If this topic is somewhere else on the forum please let me know because I would love to read the comments.
Basically I am in the process of cleaning out my 85-year-old mother‘s house. She is still alive and doing very well in a dementia care unit. I’ve allowed the house to sit for two years because I wasn’t emotionally ready to deal, but now I really want to clean it out, fix it up, and rent it out to help pay for her care because she’s out of money. She has a pension but it’s $2,000 short the cost of her care. I pay the shortfall.
My problem is guilt. I feel so guilty going through her things, throwing stuff out, giving them away, taking them to Goodwill, and planning for a yard sale. I know how hard she worked to buy everything in that house and it feels so wrong to just discard her things even though I know she’ll never use the again. The house is packed with 45 years worth of stuff. I’m an only child so I’m taking my time. I just wish I didn’t feel so guilty.
MargaretMcKen, I have gone through the same thing you have. Same scenario, different people. It seems like all my husband of 18 years and I have done is downsize.
One blessing I have is knowing he has Alheimer's he has started getting rid of a lot of his old hobby stuff. He gave them to his friends or sold them for nothing.
I still have much to go through.
For myself I already had kept my grandmother's dresser and my great grandmother's rocking chair when no one else wanted them. They are wonderful memories, but I want to keep only my mom's china. At this age I'm thinking of how my possessions will burden my sons when I'm gone, so I don't keep much.
Next? Well my first husband (my daughters’ father) died a few months ago, and they had the clean-up job. I was so sympathetic, that I said ‘just take it around to my flat, as long as I can get quickly to the toilet when I drive down from the farm’. Some is stuff that my first husband and I bought together decades ago, so back to the emotional dramas, and I now walk around all this stuff in our city flat.
So what advice can I offer after going through the fire myself? Well first, on crockery and glass ware. DH wanted the Royal Doulton to be kept ‘precious’ rather than used. I said I wasn’t giving house room to anything that couldn’t be used. Most of it went in the bushfire, thank heavens, but the rest of it is used, treated carefully, and gets broken in the normal order of things. Second, I set aside a budget to replace anything that burned that I really wanted, and the same could apply to anything that was disposed of and then regretted. What I missed was mostly books, but working out if things were worth replacing was a good test about whether they should have been disposed of anyway.
Third, I got to know the people in our local ‘furniture warehouse’ AKA clean out Op Shop for caregiver downsizing. It also provides funds for caregivers from the profits, and cheap furniture for local young couples moving out with no money.
Next, pack up stuff that you think might be valuable, or that you might want in the future, in plastic boxes. Obviously choose things that pack up small. Keep them somewhere in someone’s garage for ten years. You may feel better then, and your younger relatives may be more interested. Around our way, old fashioned wood working tools are very sought after, after years of being ‘rubbish’.
For clothing, keep a few things that fit you, that you like, and that will remind you for your mother. That is very special, at least for me. Be imaginative about what could turn into nighties! Furs are now out of fashion, but they still keep you warm and look good.
Lastly, consider getting a ‘house dresser’ to fix the house for sale. It was unusual here when we did it, but it changed Mil’s house from an ‘old lady’ house to what the market wanted. It also made it feel less like we were selling her life, at the end.
You have my sincere sympathy, for a task that is so much harder than most people realise.
Furniture and gifts have been offered to family and friends that wants them, the rest will be donated or auctioned. Mom had tagged certain items so I make sure they get them to use or dispose of as they choose. I have donated things to the local historical museum and library, too.
Each time I visit her I take a box or bag for her to sort through and reminisce about. We have a small box (nicknamed the casket) to keep obits and Mass cards, a drawer for old cards and letters, a shelf for photos and pictures. These are things she chooses to keep, the rest she has decided not to worry about. I gave her a nice box to keep her special treasures and momentos.
there is a great book I read called “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” that helps you through the process of clearing your own home so,your loved ones won’t have to. It really puts things in perspective about real and perceived value of "things."
Let it go because she still knows her stuff. Wait, I am after 8 yrs, I lived with her she thought I left her, no
One of the things I have learned over the years that your treasures usually aren't valuable to others. You have received good advice from the other great people who post here. If you need to rent a storage for your own emotions do so, but remember to revisit it in 3 months. If you don't need the contents, get rid of it. If you want, take photos of what you want to remember. Go back to the storage in 6 months, take another hard look at what is there and is it worth the dollars you are spending on it just sitting there with no one take care of it. To help my children out when it is their turn, I get rid of something I am not using every week. Sometimes it is just some papers, occasionally something bigger. I don't what them to have to wade through stuff like we have had to do with my parents, my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, aunt, niece, and whoever is next.
