My parents lived in the same over-sized house in Houston for the past 32 years. They have filled it over the years with $2,500 “oriental” rugs, $2,000 lithographs, expensive-ish ceramics, and tons of furniture etc etc. Nothing extravagant just your typical Macy’s / Pottery Barn etc type of stuff.
They hired an estate sales firm to help downsize and move. They told them, plainly, to hope for 10 cents on the dollar and expect less than that for what they paid for all this stuff. $2,500 rugs sold for $200, $2,000 couches sold for $150, a $2,000 holiday dining set sold for $300.
We fill our homes with this crap. We don’t really enjoy it that much, and at the end of the day it is, well, not worthless but it sure feels that way.
You sure we don’t “enjoy” it that much? I mean, if it brings you pleasure to decorate your house and you live with it for 20 years, That $2000 lithograph essentially cost you $100 a year and it brought you satisfaction/joy in the sense that you lived in a home you enjoyed looking at and spending time in.
Yeah, that stuff is generally worthless in resale, but that’s not really why you bought it in the first place.
After my Dad passed, we moved Mom into a nice 2-bedroom rental cottage, but getting their house cleaned out, stuff sold etc was a lot of work. I wish we kids could’ve convinced them to downsize sooner, but Dad (bless his heart) wasn’t down with that.
My wife’s parents are ~70 and both doing great, but they have several large properties full of stuff in MN and CO that they are not even considering consolidating or downsizing. We really hope that changes in the next few years; otherwise, dealing with it all is dropping in our lap when the inevitable happens. It’s daunting to consider - we’d both have to take extended time off work to sort it all out.
All of that has definitely shaped how my wife and I live - we’re not uber minimalists, but watching our parents’ accumulation of crap for crap’s sake has motivated us to do a lot of purging and adopt a “new thing in only if corresponding old thing goes out” mentality.
My parents lived in the same over-sized house in Houston for the past 32 years. They have filled it over the years with $2,500 “oriental” rugs, $2,000 lithographs, expensive-ish ceramics, and tons of furniture etc etc. Nothing extravagant just your typical Macy’s / Pottery Barn etc type of stuff.
They hired an estate sales firm to help downsize and move. They told them, plainly, to hope for 10 cents on the dollar and expect less than that for what they paid for all this stuff. $2,500 rugs sold for $200, $2,000 couches sold for $150, a $2,000 holiday dining set sold for $300.
We fill our homes with this crap. We don’t really enjoy it that much, and at the end of the day it is, well, not worthless but it sure feels that way.
Style change. And did they buy that stuff as an “investment†with plans to eventually sell it?
They dont usually talk about resale value of those items when shopping at Macy’s.
That $2000 lithograph essentially cost you $100 a year and it brought you satisfaction/joy in the sense that you lived in a home you enjoyed looking at and spending time in.
I don’t think my parents were hoodwinked, but at the same time I think they justified buying this stuff because because they thought it was worth something. And my dad did say something to the effect of, “why the hell didn’t I buy a used rug, lithographs at an estate sales and dining sets at a garage sale…”
So my point was that this stuff is perhaps not worth the premium over IKEA and Target.
That $2000 lithograph essentially cost you $100 a year and it brought you satisfaction/joy in the sense that you lived in a home you enjoyed looking at and spending time in.
I don’t think my parents were hoodwinked, but at the same time I think they justified buying this stuff because because they thought it was worth something. And my dad did say something to the effect of, “why the hell didn’t I buy a used rug, lithographs at an estate sales and dining sets at a garage sale…”
So my point was that this stuff is perhaps not worth the premium over IKEA and Target.
I won’t argue against that.
Rule of thumb: If you can buy it at a big box retail, it’s probably not worth much.
That $2000 lithograph essentially cost you $100 a year and it brought you satisfaction/joy in the sense that you lived in a home you enjoyed looking at and spending time in.
I don’t think my parents were hoodwinked, but at the same time I think they justified buying this stuff because because they thought it was worth something. And my dad did say something to the effect of, “why the hell didn’t I buy a used rug, lithographs at an estate sales and dining sets at a garage sale…”
So my point was that this stuff is perhaps not worth the premium over IKEA and Target.
Eh, somewhat better-quality stuff I think lasts longer, especially if you move at some point (we had to essentially move out & move back in to our current home during a major remodel). Pretty much all or at least most of the Target/IKEA-grade stuff we bought over the years has eventually fallen apart or just started looking like ass and needed replacing, whereas the stuff we reached just a little higher and spent maybe in the $1000-2000 ballpark (for things like couch, dining table, etc) vs say $300-500 will become our kids’ problem someday.
Those things may never be worth it as heirloom pieces or significant re-sale value, but at least we won’t have to piss away additional $$ to replace them as often, if ever, and they both look & function better over that whole time, too.
I have worked so that when I die there should only be a load of load to Goodwill and a small load of trash with my personal effects. However, if my wife dies before me I am going to need all of your help to clean her mess. The garage alone is a nightmare.
That $2000 lithograph essentially cost you $100 a year and it brought you satisfaction/joy in the sense that you lived in a home you enjoyed looking at and spending time in.
I don’t think my parents were hoodwinked, but at the same time I think they justified buying this stuff because because they thought it was worth something. And my dad did say something to the effect of, “why the hell didn’t I buy a used rug, lithographs at an estate sales and dining sets at a garage sale…”
So my point was that this stuff is perhaps not worth the premium over IKEA and Target.
It is interesting. I love Victorian era antiques. Not for every day easy chairs and couches, but for dining room tables, side tables, dressers, mirrors, etc. The quality of these pieces is amazing. You can buy the most well made solid walnut, marble topped, carved mirror dresser for less at an estate auction than the cheapest dresser new at some place like Ashley furniture.
