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.

OP probably doesn't have the time and energy to do that

I think that's a perfectly valid way to feel. Sorry you're dealing with that.

When my friend was clearing out her mums things after her death, she found messages between her sister and her mum, where her mum had been complaining about her & her daughters and it broke her. Being dead doesn't mean nothing that person ever did isn't allowed to hurt.

It’s very hard to feel your parents are apparently ignoring you in times of need. You have to try and remember that they were living in a different cycle, they too had hard times when they were younger but were past them and into a more prosperous phase of their life. They wanted to enjoy what they had worked and waited for.

Hopefully you will have the same good fortune, OP. I really hope so.

I’m so sorry for your loss, whether it’s your parents or happier memories of them.

Why are there always posts like this?

Just because you made something work for you doesn't mean everyone should do the exact same. I was also at uni in the early 90s, also had to support myself. I had two jobs at one point. Depends where you live and how expensive it was, doesn't it?

OP - lots of posts excusing your parents but they might just have been selfish. Mine are/were. They didn't support me from the age of 18 either (including through university) because they just didn't want to. Not because they couldn't afford to or were going through financial issues - they just wanted to spend that money on themselves/my siblings.

I can relate to this . After my kids grew up and left home for the first time ever I had disposable income to spend on myself and omg I did . I went crazy . I really try now to buy what I need and have decluttered . I've still got some more left to do .

My husband is a hoarder too . He's a food hoarder . We don't waste food thought it gets used up before its expiry date . He says it makes him feel secure to have a full freezer and cupboard.

He also collects tools .

I do believe if you have a bigger house you will fill it with junk . We have twice the space that we had with our first house and have twice the amount of junk .

We currently have 4 bookshelves on the go and 8 drawers filled with crap . I am determined to ruthlessly dispose of this before the year is out .

Ahh, I really feel for you, OP - and let me guess, ‘golden brother’ doesn’t get stuck doing the grunt work?
Thats my experience - youngest of 3, always been put upon to look after my parents, older two allowed the freedoms to do what they wanted in their lives, always got what they wanted - emotionally and financially. When it got to me, it felt like my parents had run out of steam - they weren’t interested at all.
But now there is practical and financial input needed towards our parents - I’m the only one expected to give. My dad died six years ago - he was a hoarder and I had to organise three skips and many, many top runs to empty out all his stuff from my parents’ house. My mum moved a year or two later and the sheer amount of stuff that was still in the house was astounding. They both had very little growing up, but apparently had a large disposable income to collect such a vast amount of crap!
sorry this is long - didn’t realise how badly I needed to vent! It just feels very selfish and wasteful. And my mum still keeps buying all kinds of cheap novelty rubbish to this day - I dread the task of clearing away her things when the time comes. It’s exhausting.

Nothing is unreasonable at a time like this. You feel how you feel. It's not easy.

@Poppins21

With the house clearing company do you literally sign over the possessions to them ? If there is anything of value such as gold Jewlry or a collection worth £££ do they get to keep it ? Also what happens to the stuff once they have cleared it ?

I must say that I don't understand what the OP is trying to say. Is it resentment at having to clear the house or resentment that her parents bought themselves nice things?

Tuition was free but grants for living costs were means tested based on parental income. I'm assuming that OP's parents were wealthy enough to need to pay towards OP's living costs but didn't actually do this which is why OP needed two jobs.

My bil apparently couldn’t help my dh sort his parents house because he found it too upsetting.
However he was perfectly able to ring dh and tell him he’d been to the house and taken xxx because they held significant memories for him.
I often wonder what he’d have done if he’d been an only dc.

I get it. It's understandable to feel upset and bitter, especially when golden child is nowhere to be seen in this process.

I'd stop sorting it out if I were you and get a company in that will do it for you.

When my DGPs died, my mum got a company in that would auction off what it could (whether they were expensive antiques or literally the toaster from the kitchen) and disposed of what was unsaleable.

They obviously took a cut of whatever they could sell and charged a disposal fee for what they couldn't, but it took so much weight off my mum's shoulders as she too was having to do it alone.

She'd gone through it all first to pick out anything extremely sentimental, higher value that might need to go to a specialist auction (bloody stamp collections!) or anything she wanted to keep, but then left the rest to them to go through.

I’m sorry you’re going through this - I’ve just had a very similar experience clearing my Mum’s things, and it really stings, doesn’t it? 💐
In a weird way it’s helped me to feel less sad about her move to care. It felt nice to sort her clothes etc, bringing order to chaos. I still feel a little bit of resentment about my childhood, but mostly it’s made me feel extremely proud that I’m giving my DS everything that I never had. He has savings in his ISA, premium bonds, a pricey but very rewarding hobby, enough toys and art materials so there’s no limit to his creativity, lives in a area that will be a positive influence… as well as all the things money can’t buy, like motivation and encouragement, help with his homework, and tonnes of affection every day. It feels so good to break the cycle.

I'd say to anyone of a certain age and thinking what your children may find when you're gone, to prioritise getting rid of things like diaries, notebooks etc anywhere you may have written about your children nastily, horribly, unfairly etc. Dont let that be the last communication from you that they'll see.

