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.

There are specialist house clearance companies that pay well for the antiques and then clear all the junk for you. Three money paid for the good stuff goes towards the house clearance costs so there may or may not be money left over.

You can then just pick out any sentimental items you want and then leave the thankless and upsetting task of clearing to the professionals. If your brother objects then he can come and clear it.

Step away. You don't have to do it all by yourself

Well, It’s indisputably true that if the OP’s parents were born in the forties then 1) they aren’t silent gen; and 2) that boomers have enjoyed the greatest and longest peacetime economic boom of modern history, by some astonishing way. So whatever their personalities, OP’s parents categorically did not live through a period where the average experience was of great hardship. This is factually and economically the case, not boomer bashing.

How old please? Thanks

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
Most students work, they are only at uni half the year!
How entitled are you! I seem to remember at that time loans weren't based on parental income so there was no presumption of a parental contribution

The OP says They were born either side of WW2, so as I said, one Boomer, one Silent Generation.

We didn't live through a World War, but we did live through the Cold War, the nuclear threat, the worldwide repercussions of the Vietnam War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and a huge amount of industrial strife and rampant inflation in the 1970s. In the 1980s some people had loadsamoney, a lot of people didn't. Ask anyone from a mining area about the 1980s! Yes, we were very lucky in lots of ways that previous generations weren't - generalising to a whole generation. Lots of individuals weren't that lucky. Exactly the same holds true for later generations.

Advise looking into it before considering appointing a solicitor as an executor, they can absolutely rinse you. Google some info and make an informed decision x

Tbh you say about the piles of tut she has accumulated over the years with them one day being ' worth something ' , and mentioned Franklin plates .
As someone who has worked in a charity shop , we groan when they come in , as they takes ages to sell and only go for a £1 or two .
Advice , you have fun smashing them up as you've suggested .

I think you've inadvertently made OP's point.

She mentions that her parents were born either side of the war, so while rationing, etc, was definitely a "thing" during that time, it wasn't a "thing" that directly affected their purses, but their own parents.

They have, however, made a lifetime of moaning about it, even though it likely didn't actually affect them, yet then had enough disposable income to be frivolous with it, spoiling her DB and latterly themselves, while she juggled working with Uni to make ends meet, thinking that her DPs finances were in a worse state than they were.

Agreed. I’m 60 and I couldn’t get the grant as parents were expected to help. Mine wouldn’t so I ended up working in an evening and nights job. I was knackered and got a very ordinary degree as a result.

You've said what I was going to say, and eloquently.

OP, there's a good deal of unpacking in every sense in the task you're dealing with. Maybe you'll eventually see the work you're doing now as the start of drawing a line under it all, and move forward.

If you find it's affecting you badly and you can't shake it off easily - if it still hurts months from now - try to find a counselor.

Don't feel guilty for feeling the way you do, or for feeling angry, or any other feelings you might perceive as negative or mean spirited. Don't judge yourself.

I understand your resentment about being treated unequally with your brother. I wonder whether that shaped the way you treat your own DC? It did for me. Not inequality but a general lack of interest in me and my sister.

There is an alternative to house clearance companies. When mum died we got a small local charity who were happy to take virtually everything.
We kept a small box of photos and papers and got rid of everything else.
There was porcelain and other "valuables" , essentially worthless. Neither of us could be bothered with the trouble of selling it though. It was just a relief to get rid.

I'm now pretty ruthless about keeping stuff. Not quite Swedish death clearing but in that direction. I've got rid of 1000s of books, tons of clothes. I hate niknaks and clutter anyway.

My sibling whispered in elderly parents ear and inherited the house and contents. I was permitted a scrabble about and take a few bits.

Uttlerly devastating. Sorry OP.

Gosh, that sounds hard, OP. Hard at the best of times to clear out parents' house.

And it sounds like you're dealing with a lot of old feelings, too. A lot to sort through. I hope you find the process cathartic and ultimately healing.

