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.”
…
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.
Happy I have sane parents who consistently downsize and donate without bothering me. We had one conversation where they asked me what I’m interested in. Of course I told them to enjoy their things as they wish.
There was a painting of a beautiful waterfall landscape, painted in 1890, (verified) my grandmother and grandfather bought early in their marriage. I always admired it and it made me think of nostalgic, fond memories of growing up. My dad hated it because that was the formal room he had to sit in for time out. Yoink. It sits in my living room and inspires me every day. A happy trade based on adult conversation.
Context is everything.
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Same here. My mom is into the “KonMari” method and it’s a godsend.
We are not a sentimental age
We don’t want our parent’s china or their ticker-tape parades
We are not a sentimental age
We’re out getting high on fire escapes
We are hooking up with strangers we will never see again
We are not a sentimental age
We are not a sentimental age
…
We are not a sentimental age
On our shoulders is a boulder of a debt we cannot pay
We are not a sentimental age
Diagnosis says I tend to disengage
I’d rather have my privacy, I’d rather have my space
These are just the pills I have to take
We are not a sentimental age
My mom is in the middle of downsizing. I have some storage space, so I let her keep her stuff in my house. It gives her an excuse to come visit and we go through her things while she decides what’s worth keeping or donating. I’m involved in the process, and I’ve saved a couple heirlooms with sentimental value.
My mother-in-law likes to show up unannounced and drop crap off. So far she’s given me two lawnmowers, a bunch of rusty garden tools, and a leaky water cooler. I think she thinks she’s helping, but it’s getting to the point that I feel like I’m her dumping site.
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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.
Don’t let the scammers trick you unto paying your parents debt. Debt cannot transfer to you.
To who? Aquaman?
Ahahahaha thank you.
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.
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.
I’m Gen-X and oh my god you have no idea.
My dad was pre-Boomer (born in 1931), but he just endlessly collected stuff. Thousands of movie soundtracks and classical music albums on both LP and CD. Hundreds of DVDs. Mountains of movie memorabilia and posters. Coins. Stamps. Rare books. Antiques. That’s just the major collections. Lots of minor ones- sheet music, British cigarette trading cards, and then there are not just the over 20 books he wrote, but extra copies of them. Most of them are academic texts on film. The rest is stuff like terrible poetry and bad plays that no one is interested in but I can’t bring myself to get rid of.
Much of it had value, so I didn’t want to just dump it. We did an auction for some of it, garage sales, a flea market stall, I ended up spending about two years selling stuff on eBay, I gave a lot to friends, the CDs eventually just had to go to Goodwill because no one wanted them.
And I’m still stuck with a ton of stuff. A garage full of stuff that I don’t want to just toss because someday someone might want an almost life-size ceramic bust of Charlie Chaplin and it feels stupid to just throw it away.
Meanwhile, my also pre-boomer mom (born 1942) has been collecting antique furniture.
I think I’m just going to do an estate sale when she dies.
I have one “collection.” 5 bakelite radios and one Weltron Space Ball radio/8-track player. My daughter has my permission to take them to some charity place if she doesn’t want them. Preferably not Goodwill or the Salvation Army, but those are the choices you get in this town unfortunately. Nothing else I have is of any real value and I’m fine with that. And having seen what I’ve already gone through to get rid of all of this stuff, my daughter is too.
Edit: I forgot to say that the stuff I talked about doesn’t include all the stuff I said to my brother “just take what you want” about because I really didn’t want to argue about it and he was going to fuck off back to Atlanta after the funeral anyway. But he doesn’t have any kids and he’s 11 years older than me, so I’ll probably get all that shit too one day.
GenX here and, yeah, I’m guilty too…
This is awesome
My wife’s uncle has a huge comic book collection, and he’s getting up in years (never married; still lives in the house he grew up in). He mentioned getting it appraised, because I guess he does have some that may have some value.
Personally I’m just glad he’s thinking about this kind of stuff.
New price guides come out every year, I keep asking Overstreet for a digital edition and API access. :)
I’m at a point now where I can’t update the prices before a new edition comes out.
At least (I would think) you could sell all of those as one collection.
My basement is already half full of my inlaw’s crap.
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
(I do.)
I mean, I grew up with one , it’s not the biggest character flaw 🤷♂️
It keeps the dogs happy.
That’s why it’s still here in the store, mom. If it was priced reasonably, they would have sold it.
