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.

Thank goodness my daughter isn’t as self centered and heartless as you. Grow up.

Hopefully she's not as heartless and self-centered as you at least?

My parents had a room for best in our 3 bed house in the 1970s/1980s it was only used at Christmas and for bed and breakfast guests in the summer.
I think the main reason for not using the room though was that it was furthest from the kitchen and the range cooker, and they couldn't afford to heat it.

I wonder if you should have this all out with your brother?

He's 100% guilty here. He surely knew he was favoured over you

And he should be pulling his weight now

It's a sad and painful business OP. I get it.
It cost me £2.5k in house clearance to actually clear my parents' house last summer. My Dad died 2 years before my mum, leaving 3 sheds, 2 workshops and a study (stuffed to the rafters, they were) and my Mum (herself a hoarder) just could not face me clearing his stuff whilst she was alive!
When she died, I was upset and utterly exhausted doing a 400 mile round trip every month and the rest of the daily care needs stuff remotely. I was their only child. I was also head of department in a busy school 30 miles from where I live so most months clocked up 1800 miles driving. . My youngest son went with me to finally clear my parents' house last summer but the task, when there's so much and so much pain...I was breaking down. Bless him, my son agreed that I should just get a clearance firm in. I did. And it cost £2.5K because of the amount of stuff and the nature of it. The company couldn't believe how much there was. I tried charities and some took bits but there was too much. I also quit my job and am now in a new career.
It's in the past now. I don't want to put my children through this at all! But I'm not like my parents - I'm something of a minimalist.
Sort your life. Think ahead!
My total sympathy to anyone going through this.

Mumsnet always delivers.

As a dedicated family historian, I would give my right eye to see 5000 photos of now-dead people I never knew!
But only if they are identifiable!!

I've been going round in circles with an elderly relative about some of ours recently.

Yes, I'd be interested to know what's actually been said to him about this and how he responded.

I hear you, OP! Just the house clearance alone is horrendous. It costs literally thousands to get my DF's house ready for sale - and he wasn't even dead! The tipping fees alone were enormous. I'm not over it yet. I tried to watch the comedy "Only Child" today. It's too soon. It may always be too soon!

Hi op,

Try and remember your mum the way you were thinking before the clearance. It doesn’t seem you are annoyed about anything wrong that she did but more that you are grieving. Death of near relatives does make one think over their own life.

My condoleances op 🌺

Try and remember your mum the way you were thinking before the clearance. It doesn’t seem you are annoyed about anything wrong that she did but more that you are grieving

OP is angry because of the huge favouritism shown her brother.

Either side of the war ! The War was 1939 to 1945 so they were born late 1930s and 1945 +

All perfectly true, I'm sure. Here are some things that are also true:

Very low salaries, leading to teaching and most branches of health care being increasingly seen as low-status professions, especially when female-dominated. The saving grace, of course, was that they had very good pension schemes in place, but you only got that if you worked for decades at the low salary. Many women who left to get married or on pregnancy asked for their pension contributions back and got them, so lost their contribution record for those years. My Mum trained as a teacher in the early 1950s and worked full-time for several years before I was born, then supply teaching on and off for a few years while my brother and I were little, then back to a part-time post and finally full-time again for over a decade, until she retired in her mid 50s through a redundancy scheme. Her teachers' pension is the princely sum of £326.38 per month. Rolling in it!

The accommodation provided came with stringent conditions about not having male callers and all sorts of other infantilising rules which the nurses of the 1960s and 70s rebelled against. That was one reason it stopped being provided. Another was the financial cutbacks after Thatcher was elected. The NHS sold off the accommodation to get money for essential capital investment and running costs elsewhere.

It's probably not universal, but where a field visit or placement is complsory because it's essential to a course many institutions either cover the cost through the fees or have a bursary, scholarship or hardship fund in place to help students who would struggle with the costs. This was certainly the case in the London medical school where I worked a few years ago and for the course my son did more recently.

