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.

@faffadoodledo I've steadily got rid of hundreds of books. I used to keep them all but I decided I will never read the majority of the books again so what's the point of keeping them. I try hard not to buy books now except for some Arab literature, and borrow from the library instead. I keep books given as presents - except for paperbacks which I get rid of once they're read - and a few reference books. Like other forms of clutter books take up space, collect dust and they will just be a problem for whoever has to deal with my stuff when I die.

Ah,
@MissMarplesNiece our children love our book shelves and regularly filch from them.
I'll wonder where my copy of Wolf Hall is bc DH wants to read it and Lo! It has migrated to a bookshelf in a flat in London. So I have zero guilt about book clutter!

You're lucky you've got readers in your family who share your taste 🙂 Sadly I don't 🙁 (I'd love a family member to have book chat with), and as I read over a novel a week the books build up over time to ridiculous levels. If I lived in a bigger house maybe I'd keep them, but as I rarely read anything twice I don't have any real reason to hang onto them and it would still be creating a problem for someone else when I'm gone.

One of the things I came across while clearing out was a guide to expat living in Northern Rhodesia, including such delightful advice as how to advance book an international phone call at the Post Office, how to manage your domestic staff, and what to do if you encounter a crocodile etc in the street.

Northern Rhodesia ceased to exist in 1964. I toyed with the idea of taking it to the National Museum in Lusaka last time I was there to see if they wanted it, but I could just picture the reaction!

I was born early 50s. How did I miss the not working and my life being all about shopping. My siblings, cousins, old friends, none of them managed this dream life. I've never done classes, the only craft I do is to make a shawl for new babies in the family. As for the labour saving devices well it was a while before I got them, no washing machine with my first two children but I did have a vacuum.

Was this a very middleclass thing that us working class women didn't get a share of?

By the way I'd love to do some Swedish Death Cleaning but I don't have any clutter to clear so all the stuff I'd want to dump wouldn't be mine so I can't do it.

Oh yes you have summed it up perfectly.

I feel sad reading so much anger towards your parents. And I’m surprised so many PP agree. An outpouring of resentment towards parents who started out poor, then thrived during a period of economic growth. They hoarded their treasures because it’s hard to shake off the habits they learned growing up in tight circumstances.

And why are you trying to sell all this stuff? Making trivial amounts of money for a lot of effort?

Wouldn’t you be happier if you just let go of the resentment, gave anything saleable to charity shops and then got a house clearance firm in?

And yes, I have been through all this myself.

Yes, I’d love to remember my mum floating round her huge house doing a little bit of watercolour painting to impress the neighbours! What a nice fantasy. Reality perhaps in some middle-class households.

In reality, and being working class, dad worked till he died and mum had just a few years of retirement after a lifetime of often heavy work. The one good thing was that, having lived on low wages, she had no trouble managing on her pittance of a pension.

I fear my kids would have nightmares if they found watercolours I'd done. My art teacher at school once said, Theign couldn't draw a straight line with the aid of a ruler. Harsh but pretty accurate.

🙄 woosh!

But you haven't. Your mother apparently had no problem surviving on on a pittance of a pension.

Neither did my Grandparents. One or two suitcases each.

My hourly paid working class parents have at least three sets of four suitcases. The first cheap set they bought to replace their original cases. Then the lighter ones but the handle broke on one, so they bought the ones with wheels but then they could take more on a cruise so there's the super big ones plus the matching smaller ones.

So this weekend, we will drive over, unzip and check and then pile for house clearance, tip and ignore all the voices on this thread and in my head that question about charity or sell.

I agree with @Hairyesterdaygonetoday . Why ask your DH to go through their old bank statements, for example? Just bin them.

The perfectly reasonable resentment that OP feels is due the inequity of treatment between herself and her slightly younger brother. Her parents didn't have enough money to provide any financial support for OP at university meaning that she needed to take two part-time jobs during term-time and a full-time job during vacations. Her brother was fully supported financially while at University. He also received a large hourse deposit from their parents, OP did not.

Her brother is nowhere to be seen now some work needs to be done to clear their parents house.

They didn't sound like good or supportive parents for OP so she is entitled to feel some resentment.