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.
My dad just passed and I got a box of ninja swords and a telescope. He didn’t even have any pictures. I wish I had stuff to remember him by but he was destitute the end of his life.
Im sorry for your loss. But I am also incredibly curious about the box of ninja swords. Were these mall ninja swords or legit swords from Japan?
Mall ninja swords mostly. Some bokkens and knives too.
There are fencing leagues that use real swords you could try to find.
There’s a HEMA gym by me. I’ve thought about it before but I don’t know if I would stick with it and it seems like a steep buy in.
If that were me, I’d use the telescope to remember him. We’re all made of the stuff of stars. Everything inside of you is due to supernovas. Every time you look at the stars, you’re looking at what made us all, including your dad.
Yeah it is. We used to use it when I was a kid. I gotta clean it though. Thick cigarette dust coats everything he left me.
Fantastic! We can rebuild Florida!
There is a whole industry to transport Silent Gen and Boomer treasures to the landfill. Most commonly, a waste management company is going to park a construction dumpster in your driveway the same week you die. And there are hands for hire if your children can’t be bothered to go through your crap themselves.
There are also auction and estate companies that will try to get value out of furniture. That’s dying out though because IKEA doesn’t make furniture suitable for inheritance.
I have hoarder grandparents… I sometimes wish for a house to go up in flames while they’re not home just so nobody has to deal with going into it.
Estate companies will take the “good stuff” to auction, and house sale the rest for a few weekends. After that, there are businesses whose sole thing is buying up the remnants for their resale/thrift store. Think Big Lots but for dead people’s stuff.
Personally I hope my stuff gets handled like this. I’d rather someone, who wants the object, gets it for cheap, rather than it be a burden to my kids.
It’s how I got it all anyways. At leas the tools.
I really hope there’s a store called “Dead People’s Stuff.”
“Big Plots”
🏅
I drove past this place the other week. It’s almost what you want. Shop called ‘Vintage 2 Die 4’ with the moto of “We have the best deaf people stuff”
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.
Adults having to have adult conversations. Oh no
Millennials are just worn out from Boomers parentifying us as children, then arguing with us for decades, and now still fighting us over decisions that seem obvious and necessary.
They’re exhausting.
I know it’s hard, I’m not trivializing it, but no one (edit adult) should be treated like a child. It only happens to those who let it happen. (The alternative is distancing)
Edit I mean adults shouldn’t be treated like children.
Hard disagree. Children should be treated as children, not parentified.
I mean adults. I was unclear. Editing.
Some of us do it to help our surviving parent who can’t handle all the stuff the other parent collected.
One can feel how one feels, however, the boomer generation’s brains are locked in a time loop. They can’t be changed. It’s like visiting someone with alzheimers. It’s quite sad and frustrating.
Oddly, the silent generation peeps are more adaptable.
Huh? You decide how you are treated. Even by your parents. I’ve had good conversations with my now aged and forgetful parents where I clarify how I want to be spoken to.
Edit not all boomers have Alzheimer’s
As good for me as going no contact would be, I love my parents and do alot to keep them in my life.
A terrible weakness. If only I could be strong like you.
I never said go no contact, edit or that I was some model of strength. I’m just an adult.
Just consistently assert the standards you as an adult want to live in.
I can’t even get folks to use the right pronouns for me. I have no hope of getting my narcissistic mother to treat me as an adult. She won’t even believe me about basic facts about, for example, about how my city’s public transit works (facts listed on a very large poster she could read herself) if they contradict her first impressions.
Sorry, that’s not how it works with people stuck in a loop. It’s a very American problem, if you aren’t American. Not sure if it was the leaded gas, or what, but some people are just broken. The person you want to change needs to want to, and be able to change for your idealism to work. Otherwise you’re just building a delusion around a fixed point to fit your viewpoint while that person remains unchanged.
It’s terribly sad, really.
That’s just ageism, with a nationalist(?) crust.
There’s lots of dumb boomers. There’s lots of Alzheimeric boomers. There’s lots of smart, respectful boomers.
Suggesting an entire generation can’t respect others is junk.
Imagine you subbed out “boomer” for a race. It’d be insane to say.
Tons of boomers have completely accepted 2024, their children, and their choices. You apparently just haven’t met them.
I wonder if the comment you’re replying to applies to the people who downvoted yours.
Or it’s only selective to the people they don’t know yet decided to hate. Sad really.
