Millennials are about to be crushed by all the junk their parents accumulated.
Every time Dale Sperling’s mother pops by for her weekly visit, she brings with her a possession she wants to pass on. To Sperling, the drop-offs make it feel as if her mom is “dumping her house into my house.” The most recent offload attempt was a collection of silver platters, which Sperling declined.
“Who has time to use silver? You have to actually polish it,” she told me. “I’m like, ‘Mom, I would really love to take it, but what am I going to do with it?’ So she’s dejected. She puts it back in her car.”
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Sperling’s conundrum is familiar to many people with parents facing down their golden years: After they’ve acquired things for decades, eventually, those things have to go. As the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. Many millennials, Gen Xers, and Gen Zers are now facing the question of what to do with their parents’ and grandparents’ possessions as their loved ones downsize or die. Some boomers are even still managing the process with their parents. The process can be arduous, overwhelming, and painful. It’s tough to look your mom in the eye and tell her that you don’t want her prized wedding china or that giant brown hutch she keeps it in. For that matter, nobody else wants it, either.
Much has been made of the impending “great wealth transfer” as baby boomers and the Silent Generation pass on a combined $84.4 trillion in wealth to younger generations. Getting less attention is the “great stuff transfer,” where everybody has to decipher what to do with the older generations’ things.
My auntie has done the opposite for fucking years : she’ll come visit her mum and leave with some knicknacks she’s had her eye on from a previous visit. My mum is absolutely fuming about it. She absolutely does not need anything, but just the principle of her sister being such a fucking vulture…
My grandmother came in for years and asked for handouts from stuff that was mine when I was younger. My mother kept giving her my old stuff. When I went to move out I went to look at the storage area and nothing that I really cared about was still there.
A few years ago my father mentioned all the toys I still had and that I should come and get them, I told him that They had already given away anything I cared about and all that was left was junk It just needed to go away. He got all defensive. But if you’re going to let somebody come in and take from a pool of goods they’re going to continually take the best things until there’s nothing useful left. I ended up with a small bucket of Legos and a couple of my favorite matchbook cars.
I’m not really sore about it, but at the same time him asking me to drive 7 hours and get the collection of broken items that were passed over No, either sell it in an eBay lot or throw it away.
What did your grandmother need with kids toys?
She ran this elaborate trade. She’d tell my mother she was giving them to my nephew or to some other relative, then I would check up with them and ask them how the toy was and they’d say what toy.
I don’t know whether they ended up in a thrift shop or some kind of trade-up rubber band for a car kind of thing.
She showed up this one time with her trunk absolutely full of just random garbage toys, Tell me to pick whatever I wanted for my birthday. I was around 16 I was like no no I’m good I’ll take a hug that’s all I need. You could see she was highly disappointed.
I was only marginally disappointed that none of my kids ended up with any of my toys but in the long run it’s not really that big of a deal. Those things all meant things to me, They likely never would have meant anything to my kids.
I dunno man, that’s pretty weird.
That side of the family was all pretty weird. There’s drug addiction, violence, mystery. I have no idea how my grandfather was on that side and no one would ever talk about it which makes me think it was probably something pretty bad.
It’s tough to look your mom in the eye and tell her that you don’t want her prized wedding china or that giant brown hutch she keeps it in. For that matter, nobody else wants it, either.
The reality is that we live in a world that is overinundated with stuff, and the value of things that people hold dear and that they paid a lot of money for and they think retained value is not so much, which is unfortunate,"
Woof those are both true
I have a TV armoire from the late 90s that I thought I was finally going to get rid of. I had been using it to store brewing supplies but was downsizing. My son said he wanted it so it went to storage with most of his stuff. When I was moving all that stuff a year or two later, I wanted to hauled to the dump but wasn’t sure if he remembered. So now it’s at his place and doesn’t fit at all. So I think I’m going to cut it up and toss it.
My mom keeps investing in diamond jewelry. I’ve tried explaining to her that diamonds do not hold their value, but she won’t hear it.
My girlfriend’s wedding ring from her previous marriage with a 8900 appraisal would have fetched a mere 1200 dollars at the jewelry exchange. Her pile of old gold was worth way more.
My grandmother recently died. Her son and his awful wife couldn’t wait to swoop in and take all her stuff. I actually didn’t mind though. They took all the tvs and old fur coats. Me and my brother got the pictures they left on the walls and the silly fridge magnets she liked. I think we ended up with the better stack of stuff at the end of the day.
Yeah, you can get tvs and old fur coats from the store, but not family photos. Silly fridge magnets can also be hard to find.
When my grandmother (Greatest Generation) died, it took my mom (Boomer), my wife, and I six weeks to go though everything and six days (over 2 weekends) to sell it at estate sales.
She had full house decor for winter, easter, spring, summer, autumn, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. She had a giant Rubbermade bin just of tiny porcelain shoes. I’ve never seen so many candles that had been burned once of twice then put away. At one point my wife screamed because she found an access door in a closet, leading to a smaller closet. and the tiny closed had half a dozen bins full of fake flowers. The house was always pristine and never looked cluttered - she spent decades pulling off one of the better magic tricks I’ve seen.
My mom majorly downsized a few years later, and just did so again. I think she saw her future and didn’t like.
This is the truth. Both sets of parents have dumped stuff on us often enough that we’ve had to put our collective foot down and refuse most items. Gone are the days were there might be just a few real nice items people wanted to keep, now it’s collections of Precious Moments figurines or similar that nobody wants.
