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.

My Dad has started getting rid of things he no longer needs, such as 100s of books, a garage full of junk (old fridges, broken furniture, etc) and I am very grateful!

Clearing a house is a huge task. It took my DH and his siblings a really long time as I don't think my PILs ever threw anything away. For example, my DH found planning paperwork from his Dad's time as a local councillor, for buildings that had been built, used for years and then demolished!

And of course it's an emotional task as well as a practical and physical one. Memories are bound to be brought up, all sorts of forgotten things found, etc.

Incidentally, does Swedish Death Cleansing really advise getting rid of everything and sitting in an empty house????

Agree whole heartedly!

(Although a friends relative who died recently was a hoarder - that was a whole load of pain!)

OP - your emotions are raw I should imagine right now. I expect it was guilt that they bought your brother more stuff - my DB was also ill for a few years ago, and I still feel a bit jealous at the stronger bond between him and my mum as a result of spending all their days together. I get it! But in reality, she loves us both the same, it is just a different relationship.

OP, can I just ask where your brother stands with all the work of clearing your parent's house? Has he contributed to this in any way, or has it all fallen to you?

With regard to what you seem to perceive as your parents having money while you struggled, they probably thought that they were teaching you how to manage money, and keep your head above water even when times were tough. My children would probably think that I could have helped them more financially, but if as a parent you are constantly supporting your adult children financially, they are not learning how to budget and cope on what they have. Obviously there are circumstances where adult children do need financial assistance, but I believe that generally once we reach adulthood, we should earn our own living, and live within our means.

@DazedorBemused I am so sorry for your loss. It's very hard too to be having to sort through everything left behind.

It does bring up memories, not all of them good ones, and clearly you resented your brother getting things you didn't. I would also add that 'anger' is one of the stages of grief that happen to us, when we lose someone we love and it may be that you are focusing on this as an outlet for the anger? Maybe some bereavement counselling would help?

I have no doubt your parents would be hard up as they said, for part of their lives, but things got better as they got older. I was broke for many years while my children were growing up and beyond. No holidays, watching every penny and it was hard for a long time. Now we have a bit more to spend, and we are enjoying spending it. It feels like a reward for getting through the years and years of very hard times. Your parents probably felt the same. Try not to begrudge them the fact that they spent money on themselves, when they could afford it.

Gat a house clearing company in to get rid of their possessions, once you have distributed or taken anything you or others want to keep. I did that and it really was a huge help

I know how you feel. The thought that when family have the means to help, they unconsciously (usually) don’t bother. I have a couple of those above me, who are quite literally rolling in cash they’ll never spend but will never think to make things easier now. Even in these challenging COL crisis times.

And with one of them, it’ll fall to me to sort their huge amounts of clutter that has been collected over decades of having all the time and freedom to wander around aimlessly when the rest of us have had to work.

But as MN will tell us - their money, their choice.

It is, but for my family it’ll be so much more transparent.

I think often, the war generation spent money on things as they had money later in their lives, just because they could.

I've cleared my parent's house out. Alongside the things which were kept for best - and largely never used - and are now virtually worthless, I cleared so many of my Mother's clothes, many of which still had labels attached. She clearly had a need to buy them in her mind, because they could afford to. But, she rarely went anywhere - other than shopping - so didn't need them.

I cleared some of her clothes when they were both still alive as she had taken over my old bedroom as storage for the excess. She couldn't even get upstairs so didn't even remember what was up there (she'd got my dad to put them there). As I brought them down to show her and see if they were wanted/needed it became clear to my DF just how much money she'd wasted on clothes hardly/never worn.

But on the face of it they'd appeared to be relatively frugal in their lifestyle.

Clearing out our parent's home is always difficult, especially if it was our childhood home (which my DPs was) and there'll always be a few surprises and revelations. I too have vowed not to leave the same for my DS.

