for sorting out someones effects and closing their life down then it was the easiest money I ever made.

On Free higher education:

I can assure you that for the postwar generations this really isn’t true

Its factually true based on historic and ONS stats. I note you fudged the numbers upthread by lumping a whole bunch of on the job training schemes and self funded higher education as "free higher education". It wasn't. A nurse with 5 O levels going to work as a nurse and receiving on the job training or an apprentice (no formal qualifications needed usually) doing day release were not getting "free education" - they were taking low paid work, often indentured for apprentices with employers covering the short term fees. They were not attending "free" higher education full time or part time.

Many of those HNDs and ONDs were done at evening classes alongside a full time job and with participants paying the tuition fees. Some employers would contribute to the fees but by no means all.

Girls were routinely discriminated against in education - less grammar school or HE places for girls than boys. Poor families might scrape together the cost of sending a bright boy to grammar but would baulk at the cost of sending a girl (no fees but the ancillary costs were much higher). The attitude that there was no point in girls staying on at school was widespread and restricted many bright girls from building careers and qualifications.

How do you square this with the historically very generous levels of social support and social housing in the postwar period, sold off and removed in the 80s onwards and not available today?

Post war social housing was usually shockingly bad quality. There was some good stock but much of what was in cities and industrial towns was poor quality, war damaged and often temporary. I was born on the boundary of boomer/X and grew up in overcrowded, damp poor quality housing as did all my friends. My generation were also the first to really benefit from mass vaccination but my older friends could all describe at least one loss of a child or seriously damaged child in the family due to being born the wide range of vaccinations enjoyed by younger generations. I also didn't know a single family where one parent was full time at home - that was a luxury position for the middle classes. The women I knew all worked although many did so on shifts, early mornings etc so were classified as "housewives".

Property prices have risen madly (as they have across Europe in widely differing political regimes) I agree but interest rates are much lower, access to credit is easier and the standard of material living people take for granted as "ordinary" would have been considered the height of luxury by 60s/70s standards. Then as now the way to get on the property ladder for many was help from parents. Then as now there were haves and have nots. Most adults continued to live with parents until marriage and even then often lived with one set of parents, there was no concept of "living independently" or having the means to so do unless you were in a well paid professional job. If you had to move for ordinary work you would be lodging or at best in a bedsit.

You have a very one-track vision of the past

I have a WC memory of my past and the community I grew up in, even though I'm not your target boomer group - things were better in my childhood than for my older peers. That was the majority of the population.

Your memories seem to me to be very much of rose tinted MC life which in every generation is more comfortable and easier but was not the norm for most people. I note also your complete dismissal of the impact of the "shadow of war" on the childhood of older boomers in favour of a tired old "rich bastards" trope.

My biggest objection to this generational nonsense though is that its a nice fudge for lobbying liberals who don't actually want to make the changes needed to reduce inequality within generations. ie actual meaningful changes.

There are always Lilliput Lane ornaments in charity shops. They have never been my cup of tea, but I am glad they are appealing to a new generation. My daughter has always liked royal memorabilia; again not my bag, but again charity shops have lots of it. It’s a great way to start a collection of their own at very little cost. I have my own collection of Royal Worcester and Royal Doulton figurines of children and Ladybird books - the figurines remind me of the Ladybird illustrations. I also have a best dinner set, both Royal Doulton (l pronounce it dole-ton rather than Hyacinth Bucket’s rather pretentious Doulton) china and a canteen of Viner’s cutlery. In addition to this, I treasure my grandmother’s tea sets l have inherited. I was married in 1989 and I think maybe my generation is probably the last to have had best as well as everyday china. However, it seems that everything goes in cycles and the younger generation are maybe embracing maximalism rather than minimalism. They may treasure some of their grandparents’ collectibles.

@DazedorBemused, I feel for you. I would do as others have suggested and take the pieces you would like, then let your brother choose what he likes and then get in a clearance company for everything else - especially those Franklin Mint and Leonardo collectibles that were advertised in the colour supplements of Sunday newspapers in the eighties and nineties.

*Hyacinth Bucket’s pretentious doolton pronunciation.

I think part of the issue is that generation can't understand why their offspring aren't doing as well as they did, and put it down to laziness or overspending. In fact, it's just incredibly hard to live off 'average' salaries these days, and people rely on credit to pay for stuff that was free or much cheaper in the past.

That's fair enough, and I agree that everyone has the right to live as they please as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.

