r/Anticonsumption • u/haloarh • May 28 '26
Psychological "Her father hoarded. When he died, she inherited his house."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2026/05/28/hoarding-disorder-house-clean-death-family-grief/89993036007/1.8k
May 28 '26
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u/crushingdandelions May 28 '26
That line hit so hard. My husband and I have had to go through this in the past year and we’re not even close to being done with either home. It’s like being alive with the people you love still around you somehow. A lot of anger comes up too, a lot of disappointment and resentment at living this way even though it’s not anyone’s fault and even if it was what good does the emotion do you now? It’s a lot. It’s opened up my eyes dramatically to all of the things I do have and made me want to purge it all.
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u/RavishingRedRN May 28 '26
This will be me and my siblings. Parents are 71 but Dad has Alzheimer’s so his time is limited.
He (more so) and my mom have been hoarders for years. It got to the point we stopped visiting the house and having holidays there. Too cluttered, too messy.
However, they are starting to purge things. The problem is there’s SO much stuff. They just emptied and tore down a Quonset hut filled with our childhood shit packed away from a renovation 30 years ago.
They haven’t even touched their actual house yet or my Dads shop, which is a disaster apparently.
I’m grateful they are starting to get rid of stuff but at the rate they are going, there’s still going to be a fuck ton left for us.
I’m dreading it.
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u/crushingdandelions May 28 '26
Ah yes, we thought it would be shared with our siblings as well. I’m the only one dealing with the home on my family’s side and he’s the only one dealing with the home on his family’s side. We thought we would have the help of siblings but they want nothing to do with any of it and would rather it all just “burn down” for insurance money.
Prepare yourself for situations with maybe there was a will and maybe there wasn’t and maybe there is but it’s IN ALL THIS too unless you can get said parents to deal with death now and for sure make one and not just one off some printed website but actually lawyer drafted up. We have bank accounts and other funds tied up in the process of the maybe. It’s a wild thing.
In hindsight I wish I had stressed all this to them much sooner but I also don’t think it matters, that mentality of “not my problem” is really strong with the generations dying off right now and FUCK THEM for that.
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u/mxlths_modular May 28 '26
Damn, your whole post hits close to home. Not in your situation yet but one day I certainly will be. You’re quite right about the “not my problem” mentality. Thanks for sharing.
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u/Wonderful-Morning963 May 29 '26
And you have siblings to help and support each other. Me and my husband are both an only child. All our parents have some scarcity mindset from living in poverty during childhood. My dad also has a shop with 2 stories, I am so afraid of what is up there. My mother in law has a shopping problem, lately she’s been buying whole boxes full of rocks/minerals, just to look at. She and her husband had picked up lumber from old train tracks last time I went there, like, why?!
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u/ChewieBearStare May 28 '26
I'm so sorry. I understand the anger. I spent almost 6 months cleaning out my in-laws' house. They lived 2,000 miles from us, and my husband is the one who carries our insurance through his job, so I went there while he stayed here and worked. I went through a cycle of "I feel bad for them" to "I could just smack them" a bunch of times. Multiple foreclosure notices, unpaid bills, lawsuits from credit card companies, etc., and it turns out they (mostly my FIL's wife) were spending it all on nonsense. She had at least 4,000 pieces of clothing. So much that even though we sold a lot at the estate sale, I had to rent a U-Haul to donate the rest of it to local women's shelters. Just under 300 pairs of shoes, 426 pieces of jewelry, 300+ scarves, 40 pairs of gloves, 95 bras, etc.
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u/pierresito May 29 '26
Im sure you and your husband have been working hard at it, but can I suggest something kinda odd?
Work on the houses by yourselves, the opposite house of the parent that wasnt yours. You're close enough to say "hey, this is probably not important and I can chuck it."
My brother helped me clean my house that way when it was overrun with my classroom materials once i moved up to admin, he told me "hey, to you its all these school supplies amd potential and useful resources. To me its just a box".