I didn't feel resentment clearing my mum's house, but that is because of a few things...(1)she loved and used everything she had - she was an artist and a collector of many things, but any given item she could recount it's story and tell you why it was unique or useful or unusual, she didn't just hoard for the sake of it, she appreciated everything she had (2) she didn't punish me for growing up in a more difficult economy and blame my financial misfortunes on frivolity (3) selling things on market place meant my cash flow situation wasn't as terrible as it could have been (clearing a house is very costly in time and money). I quite enjoy boot fairs. There is nothing wrong with selling things to try and make the process manageable financially, particularly if you are taking unpaid time off work to get it done. OP has had a very different experience - if I'm honest their parents sound selfish and out of touch and that would have made me angry too. It is difficult when your parents are ivory castle dwellers and you're grinding away to make ends meet (the situation a lot of people are in even if they earn significantly over the average wage).

And more than once too!

From one of Op's posts-
When I got married, they paid for my dress and a buffet (2k) and gave my brother 10k for a house deposit because he didnt have a deposit saved and his then girlfriend they adored and wanted to settle down. It didn't work out.
They then gave him a similar amount for the next girlfriend. I was apparently fine because my DH was a steady earner ( although a low paid sector) and we'd already bought a part share.
Five years ago, it all fell apart again and yes bro needed a considerable amount because his employment was so bad he couldn't get a mortgage.

And he still got a 50/50 split!

To be fair to the brother his parents gave him money, maybe he didn't ask for it, maybe he didn't know what his sister got. Now he might favour getting in a house clearance company as he doesn't want to spend time doing it. He isn't forcing the OP to do it. If no one is interested in it just get it cleared and don't try to guilt trip other people into spending weeks sorting it out.

Yes, it probably was more of a middle class thing than a working class thing. Which is not to say that it was unusual. Most of the British population identified as middle class by the 80s and 90s, if I remember rightly.

I feel sad reading so much anger towards your parents. And I’m surprised so many PP agree. An outpouring of resentment towards parents who started out poor, then thrived during a period of economic growth. They hoarded their treasures because it’s hard to shake off the habits they learned growing up in tight circumstances.

Perhaps you could show the same empathy and understanding to this generation's children. You clearly think we ought to take into account the wider social and economic contexts when we think about this hoarding behaviour. That's not a bad idea, but it can't be a one off.

There are people on here talking about having to deal with this whilst in objectively worse financial and housing circumstances on average (and even for those of us from working class backgrounds, the appropriate comparison is between people doing the same jobs now with those 50 years ago, not between working and middle class). Your post didn't show any recognition of the impact that might have.

Re: "the appropriate comparison is between people doing the same jobs now with those 50 years ago."
I ended up in a senior role in a "traditional" high-paying sector. A colleague once remarked that if we'd been doing an equivalent job thirty years earlier we'd have had a country estate, and a pony for every child. Let's just say there were no country estates and no ponies. We were all crippled by housing and childcare costs. We were at least able eventually to get on the housing ladder, though generally in our 30s. We could see the cohort coming 5-10 years behind us were having even bigger problems with affordability and generally renting into mid-career.

I feel sad reading so much anger towards your parents. And I’m surprised so many PP agree. An outpouring of resentment towards parents who started out poor, then thrived during a period of economic growth. They hoarded their treasures because it’s hard to shake off the habits they learned growing up in tight circumstances.
And why are you trying to sell all this stuff? Making trivial amounts of money for a lot of effort?

Because the OP was unfairly treated by hair parents. That tends to cause long-term hurt and anger.

And she sounds like the last thing she wants to do is sell the stuff! Did you actually read any of her posts?

@TheignT
I was born early 50s. How did I miss the not working and my life being all about shopping. My siblings, cousins, old friends, none of them managed this dream life. I've never done classes, the only craft I do is to make a shawl for new babies in the family. As for the labour saving devices well it was a while before I got them, no washing machine with my first two children but I did have a vacuum
Was this a very middleclass thing that us working class women didn't get a share of?

Its fiction and rose tinted spectacles. My mother and all her peers worked. None had "labour saving devices" of the type described nor did they have a "nice big house". We lived in overcrowded and damp flats, washing was done in the tub or the launderette and we didn't have a bathroom. I'm not an old boomer I'm a 60s baby on the generation boundary growing up in London. We also had school classes of 40-50 pupils per class and no special needs provision.

The "most women at home" may be aggravated by census data which routinely classified women as "housewives" even if they worked. My mother had quite the rant when census collector insisted that "the man" must fill in the form and only full time jobs were ecorded as work. The rationale being that women's main responsibility was at home so she was a housewife even though she might do much the same hours but scattered across part time jobs at unsocial hours. If they were home during the day they were listed as housewives.