The difficulty comes when the chaotic house stuffed with possessions and disorganised paperwork is accompanied by an attitude of "not wanting to waste things / valuing money / wanting to pass things on" - and an implied moral judgement from them.

I don't need whatever money could be generated by selling the contents of my parents' house, and the pressures in my own life mean I will have no choice anyway but to use a house clearance firm - I'm just sad and frustrated that this will be accompanied by so much guilt. I know that they would be HORRIFIED to see their hard-won things discarded when they could be carefully packaged up, driven out to some antique dealer / borderline junk shop and maybe sold for a few quid. I imagine my major inheritance will be a shedload of guilty feelings mixed in with the grief.

There's also the issue of the administration you cannot avoid when a person passes away - there are utility companies to be contacted, insurance policies to be cancelled, documents to be found relating to the house. With a bit of effort from my parents, these could all be together in a file. But instead, I will have to spend who knows how many weekends away from my kids searching through piles of receipts, magazines, random bank statements from 1993 to locate this stuff. It's tough to square that with their repeated "We just wish there was something we could do to help" when they see the exhausted state I'm already in. And with how much they complained about doing this process for their own parents when they had significantly less crap and there were siblings to share the load (I'm an only child).

So you're right - we're all free to live as we please and make our own decisions about how we spend our time while we're alive. But some of those decisions can feel pretty selfish.

My brother and I did the same. We took away a couple of items of sentimental value but then got a firm of house clearers in to empty the property.

Both my mum and step dad had huge amounts of clothes - many still with labels and price tags on them.  My step dad in particular became a "catalogue junkie" and was ordering trousers, shirts, shoes in quantities of half a dozen at a time but then never wearing them.   We gave a lot of clothes to the Salvation Army.   

There were bags and bags of Christmas decorations - every year they bought the latest Christmas fad on sale in the garden centre they went to, but several at one time. Just looking at the bags was exhausting and we didn't bother looking through them. It was such a shame because I know they loved Christmas and their bungalow was always decorated to the nines. It almost felt disrespectful to my mum to let the house cleaners have them.

I'd always thought that my step dad was well organised but there was paperwork everywhere, bits of it in every drawer and cupboard. To find what we needed amongst all the old receipts, instruction booklets, old electricity bills etc took us days.

It's made me think about the stuff that DH & I have got and I've been having a ruthless declutter. I don't want anyone worrying about whether they have they found all my bank accounts, whether a charity shop want all those clothes, who will take hundreds and hundreds of old paperbacks and cassettes of music taped off the radio etc.

@AnonymousBleep - Yes, something my parents REALLY can't seem to grasp is that the people doing the jobs they considered "posh jobs" - Doctors, high street solicitors etc - are working all the hours they can and taking on huge debt just to afford the same lives my parents had on one semi-professional salary. They just need to look at their own street - the houses they could buy on one non-graduate salary in the mid 80s are now being bought by families where both parents work full time and are eg. a dentist and a lawyer. The current generation of parents find themselves running faster and faster and driving themselves into the ground to live the same way their own parents did on very average wages.

My parents don't get it. My mum has never worked full-time in her entire life (she's a dentist) and comes from a very well-to-do upper-middle class background but for some reason, felt that her job of parenting ended when I turned 18 and that was that, off you go! You're on your own! I think she thought I'd walk into some little job in PR or something that paid enough for a bijou flat in Chelsea and all the champagne I could drink, and nothing that I (or any of my siblings) have said has ever managed to convince her otherwise.

OP's brother has managed to refuse to engage with clearing their parents' house with no consequences in terms of inheritance which has been split 50/50.

He has also been the sole beneficiary of their largesse while at University, where he was entirely supported by his parents while OP didn't receive a penny and had to work 2 jobs. He was also gifted a substantial house deposit which OP was not.

@gaspanic they can live how they want but I think it’s selfish not to think how it impacts their loved ones. Surely you want to help your children as much as possible.
They often aren’t taking enjoyment from it and are living in a room or two, unable to heat it adequately, risk of falls over tat.
My mums quality of life v mil’s is such a stark contrast (mum in bungalow/no tat v unsafe unsuitable large house/stuffed to rafters)
Both were in hospital similar timescale. My mum came home quickly. My mil couldn’t be discharged due to her unsuitable housing.
An acquaintance of mine in her 50s is clearing out with a view to downsizing and has been posting on facebook. It’s really made me think.
People generally leave it too late and then are too old to face it or physically able do it.