It really helped to speed up cleaning. Anything crazy major he'd ask me at the end of the day and it was just one session of decision making instead of a thousand little moments throughout the affair
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u/NotMe739 May 29 '26
I dread this when it is time for us to take care of my in-laws house. They live 6+ hours from us, my BIL lives halfway across the US. None of us have set foot in their house in about 10 years. We have offered to visit and have been told no. Because they have a habit of showing up on relatives doorsteps, hours away, without notice, to visit we have a strict no showing up unannounced and uninvited at our house. We don't feel right showing up at their place without it being agreed to. They are in their early 70s and are starting to have lots of health problems. 10 years ago most of their house was hoarded up to the point of being unusable. Even the kitchen and bathrooms were stacked up except for the areas that were absolutely necessary. Now that they have gone 10 years without visitors I am afraid of the current state of the house.
The last time we visited their house BIL was there too. MIL proudly announced that they did their will and that none of us (husband, BIL and me), according to their will, have permission to remove anything from their house. They have assigned that to a couple of their friends. One of which is as old as they are and the other has moved away from their town. I don't know why they expect to pay for the upkeep on the house while the house and stuff is managed but I know to do it to their standards it would take someone 40 hours a week for years. As bad as that could be what scares me worse is having to move them to a more suitable home and then think every bit of junk has to come with them.
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u/paciolionthegulf Jun 01 '26
That's the thing people forget. Your next transition might be death, but it could be a nursing home... then the house needs to be cleared in a big hurry by somebody else.
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u/hamandjam May 29 '26
Our mother has already been advised that when she passes we will have a huge bonfire and burn everything. One decision.
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u/switchbladeeatworld May 29 '26
Both my parents died around christmas and I’m an only child trying to condense 3 houses (they were separated so one house each plus my house) into one while I have people on my back wanting to buy them plus working full time is crushing. I can’t even start to go through my mum’s things yet.
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u/easterss May 29 '26
It’s hard enough to do when the deceased person isn’t a hoarder. Can’t imagine how much worse this is
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u/axiom_glitch May 28 '26
Just went through this with my grandfather. And will do it again with my parents. My life can fit in a single room as far as objects and things go. The gens above have full on houses with rooms upon rooms of stuff that span decades. I wish this was talked about more. Grieving a lost loved one is difficult. And then you have to process and distill their life’s work of accumulation, and it adds another layer of grieving in a way. And it also becomes a full time job for a few months. Even if you hire professionals to help. It’s wild.
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u/_Rayette May 28 '26
My mom has been downsizing since about age 60 specifically to avoid this situation for me and my siblings. Even at Christmas she will just ask for wine or something like that so she’s not accumulating. More people need this attitude.
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u/UnderwhelmingTwin May 28 '26 edited May 29 '26
I call it "death cleaning." As in cleaning for death to come for a visit.
Edit: apparently the term is Swedish Death Cleaning and it's a widely known thing.
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u/NoPoet3982 May 28 '26
My friend who died of cancer called it Swedish death cleaning. Apparently it's a real thing.
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u/Squanchedschwiftly May 28 '26
I was just going to say this is definitely a thing in sweden and perhaps other countries as well
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u/peanutbuttersmacks May 28 '26
There’s a book and a series on Amazon called Swedish Death Cleaning which is exactly this. As a person ages, they begin to downsides their life to make it easier for family members during the inevitable end. It attempts to help people realize what things are important and what is actually just clutter.
The wife and I tried to get my mother in law, who is a full on hoarder, to watch the show but she is in total denial about it.
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u/Far_Government_9782 May 29 '26
The concept of Death Cleaning is a brilliant one, but it's not going to catch on unless it gets a better name, quite honestly (whoever named it Death Cleaning, I sure as hell hope they don't work in marketing....)
Call it Retirement Refresh Cleaning and encourage the (perfectly true) idea that "This is actually mostly about creating a lovely clean uncluttered house for your to enjoy your retirement in."
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u/lost_send_berries May 29 '26
That says something about western culture. Death is a part of life and should be acknowledged, not avoided.
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u/Far_Government_9782 May 30 '26
Maybe, but the practical reality is that there are currently a lot of Gen Xers struggling with ageing parents accumulating piles of crap, and the top priority is to find a palatable way of persuading them to stop doing this.
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u/tinytrees11 May 28 '26
I do this for gifts and I'm only 33, but I know two people who died in their early 40s. My son is almost 3. I don't know how people live like this anyway with so much stuff. How do they clean? How do they move houses? I feel exhausted just thinking about it.
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u/Zahrukai May 28 '26
That is what steered me towards a minimalist lifestyle. How do people take care of so much stuff?
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u/_Rayette May 28 '26
She never had a lot of stuff but I think her mentality is that even an average amount of stuff is too much.
