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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Hard disagree. Children should be treated as children, not parentified.
I mean adults. I was unclear. Editing.
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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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.
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?
I’m not stuck with anything, I put all my boomer parents shit in the trash
Fantastic! We can rebuild Florida!
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.
To who? Aquaman?
Answer is sell the shit.
Sell it to who? Nobody else wants the shit either, that’s the problem
Ahahahaha thank you.
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
Part of this seems like it’s attributable to changes in lifestyle and material conditions of younger people, relative to their parents. Different aesthetics might mean their parents’ stuff looks incredibly gaudy to them, and doesn’t go with anything else in their apartment. My parents’ home is larger than any place I can reasonably expect to be able to afford, so I also don’t want their big dining room table that I’d have to pay for storage on for years before I can afford a space that it will immediately fill all of. Even if it’s a nice piece of furniture, that’s just a pain in the neck to go through, all for something I might never get to use.
On the topic of collections, boomers just fundamentally ignore key parts of collectibility. First, old collectables only became so valuable precisely because people weren’t obsessively hording and caring for everything with the intent of selling it down the line. Old Superman comics are rare and valuable due to people who bought them at the time they first came out largely treating them as disposable. They didn’t assume they were anything special that merited being held on to and cared for, so they didn’t. When everyone and their dog buys up commemorative plate sets, or Beanie Babies, or whatever other collectable grift boomers fell for, and they take great care of them, they don’t generally see their value do anything but decrease. The supply doesn’t get significantly reduced, and everyone else can see that they didn’t pan out as the collectable investments they were billed as, so who would want them?
That said, even for collections of items of genuine worth, you mostly need to hope that whoever you’re looking to give it to is as into whatever hobby as you are. If I were planning on having kids, I think it would be pretty unreasonable to expect them to know what to do with my fountain pen collection, unless they were into them as well. Otherwise, it’s just a ton of fussy pens that seem to have a fair number of duplicates that are really only distinguished by knowledge I couldn’t expect them to take the time to go gathering. Then, it’s still a big pain to actually identify things, make sales listings and sell them off. Hell, I have the knowledge, and even I find it annoying to do so.
Maybe we could address this, in part, by normalizing expanding options a bit for inheritance. If my hypothetical kids aren’t going to know how to make heads or tails of my pen collection, but I’ve got a younger friend who is just as into the hobby as I am, it would be nice if I could just leave them that specific collection, without having to worry it’ll kick off some acrimonious squabbling. Failing that, have parents indicate who they trust to sell an item for a fair price if nobody wants it. You can take it and think about it, but if it’s just not for you, you’ve got a trusted source to sell it off for you, so you (hopefully) don’t have to go through an ordeal trying to find someone to sell it for you that will give you a fair shake.
What the article doesn’t say is the stuff is all there is - there’s no money. Just stuff.
So if you throw it out, your inheiritance is nothing, otherwise you have to be come an online seller which - if you’re not already you know why you’re not already.
Estate sales and auctions are where this stuff goes.
There are multiple whole entire industries dedicated to fleecing such individuals. Health care in the USA for one… Donald Trump’s campaign to name another…
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
What’s the melt value of Elvis commemorative plates?
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.
My mom has kept everything from my childhood I mean everything. For a few years she was trying to pass some of it off to me and I kept having to turn down a lot of stuff, it made her feel bad. One day I finally managed to have a proper conversation about it with her. I don’t remember most of my childhood and things like second grade report cards don’t have any context because of it. Those are her memories of me not my memories of me. She finally understood after that and now she keeps what she can and doesn’t feel bad about “robbing” me of anything when she does get rid of stuff. Some heirlooms I’ve been asked about and many of those I accept, or in the case of one larger one I’ve accepted it “if I ever live somewhere that can fit it”
My mom held on to just about everything, but for rid of all my early 90s GI Joe’s and my stack of big box computer games.
My poor poor Sierra collection fine to the charity shop once I moved out.
I’ve managed to hold on to my computer games and even acquired my dad’s collection. GI Joes all went to my niblings though because I didn’t have as much sentimental value for them, same with my Legos and bionicles save for a handful. My pokemon collection recently resurfaced though and my mom handed those off I was pretty excited about that
We have the same mom.
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.
Personally, I think we should bring back the custom of grave goods. If there’s some precious heirloom that holds sentimental significance to a person but isn’t otherwise valuable or useful, why not bury it with them?
I’m already thinking about getting some land and making an “indefinite time capsule” for storing a bunch of stuff that I have no use for but that I wouldn’t want to see go off to a landfill for sentimental reasons.
Friends… relations… Whatever the hell Meatwad is… I’ve lived a full life. It’s actually been pretty bitchin’. But now, regrettably, my life has been taken. Please bury me with all my stuff, because you know it’s mine…
Was that the one where he kills himself so he can haunt Meatwad?
Bury me with my sweet vice I scored for free that one day.
I love that your last paragraph explains that you want to avoid things going into a landfill by reinventing a landfill.
Yes, but it’s a curated and cataloged landfill.
There’s rather a big difference between a time capsule and a landfill.
No. We do not do nuance here
The difference being a landfill might one day be mined for raw materials, whereas no one past your grandchildren will know about your time capsule until archaeologists discover it and misattribute all your sentimental crap as religious or sexual paraphernalia.
You’ve made a heck of a lot of assumptions about how a time capsule like this would be set up. But even so, how is being mined for raw materials better than having some of my stuff be misattributed?
Seeding the land for the next generation of American pickers?
Every time I pass a cemetery, I think, there’s a million bucks in jewelry just sitting there.
At my grandmother’s funeral, she wore her jewelry for the viewing but it was quietly removed by the funeral home folks and handed to my mother before the burial. So there might be less jewelry than you’d expect.
Your mother is a grave robber. Smart woman.
We’d need to take some cues from how the ancients did it. Either arrange for long term security, like the Egyptians, or rely on secrecy, like the Mongols. It won’t work forever, but as long as it works for a couple of generations I’d be satisfied.
One idea that comes to mind for modern grave goods would be to bury them in a nuclear waste disposal facility.
Bring back kurgans and put parks on them.
I don’t think we want to give an incentive to plunder nuclear waste.
“This necklace is beautiful, but why does the air taste like metal?”
I’m thinking more along the lines of future archaeologists. We learn so much about ancient cultures from what they bury with their dead, I figure we should return the favor.
Geez they had a lot of absolute tat!
“Why the fuck was this man burried in a refrigerator and why the fuck was it set on fire?” I want these to be the exact words for when my inevitable redneck viking funeral is done.
So… a storage unit?
No.