On TV and in the media family life portrayal was pretty much always the middle class version which may add to the rose tinted specs.

Worth noting also that at a time of "things getting better" you would often hear "my wife doesn't need to work" - a non working wife was a status symbol adding to pressure on women to downplay their paid work.

If they are old enough to remember post war austerity how old would they have been by the 90s? Although I suppose it depends when we are talking about post war austerity. I was born early 50s and I don't remember rationing although thee was sugar rationing while I was alive. I remember poor housing and bomb sites but generally people were working and had enough to eat and a life so I sort of see people who remember the austerity as being probably ten years older than me so by 1990 they'd have been 50ish so not likely to be giving up work to start a family and I definitely think most women were working in the 90s.

It is complicated as there have definitely been ups and downs since the end of WWII in opportunities/cost of living and so on. Different areas have also had different experiences, I don't think the coal mining areas were having a very middle class experience when the mines were closing in the 80s.

Precisely. My DF was made redundant by the Coal Board in 1985 because his engineering job making machinery for the pit heads was pretty much defunct by then. Luckily he had clawed his way up from the shop floor to management by doing night school exams and that gave him his enhanced pension on which they are still living today. But he was lucky and had worked bloody hard for it, otherwise his experience would have been much more Valleys working class. As it is the town went to the dogs and the house they are in is an ex Council house. It left my DM in the strange position of being relatively - I emphasise relatively - affluent in a poor area and she had very Hyacinth Bouquet notions about her superiority, and expressed them with catalogue fashion, wall plates, lace table cloths, the lot. (I wouldn’t mind if she were a nicer person and could see past her own nose).

And this is why we need to make History particularly recentish 20th Century History compulsory.

Very, very few people born 1930, 40, 50s stayed on at school past 14 or 15. So no, they didn't get free Uni - they got no Uni, no A levels, no O Levels ( GCSE). This is why the campaign for Comprehensive Education which was only coming in 1970s in the main, was and still is so important. The curtailing of most people's ability to better themselves was criminal. Backed by falsified 'research' proving that there were different types of people with a fixed IQ which could be tested for at 10-11 etc. Shameless politicised "academics" making up the proof to make sure most people couldn't progress. It wasn't until Prof Brian Simon trawled through the 'proof' that it became public that it had been made up.

Equal pay for women wasn't a thing until the1960s +. So eg there was separate scale for women teachers' pay - 3/4 of men's. The NAS ( National Association of SchoolMASTERS) split from the NUT to campaign against equal pay for women.

Discrimination at work against women,Irish, Jews, Catholics, racial minorities was rife. ( Huge amounts of unemployment - most women who had worked in factories during the War were summarily sacked in 1945). No employment protection so summary sackings rife, line ups where employers picked out a few men toward that day on the Docks.

Girls who had much higher marks than boys were forced into Secondary Modern Schools and had to leave at 15 with no qualifications because schools were segregated by sex. Most girls were not allowed to study 'boys' subjects so no engineering, woodwork etc. No cookery for boys.There were only 3 Cambridge Colleges for women v about 30 for men. Many courses refused women or had a quota ( Medicine).

Maternity pay was 11 weeks before the birth and 7 weeks after - yes SEVEN only in eg Teaching in 1960s even, Usually this was irrelevant as you'd be sacked. Until 1944 ish women were sacked if they married hence we call women teachers Miss.

There was no reliable contraception ie no pill. Women lived in a perpetual fear of becoming pregnant and being summarily sacked. No access to ( legal) abortion. Very little ante natal care,

Infectious diseases were rife - TB, diptheria, measles, polio and no/very little preventative medecine. No Health and Safety. If you had an accident at work you were likely to be sacked not compensated.

Housing was grim post War. Huge areas of the Cities were bomb sites, or filled with back to backs or 2 up 2 downs housing families of 6-10 or more. Rented ( eg Rackman) of course not bought. Buying a fantasy for most and all women who were not allowed to have mortgages, credit, loans eg hence the Teachers' Building Society founded to help women.

How I wish I had lived in the Golden Years Fantasy that is now the Boomer Age.

If the tip is more than 1/2 a mile away, then screw it - tipping in the street is bad, but petrol is bad for the envorinment - just tip it in the street. Why are you clearing it anyway? Can't you just ignore it? Forget about it?