Ahh, that's tough.

I've always been the dependable/stolid one of my family, whilst the others got fancy gifts to (unsuccessfully) buy their love.

The worst one was a Christmas Day in my twenties where my mum had bought one gift for me and about a dozen for my sister. I sat there taking gifts from under the tree, handing gift after gift out to other people, and it becoming increasingly obvious that I only had one. I ended up tearing up when I was turning one over and my mum took it out of my hands and said that was for my sister too.

My sister passed me one of her gifts saying she thought it had been labelled wrongly by mistake. My dad panicked and went upstairs and bunged me £100 in an envelope saying it was to buy a sat nav (he's a tech expert and would absolutely have just given me the tech if he were buying me one).

For those who might call this precious, my dad always gave us a generous sum of £250 for Christmas and my mum would always buy us a few second-hand vintage gifts.

But it will never not hurt to remember that when Christmas shopping, my mum thought one present would be fine for me before buying a pile for my sister. That she sat there, wrapping them, writing my sister's name on the label again and again, and didn't think, "hang on".

I confronted her with it that night because I was crying, and got excuses about "always being so busy". But that's what I got all my childhood - the older ones were keeping her busy, so I had to make do.

Do get a skip and chuck everything in, unless obviously valuable and saleable.

I don’t think the OP is that difficult to comprehend really, and there are multiple things she’s resentful about (it doesn’t have to just be limited to one thing).
Here’s what I took from her post

• She’s resentful that while she was struggling and working 2 jobs, her parents were simultaneously pleading poverty and also buying themselves lots of ‘stuff’.
• That stuff that they bought is now her job to clear out, and the golden child brother isn’t offering any help.
• Said golden child brother had far more money spent on him as a child than she did.

It’s completely normal to be angry when people die, it’s part of the grief process. It’s even more normal to harbour anger/resentment when you feel you were unfairly treated as a child/young adult in comparison to a sibling. Especially when you’re the one expected to pick up the pieces after death.
I can’t see anywhere that suggests the OP is just cross that they bought themselves nice things.

@DazedorBemused The main fuckity issue here is that there was such a difference in what your brother got and what you got. And yet you are the one to sort things (and probably one that provided care). Its shit. Unfortunately women and girls are not valued as much as boys/men yet shoulder the bulk of unpaid care. It sucks. Hope we do better with each generation.

As to the stuff, as upsetting as it is, we all but stuff we dont need. It probably fills a certain emptiness or gives hope for a better tomorrow (when the visitors come. When x happens I will wear this or that). It sucks but it is life and I bet most of us are guilty and our children will be horrified (or they may buy more - thanks Amazon and Shein and Temu).

I dont have much to offer except, strength to you op.

My MIL made a serious consideration of us when she was alive, so that when she died, this house stuff was as easy as it could possibly be.

She gave my DD most of her jewellery, she cleared anything into the charity shop that she didn't want/need. Her attic was empty. Her and FIL had a little bungalow - so when they had both died, what we did was to go through it quickly and collect things like photos/sentimental items. We then employed house clearers to do the rest. You don't even have to pay them. They sell stuff (eg a washing machine and dryer that were quite new, furniture in decent condition etc) and they then give you money. You can really only do this if you have made sure that there isn't anything of value (sentimental/monetary) first - but MIL had left everything very tidy/organised so that this was not difficult.

She knew she had cancer, so she had some rough idea of what was going to happen. I am very grateful for what she did. She was a good person who was unafraid to face reality and speak/act clearly and practically.

You are no more responsible for turning their investment antiques / junk into cash than if they had bought shares in an ostrich farm (like my parents did.. though I am starting to feel some gratitude to my father in his attempts to liquidate some of his own investments).

Why do so many parents treat their daughters so differently to their sons.... I hope it rooted in beliefs and habits that have long since faded and that I do better. My mother was / is so bitter about how the boys were treated in her family and she did the same to my brother.

You say your brother was occasionally ill? What? with coughs and colds? or a medical condition which he lives with and is a bit sh*t? If it's the latter - even mildly - I'd trade good health for stuff any time.

Plus what everyone else has said about clearing parental homes. It's tough. Acknowledge that.

And try to remember different generations have different hang ups about money. My mother was brought up in poverty by a single mother because her dad was killed in the war. As she and dad did well she developed a taste for luxury brands and extravagant gifts for people. Both of things repelled me a bit (yes, I was probably a snobby little prig!). But I completely understand why she was the way she was.

Good luck. It's a rocky moment, losing parents

Why are you doing this? Tell them they can do it themselves, get the golden child to do it, or pay someone.

I'd never use a House Clearance company, & have dissuaded friends from doing so.
When DM died, DF was in a wheelchair & I cleared out her things.

I found >£16,000 - no typo, over sixteen thousand.

But it's only a fortune if you can realise the value, which means sorting it from that tat in the first place and then having the inclination to find a way to sell it. My DM just gets stuck on her Vinted login and gets no further. It's infuriating.