It’s really hard to get rid of stuff that is still good and useful. You can barely literally give it away. I hate waste, so just dumping whatever it is in the trash is an absolute last resort. Places you would think that would take stuff are also overwhelmed and won’t take a ton of different things. Salvation Army, Goodwill…all of them have gotten picky and will refuse things even if new on occasion.
It’s really given me a deep revulsion for “stuff”. If something comes into our house it has to have a real purpose, or if it’s replacing something, the old thing must go ASAP.
Salvation Army and Goodwill don’t refuse things— I’m not sure where you’re getting that. They take their free donations, mark them up so much you could almost buy things mew elsewhere for the same price. They’re not a resale shop like Buffalo Exchange
The trick is to pack up a big box full of stuff and give it to them all at once so they don’t have time to look through it and refuse it.
They absolutely will refuse things they know they’ll have a hard time selling, and trust me they have unique insight into what people want and don’t love the idea of warehousing unsalable merchandise. Many Goodwill location’s FAQs acknowledge that they refuse to take certain things. Salvo has a whole page dedicated to why they refuse certain things.
Do they not have drop off bins where you are?
They do! They’re where I leave all of my used motor oil, dead batteries, and bedbug-ridden mattresses.
Come on. Just because you can subvert their policies by dropping stuff there indiscriminately doesn’t mean you should. Most of them say, right on the bin, that they’re for donations of clothing and shoes only.
My father’s mother died a few years back and due to a rabbit hole I won’t get into, was left with cleaning out her condo by himself. She wasn’t a hoarder or anything, but he was floored by the work involved.
During the pandemic hermitude, he absolutely purged his own house of everything like this. He didn’t want us to be burdened with it when his time came. It’s ironic that I was a little upset over some of the things he threw out xD
My mom made them sell their house because “it’s the only way I could think of to get the basement cleaned out before we die”. She didn’t want to burden us but it really just changed the time line.
My father was an incorrigible hoarder, but my mother had been culling his shit for years ever since he got too sick to stop her. Now that he’s buried she’s culling the last of it all, which is still a lot. She is not a hoarder but we kids have no use for her stuff even tho it’s quality. Estate sale is what it’s gonna be.
Silver has an inherent melt value though, $30 an ounce.
So say you inherit a silver set weighing 110 troy ounces.
https://www.silverqueen.com/item/250501?Mcat=e7c15b48-b610-4c99-831d-937f77ccc4c9
Just the silver, BY ITSELF, is worth $3,300.
Those silver platters are plated
That might be true if it were pure silver, but it isn’t.
At best, it could be sterling silver. If it was made in the past century or so, it’s likely just silver plated.
What’s the melt value of Elvis commemorative plates?
First world problems
Most boomers aren’t leaving shit to us but debt and worse economy ever. What fuck is this article. Answer is sell the shit.
Ahahahaha thank you.
Don’t let the scammers trick you unto paying your parents debt. Debt cannot transfer to you.
To who? Aquaman?
Answer is sell the shit.
Sell it to who? Nobody else wants the shit either, that’s the problem
Much of the consumerism that taught them to accumulate junk turned into a burden for us all. Everything they bought is “vintage” and many pretend it holds onto some type of value. That or they didn’t want to clean up their garage for 30 years. The boomers’ posthumous contribution to landfills is truly staggering.
Donate it to a thrift store or someone who needs it
You actually don’t have to polish silver. It’s anti-bacterial properties still work if it’s tarnished.
But it looks shitty, it’s not nice to eat with black spoons and forks that never look clean.
Goblincore…
A trip to the thrift store can help. Its full of fine silverware and crystal and all sorts of nice boomer things. They will see that their treasures are worthless and can be painlessly donated or disposed of.
I get your point— but in truth thrift stores have started charging tons more in the last few years. Boomer zombies might also go “but honey look, they’re charging $1 per fork!” , which, yeah but I’m not doing a whole yard sale for your crap Mom.
“YARD” sale, like any of us has one of THOSE lol
That’s why it’s still here in the store, mom. If it was priced reasonably, they would have sold it.
(I do.)
I mean, I grew up with one , it’s not the biggest character flaw 🤷♂️
It keeps the dogs happy.
I’ve spent the last two decades training my parents to understand that I generally don’t want their hand-me-downs, and probably don’t want a lot of their belongings when they depart this world. Maybe a few items that have sentimental value, but the rest will likely be sold, assuming we can find people to buy it. And they do have a lot of stuff. Some of it valuable art and trinkets they’ve collected over the years. Very little of it resonates with me, though. They’re in their 80s now, so we’ve had discussions about plans between them and my older brother and myself. There are trusts. We have access to their accounts. I count myself lucky that they’re so practical.
My parents went through this when their parents died in the early 2000s. This is an old people vs young people thing. Let’s see what millennials accumulate as they go senile.
Let’s see what millennials accumulate as they go senile
Probably not as much, what with not having anywhere to keep it
Mine is all on my server, photos and videos of me and my kid. Movies and TV shows I ripped from when blockbuster went under.
We will own temporary licenses to things, and we will be happy.
That’s a good point. My wife has an extensive audio CD collection. There’s something to be said for “owning” that music. But if she does, I will be keeping that collection on some other long-lived media instead that consumes less physical space.
I’m leaving a bunch of tools and crafting supplies. I hope I jumpstart a career or hobby when I die or it gets tossed whatever I will be dead.
There’s going to be so many Funkopops.