There is an entire market in cheap premium things if you look in the right spot.
I think the premium mediocre furniture market has tightened a lot over the last decade. There used to be several stores in Columbus that catered to the $3 - $5k couch market. We wanted something above cheap quality but below custom level and it has really gotten hard to find. Maybe people have caught on that styles change and spending a mint on a couch you want to replace every 3 - 5 years might not be the best place to drop your money.
After my Dad passed, we moved Mom into a nice 2-bedroom rental cottage, but getting their house cleaned out, stuff sold etc was a lot of work. I wish we kids could’ve convinced them to downsize sooner, but Dad (bless his heart) wasn’t down with that.
My wife’s parents are ~70 and both doing great, but they have several large properties full of stuff in MN and CO that they are not even considering consolidating or downsizing. We really hope that changes in the next few years; otherwise, dealing with it all is dropping in our lap when the inevitable happens. It’s daunting to consider - we’d both have to take extended time off work to sort it all out.
All of that has definitely shaped how my wife and I live - we’re not uber minimalists, but watching our parents’ accumulation of crap for crap’s sake has motivated us to do a lot of purging and adopt a “new thing in only if corresponding old thing goes out” mentality.
My dad is 78 and my mom passed 14 years ago. He has been actively trying to eliminate stuff in his house. I asked for and got an old Coke cooler from the 1930’s that is in great shape. The only things he is keeping until he dies are all of the Santa Claus’s my mom collected over the years, her birthday was December 24, because it was something she always liked getting. It has already been determined who will get what after he dies and there are only 3 of us left. By the time he dies, there will probably be only 2 so it will between my one brother and I.
He called me the other day and told me he moved all of his funeral arrangements and that everything is paid and ready to go. It was a weird call out of the blue.
My father was a hoarder. He came from very little. Once he retired, he would go to goodwill/thrift stores and by “collectibles” and solid furniture. Oak/real wood furniture is a beast to move. For whatever reason, he thought what he had could be sold for our inheritance if we just held onto it longer. He had series upon series of Beckett’s, old records, time magazines, life magazines, comics, etc.
Some of the stuff was pretty cool, but things like a 3rd run of Superman #1 just isnt going to get much money. Or if you have to dig through 1000s of life magazines to find a cool cover just to have. Just so much junk. beanie babies, etc. Paintings, etc. Some of the stuff did have value, like some life magazines worth $50. But when having to go through the hassle of learning about what has value in different industries just isnt worth it. It would have been much cooler that instead of just being a random collector of artifacts my father had a specific collector hobby that he was passionate about.
I think a lot of the hoarding came from my fathers humble beginnings, and my mother’s enabling. For us, we get rid of a lot of decent things, but we just never are going to use it. We have a “1 year closest rule” in my house. If you put something in the closet, you put a date sticker on it. If the sticker hasnt been removed within 1 year, anyone else in the house can donate the article.
Maybe people have caught on that styles change and spending a mint on a couch you want to replace every 3 - 5 years might not be the best place to drop your money.
Wait… what? People replace their couches every 3-5 years?
My father was a hoarder. He came from very little.
My mother is like that. Born and grew up in rural Poland right after WW2. Over the past 20+ years she has had her own successful Paediatrics practice in Canada. She has used that money to fill 3 houses to the brim with crap. She goes to the dollar store regularly to ‘stock up’ on crap that no one needs nor wants. There are hundreds of unopened VHS cassettes, DVDs and CD at her house - all from the bargain bins at Best Buy or WalMart.
So I don’t know if this is a real thing Swedes do or not, but I came across this decluttering method Döstädning, or “death cleaningâ€. The idea being that as you get closer to the end of your life, you declutter, downsize, and all those good buzz words. A Swedish woman wrote a book called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. It isn’t about crap not bringing you joy, but getting rid of your shit so others don’t have to. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/what-swedish-death-cleaning-should-you-be-doing-it-ncna816511
My dad is much the same. Maybe not quite a hoarder, but he’s collected stuff ever since I can remember that he felt was worth something, or just was cool. A lot of it is second hand knock offs of the real thing, but he got it at a “bargain” so is sure he’ll make out whenever he decides to sell, though he rarely sells. Now there’s tons of stuff spread out between the house, garage, and a barn. He’s 70 and in good health, but shows no sign of down sizing any time soon and I shudder thinking about how I’m going to deal with all this stuff when he’s gone (assuming there isn’t a drastic change in behavior first).
All that said, I feel guilty when I think about this. Even if most of it is junk that’ll be a big headache for me, it’s his junk and his life; he shouldn’t need to compromise what he enjoys doing or buying to make my life easier after he dies. I don’t obsess over it, but probably should spend more time being thankful for having him around than worrying about what I’ll do after he passes. Thinking about the junk gives me anxiety, but it’ll get taken care of one way or another.
This is much easier to say than remember and practice when I’m faced with it.
Something I wish I would have done is introduce my father to ebay. And have HIM list things that have sold for $20, $50, $100+ on ebay. I think this would have done two things 1) given my father great joy and realizing he had one or two things of value, 2) realize 99% of the stuff he buys no one else wants to buy, 3) have some form of catalog of stuff (even if it was just his ebay account).
After my dad retired, my mom wanted him to catalog his junk. But all he ended up doing was moving his stuff from room 1 to room 2, and his stuff from room 2 to room 1. And had notebooks of what was in each box of stuff. “Country Records from 1960s” “Comic books from the golden age”