1) Make a point of getting old photos labeled while someone is still knowledgeable and mentally capable of providing the information. I almost "imprisoned" my father one day while I coaxed this information for a pile of photos (fortunately, he lived almost a couple decades longer although he had had some health issues a little while before I did this so I didn't want to take a chance by procrastinating).
2) Make a plan for your own things in case something unexpected happens to you even if you are still relatively young. For example, if you have collections having historical or scientific value (or even monetary value that might not be obvious to someone not knowledgeable), let others know what should be done with it, such as to whom it should be donated or given, or how to go about selling it.
3) When dealing with someone who has "hoarded" items that would appear not to have value (such as Midkid58's mother who saved all the PCH mail), it might be possible to compromise by suggesting that just the oldest ones (depending upon why the person still wants to keep them) be kept while the others discarded/recycled. I do this myself--while dealing with the phonograph record collection in my parents' house, I kept the very first LP album my father ever bought (Roger Williams, on a Kapp record, ca. 1960) and gave Goodwill the several dozens of remaining albums.
Any other ideas? I'd love to read them!
It was horrible. I will never do that to my kids.
EVERYTHING of mother's was so important to her--we had many battles and even though a LOT of the stuff went to family--she was adamant about some things simply NOT being "given away" so they have sat in storage for 22 years.
She's completely packed her current place to the point it's simply so full--she has had to put a lot of stuff in bins in the basement (like 60 years worth of Publisher's Clearing House envelopes. She will NOT throw those away....)
I don't know why she was like that. We were able to clean HER mother's condo out in about 2 days. GG didn't hang on to stuff. She also didn't value her junk more than relationships, which is a big part of the hoarder mentality.
I think the only "good thing" we did was to remind mother over and over that her "things" were going to bless the lives of others--we weren't trashing them. That did help, sort of.
If you find old photos, keep them all. Thank goodness I didn't toss many of my parents old photos as now I am into Ancestry and putting together binders of the generations. Photos have been a wealth of information as my Mom use to write on the back of the photos.
As for renting out the house... have you done this before? I use to be a landlord and one needs to have deep pockets as something is always needing repair. It was better to sell the house and put the equity into a money market or into the stock market, if you are stock savy.... and least that way you won't get a phone call in the middle of the night that the disposal is clogged :P
Take your time, take pictures and make her a Memory book of those cherished items. After all, it’s not things that are the most precious its our loved one.
Maybe think of it that way for your Mom. You are doing her a huge favor. Maybe she can't understand, or express it, the way my Mom did. But really, you are.
Don't feel guilty.
Stop feeling guilty. Go slowly, enjoy the memories. Do one room at a time. Make a save, keep, sell pile. Rent a small storage unit for the things you think you may want to keep or pass on to others. If you are readying the house for renters, hire some help in the form of professional painters, carpet cleaners, and even movers for the big furniture. This is a hard job, a monumental task. Do not feel guilty and remember if it is of use to someone else, and you have not thought about it in the past 5 years, you should sell or donate it.
Make a plan, lists, and pace yourself. I never thought I would get through it, but did, so will you. Blessings to you.
When mom had a stroke and it was clear that she was never going home, that we were going to need funds from the house to care for her, it seemed to me imperative to get the house cleared asap.
Mom had taken the stuff that meant something to her to IL; what I came to realize, going through "stuff" is that it's just.....stuff.
I had my kids come or tell me what they wanted; we kept the pictures to go through later. I put the silver and cutlery in storage, took the china to Goodwill, along with all the other household and decorative things.
It was just .....stuff.
When it came to mom's creche, some of the pieces were figures I'd bought her with my babysitting money and the whole thing had tremendous emotional valence. So did a couple of other things.
These I placed in front of mom's house. As I cleaned, I saw an occasional car stop and pick up a treasure. Mom's creche was cradled in the arms of an Hispanic lady. I could see she was going to treasure my mom's treasure.
You are sending your mother's good out into the universe, to be treasured by a new generation of folks
You are doing nothing wrong. You are regretful that your mother can no longer use her stuff. There is a huge difference between guilt and regret, in my book.