Maintenance grants were certainly based on parental income in the early 1980s when I went to university. You only got a full grant if you were from a low income household. We were not well off, but my parents' income came in a bit above the limit, so I was very fortunate that they made up my grant to the full amount. Not everyone had that good luck. It was unusual in my day for students to work in term-time, but most of us worked in the summer. Of course, the vast majority of my generation never got to university at all, or even did A levels, so those of us who did get there were very fortunate indeed.

Her point was that she worked to fund her place, but they paid for her brother.

We are clearing my mother’s house. It’s exhausting. I asked her, gently, when she was still alive if we could maybe get rid of some of the old furniture in the garage, and her dinner service with 24 place settings. She said I could do it when she died.

I knew she lived very frugally, and had a tiny pension, and assumed she didn’t have much money. One of my cousins used to send her vouchers for her local supermarket. I was astounded when she died to be left over £1 million. I wished she had spent it on making her life better when she was alive.

It's hurt that her brother was given nice stuff while she wasn't, hurt that they never considered her financial struggles while they spent money on piles of useless crap, and now she's the one left dealing with it all.

@FartyPrincess that's a serious amount of money.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I’ve done educational research in this area, and actually the university thing is a complete myth.

When you add university students together with the students of the postwar period who had free tertiary education (including bursaries and grants) to attend polytechnics, further ed, vocational colleges and other forms of tertiary education and training that would now be done via a degree (eg nursing training, teacher training, and other forms of similar work-based and vocational training), the proportion of that in total in the boomer generation is around 40 percent - not that far below the current level of tertiary participation. And before you begin, the 50 percent target was developed by Major in the 90s, and NOT Blair, and was only ever a target of 50% tertiary, not university, education (and as such not actually that more than the total percentage of tertiary level education particupation in the 80s, which was around 42 percent already by the time the polytechnics were turned into universities).

All these talking-points boomers come out with on the regular were all created as anti-Labour right wing myths peddled by the press in the 2000s.

I see those "collections" in my local thrift shop all the time, each piece priced at 50c or taped together randomly and priced at 5/$1.

It's all crap that used to be advertised at the back of the Sunday supplement in newspapers along with coins, polyester trousers with elasticated waists, and hideous slippers, with a mail order form you could cut out and send with your cheque.

They are not worth the effort of schlepping them anywhere. Drop them from a bedroom window into a bin placed below.

Nonsense - loans weren’t, but the maximum loan was 1/3 of the recommended lowest living amount - your parents were expected to make up the rest, and if they were low income you qualified for a grant, which was around another 50-30 percent of the total (it decreased from 50 percent around 1990 to 30 percent in the mid-90s before being cut completely around the late 90s).The rest was expected to be made up from your parents, even if they were low income, or from part-time work. So your parents were normally expected to contribute all the rest if you didn’t have a grant, and something even if you did.

If you ever visit Agatha Christie's house in Devon you would find that her and her husband loved to collect clutter.

It's the main thing I remember from visiting 15 years ago. Just little collections of cigarette boxes and silverware and vases and many more things. Thousands of books!

And there you go again. You've assumed I will be anti-Labour. In the great majority of elections I've been eligible to vote in I've voted Labour and I've never voted Tory. I haven't lived in a Tory constituency since I was 18.

Your figures are very interesting and I will try to remember them, but it is undoubtedly true that those of us who did get to go to university, polytechnic, art college etc with no loans, no tuition fees and reasonably generous maintenance were very lucky indeed. We know it. We know things have changed a lot since.

Just over half of University students have term time jobs currently, it was 45% in 2022 and less than 30% in 2012.

I have the memory of what happened when a childless great uncle died.

Three of us were delegated to take his savings book to the building society, to see whether there was enough to bury him. Turned out he had a second account with 200k in it. (This was the ‘90s.)

When we got back to the (council) house to tell them, my mum’s cousins went mad tearing the place apart, looking for a will.

That’s stuck with me.

GU did get a proper funeral, but some of the beneficiaries didn’t attend. (GU died intestate. Once the tax was paid, the rest was split equally amongst his nephews and nieces.)