Dear @DazedorBemused ... allow yourself to feel all of these feelings... be kind to yourself. Think about not doing any of this... find someone else to do it... your brother maybe... or of you can't afford to pay someone, think about how much it would cost you in time and see if you can use that time to make money to pay someone else.. or bring a friend who will play loud music, feed you doughnuts and fling everything in skip... and will not let you read receipts or analyse everything.

If you think there is something valuable to find... focus only on that... the rest is not your responsibility. Give yourself permission to just let it all go... physically and emotionally... come back to your own values, actions and things that make you happy. Love yourself... that's all there is.

Please try and sell a lot of this stuff, don't take it all to the tip

I understand you, OP. My parents also had golden children to whom they gave a lot, in childhood and adulthood, and nothing to the other children. Some of it is the old-fashioned way of thinking, maybe, in that their golden children were also boys. Don't feel guilty about the way you feel. Even though I was my parent's carer, I did it out of duty. That sort of uneven distribution is a shitty thing to do. And withholding money, I sort of get too and it has been covered by people above. But it is also shitty. Once you have finished the clearing out, I hope that you can get rid of your anger. My anger has now turned to a bit of scorn and quite a lot of indifference. Let every trip to the dump be a release of a bit more of your anger, too. My best wishes.

That’s such an onerous process though. And most people don’t want to buy junk.
I take good quality stuff to charity shops, and anything the charity shops wouldn’t want goes to the tip.

By the way, where is your brother while all of this house clearing is going on?

They didn't help OP out when she was working two part-time jobs during term-time while at University and full time in the holidays and they weren't poor then.

@DazedorBemused can't your brother help with the clearing and sorting out of your parents' stuff?

Incidentally, does Swedish Death Cleansing really advise getting rid of everything and sitting in an empty house???

@VodkaCola of course not! It just means sorting and divesting oneself of the tat we all accumulate. All those boxed clothes, unloved ornaments, items held on to 'just in case'- in short all the stuff that pp are feeling oppressed by when clearing parents' houses. It's supposed to be liberating, and helpful in advance so one's children have a lighter task when we go.

My mum (born 1931) wouldn't change anything in the house. It was 'too expensive' to put a new carpet down, when she died she still had the carpet in the living room that my brother and I grew up with. Furniture was renewed when it died not because it got scruffy/smelly. I think my parents had the same mattress from the day they married until the day my mum died.

Yet she left enough money for both my brother and I, who inherited jointly, to buy our houses outright. We used to tell her to buy new stuff, but she just wouldn't. I think the frugal lifestyle that was forced onto her by having almost no money when we were both growing up (my dad worked but didn't earn a great deal) became a habit. I wish she'd splurged the cash on herself a bit more.

Yes it can be very emotional, sad, frustrating, heartbreaking and often rage inducing to clear out someone's home for them. I know this from my own experience, so am bit by bit embracing the "Swedish death cleaning" method. It won't be perfect, it's ongoing, and I'll still have some "stuff" but it won't be anything like my late mother's house either! I look on it as a courtesy to those who might have to do that job for me someday.

https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/what-swedish-death-cleaning-should-you-be-doing-it-ncna816511

I can relate. I'm around same age, with parents around the same age. They used to talk about rationing etc.
They've sat for nearly 25 years on huge final salary pensions. Multiple cruises and foreign holidays each year. They inherited hundred of thousands and shared not a penny. bought themselves some buy-to-lets and a foreign pad in the sun.
They sat and watched as DP and I struggled. We were too poor to afford meat and not uncommonly walked 3+ miles because we couldn't afford to take the bus. We delayed having kids because we couldn't afford to, then ended up needing fertility treatment mainly due to age. We've been chronically financially insecure, both in terms of job security and pension provision.
They are/were oblivious and gave us no help whatsoever, despite them receiving a 30% deposit from my GM to buy the house I grew up in.
Now they are so obsessed with the taxman getting his hands on their loot that they are setting up trusts for the grandchildren and squirreling money in there despite the fact that when their own parents died they pocketed the lot and ensured that the grandchildren (i.e. myself and siblings) didn't get a penny.
Entitled fuckers.