Feeling for you OP; I cleared my parents 4 bed house a couple of years ago when mum died and dad bought a retirement flat.
I also have a brother who bowed out of family life over 15 years ago leaving my parents heartbroken; the last time I visited my mother in hospital she called me by his name.
I’m angry about so many things; I was adopted and golden boy was theirs. He hated me and made my life a misery and they did nothing etc etc.
But. It’s done. Mum’s dead and dad’s 95. I never have to see my brother again. So I’m not forgiving anything but I am moving on. because I can’t change anything and hanging on to those feelings just wastes my energy.

"could expect decent private and state pensions"
Yes, @Juliagreeneyes Both my dad and step dad had index linked private pensions, a rarity these days.

I agree those were better times. I wish we had arrangements like that in place now. What baffles me is how we got to where we are now, and the only answer I can come up with is greed and stupidity. You can't get something for nothing. Back in the 80s the Tories told people that public spending was far too high and that essential services could still be delivered to a good standard on far lower taxes, because the cuts would just get rid of waste and inefficiency. Not true, and we are still suffering the results of that now. But at every election we see people who are desperate for more disposable income and one obvious way is if they pay less tax. Add in distrust of the government and other public bodies and of course any party offering low taxes will do well.

The other thing Thatcher and her cronies did which has been hugely damaging is (a) enabling council house tenants to buy their homes at huge discounts but forbidding councils to use the proceeds to build replacement housing; and (b) taking away the safeguards around mortgage lending. Most people were only able to buy homes if they got a mortgage, and they could only borrow a maximum of 90% of the purchase price and a maximum of 3 times the male salary. Latterly married couples were able to borrow 2.5 times joint income or 3 times higher income + 1 x the lower income, and single women were finally able to borrow on the same terms as men. When those controls were removed and building societies started converting to banks and lending 100% of the price or even more, interest-only mortgages and so on, house prices went through the roof. An incredibly short-sighted policy.

People of all ages voted for these measures.

This post just proves our point! Retiring mid-50s, £400 a month additional pension - but these are all things teachers would absolutely love to have today! Many good employer scheme pensions now will likely pay out not much more then this for a full working life of contributions. Teaching is still thought of exactly the same by the way, if anything lower in status - requires a degree and big amounts of student debt just to start out, and workload and hours are massively more than in your mum’s day. The young teachers at DD’s primary school were easily working 60 hours a week or more.

One woman's hoarding is another's treasure trove
Or in the case of Eddy and Ruth Frow who had to have their floorboards strengthened because of the weight of their 'junk' a Museum, the Working Class Museum in Salford.

Op, it's one of the shittest jobs. Sorry you are having to do it.

Can you get a company in to do it when you've removed what you want to?

My mother, who was 90 this month, has spent the last year decluttering. She is eminently practical and I am so thankful for that. I look at my home and it looks like a hoarder's paradise by comparison - I need to learn from her example.

Additional pension? Before my Dad died, that was most of her pension. She also got the basic state pension which was a pitiful amount in her case. My Dad worked in the private sector and did not have a final salary pension scheme. Fortunately he did have SERPS, an enhanced state pension entitlement which I don't think exists any more. Final salary pension schemes were far from universal and often made up for very poor salaries. My Dad didn't have much of a salary either, but fortunately he and my Mum made a little go a long way and have been OK in retirement.

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

I would like to extend that to two manchildren with the sun shining out of their arses. OP, pm me if you want to swap stories!

Good for her! I am taking from this thread that I need to start doing a bit of this. Music to my husband's ears. He is Mr Minimalist, so there's not much chance of our house ending up overly cluttered.

Oh you’ve not heard what she’s been saying then?

Sorry OP, but you seem to have a MAJOR chip on your shoulder! We are all a product of our upbringing, and if you have kids of your own doubtless they will have their own reasons for thinking you were a crap parent. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and move on. Life is too short for all this.

Maybe you aren't as self centered and heartless as OP's parents. Though from your post, you seem pretty heartless to me.