Thank you everyone, lots to take from your posts.

My slightly younger brother is of course no where to be seen on this. Luckily DH is really supportive.

I'm angry and sad, I think, at the disconnect between what they said and what they did.
I know all the stories, the stress and the pessimism behind their lives. I get that it helped shape me, good and possibly needlessly. And they never asked how I felt or just repeated their hard luck times.
During my uni days, they were both threatened with redundancy, made redundant with big payouts then quickly found even better jobs.
So I worked during uni, two years later my brother didn't, got his overdrafts paid off and my parents spent even in today's money eyewatering sums on holidays.

My brother was bailed up and given a substantial house deposit, again just five years ago.
Most of the stuff I'm sorting today happens to come from the period that DH & I were really over reached, investing in work and our home for the future. So it's particularly acute finding the paperwork and stuff plus spending the time now on it.

I am very tempted to get a skip and hurl every last collectable Franklin mint piece and investment antique ( there should be a special place in hell for those oily tongued dealers) into it off the balcony.

Didn’t most people work while at uni in the 90s? I know I did, and all bar one friend did. I guess my parents could have kept subsidising me, but they (and I) felt better to be self sufficient. Maybe the difference is I know that if I had REALLY struggled - couldn’t feed myself or had nowhere to live - they would have been my safety net.

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

I think there's a difference between getting rid of a lifetime's worth of accumulated junk you've forgotten about and having neatly organised spaces of things you use and love. It's much easier to pack away clothes hanging in a wardrobe or folded in a drawer than going through a loft of random disorganised boxes of junk.

I didn't mean any tat, there may be good porcelain, or if she comes across some of the lego or handheld games. These can be worth something.

I admit though, I did miss the original point of the post.

There was an 8 year age gap between me and my DB. Mum married his father when I was 3 and he raised me as his own. He was better off when DB was born, he ended up going to private school, uni, very good education. He had everything he wanted, but because they could now afford it. He has had MH issues since late teens so he kind of got what he wanted to compensate.

He lives in a very nice house he bought, has a very, very good job, has lived all over the world and he would be my phone a friend on who wants to be a millionaire because he knows everything - literally everything, super intelligent.

I live in a rented, earning just over min wage, sometimes I get just that little 'pang' of if only I had had his upbringing. If only we had the same parents. Even though we did.

I really empathise OP, clearing is rage inducing for me at any time and with the layers of family emotion woven in, sounds very hard.

I think what’s worth bearing in mind and we aren’t really far enough on from yet to have perspective from an historical point of view is the huge explosion in spending power, commercial items being made so much more mass-produced and affordable, convenience and celebration of ‘mass’ shopping and - key - women’s control over earning their own money and being able to essentially spank it without answering to anyone that opened up gradually, slowly in 50s/60s/70s then with mad traction in 80s/90s. I don’t remember any critical thinking around ‘but does anyone NEED any of this stuff?’ Until the noughties.

Society has changed so much in terms of stuff- I always think our instinct to collect hasn’t caught up with the availability of things. Agatha Christie writes in her autobiography (nice middle class upbringing) that she had no stuff - one evening dress and pair of evening shoes in an era where changing for evening was still more common, no car, taking the bust everywhere, but full time daily domestic help! Right now I would trade all my possessions for any domestic help I think.

My parents brought loads of stuff thousands of CDs all worthless now and lots of dining ware etc for having different people over. Even 4 years ago my mother was banging on about her evoke 2 radio being worth a fortune - no it really isn’t. They think their possession are worth millions where as they can’t give it away.

Is your brother one of those who'd suddenly start to give a shit if he thought you were chucking away things of any value?

If so, I'd tell him you're not up for this so either he can or it all goes in a skip.

Some of that stuff will be worth a fortune.
Follow Dan Hatfield.
Look on This Mornings website.
All those old games n toys.
Not to mention the things your parents collected.

You do realise house clearance companies charge a fortune You aren't doing your kids any favours by suggesting this. Indeed quite the opposite.