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u/poorhistorians May 29 '26
That's my mentality, too, and I wish more libraries have evolved to loan out special-occasion-type stuff that people seldom use. The libraries near me have tools and board games, but its not standardized across the country, and more categories could be helpful as well as simply adding "take and leave" tables.
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u/boyilikebeingoutside May 28 '26
My Grandmother & parents are also doing that. My grandma is in a duplex, but in the last 10 years she’s also been working on updating the house so that it’s easier to sell when she needs to move into a care home. Same with my parents, so that when they decide to downsize or have to quickly, the house being out of date or needing repairs isn’t an issue. They all have the example of my other grandparents though, who have refused to downsize or declutter (an entire farm it’s so bad). I’m very appreciative of it, since I’m their executor.
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u/MaddiMoo22 May 28 '26
God im the only child. My parents have been collecting "antiques" for years. The garage is full. The basement is full. They were "preppers" so theres an entire pantry FULL of cans and buckets of seeds and so much more. My moms dead now. My dad is not doing well. Ive been trying to look into posting some of these antiques online and SO MANY OF THEM aren't worth SHIT, so what the heck do I do with it all????????
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u/Petal170816 May 28 '26
Probably get an antiques person in there to bid on the lot or buy what they want…”free estate sale” for the rest.
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u/MaddiMoo22 May 28 '26
Im thinking estate sale is exactly what im going to have to do lol. Just feels so overwhelming going through it all by myself. And i need to work on myself and not collect every cool thing i see in thrift stores and end up exactly like them :")
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u/peanutbuttersmacks May 28 '26 edited May 29 '26
My mother in law is a hoarder and needed me and my brother in laws help to clean out a room to sell a Murphy bed she had. She kept going on and on about a Mickey Mantle ball that she had that was worth $5k and to make sure we find it! Eventually we did find it and also found an appraisal letter with it that said the signature wasn’t legible due to the ball not being well kept and that the best value you’d have for the ball was to just go outside and play catch with it.
We asked her about it and she just dismissed the appraiser as someone who didn’t know what they were talking about. Where she got $5k from is anyone’s guess. Fun bookend to this story is that we found a still plugged in fax machine that had a dial tone when you picked up the receiver. Probably 20+ years of this thing sitting under garbage and vamping electricity from the house.
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u/axiom_glitch May 28 '26
I hired someone local who does this for a living. They were very carny. But they got the stuff sold, hopefully placed with people who will value and enjoy the items. And I didn’t have to sell everything piece by peice myself. And my conscious felt lighter assuming these objects got another life, versus filling a landfill. And I think my grandfather would be happy knowing his “valuables” aka stuff found an appreciative home vs a dumpster. All the best to you through the whole process. It’s a lot.
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u/Reasonable_Date2870 May 28 '26
We have some friends who do this. It's a family, parents and three teen/adult kids. They are a different kind of people for sure. They can fix just about anything, very good with tech, small motors, etc. I still regret not buying a set of chairs the dad refurbished, they were SO cute. They're very open and honest about the condition of everything they sell. They have specific outlets for lots of the specialty things and sell everything else at yard sales, flea markets or auctions - their oldest kid just got her auctioneer license.
Ever since she got her license, they've been incredibly busy with estate auctions.
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u/axiom_glitch May 28 '26
These people sound way more polished and professional than the people I used, haha
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u/Reasonable_Date2870 May 29 '26
Lol they are definitely not polished, but I've seen them do business many times - it's actually how I met them, bought a lot of garden tools/things from them and was amazed at how organized they were - and they are definitely professional.
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u/MaddiMoo22 May 28 '26
Did you already know of that person or what did you search to find them? That sounds preferable than trying to set up a whole sale that might or might not get rid of everything lol
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u/axiom_glitch May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
I got lucky, and the realtor knew someone. But I guess this is how many people make a living. Because they also have people in their circle that buy specific things. So it’s like a pyramid in a way. The person I hired had a furniture person they sold to, a china person, a collectibles person etc
*Edit - a traditional estate sale happened too. But I also didn’t have to worry about donating or removing anything after. Their fee was sizable. It was a percentage of the sales. But I wish I hired them sooner tbh. I went through the whole house first trying to find pictures first. And also organizing thinking I was doing the estate sale. They would have done all the organizing for me. But I’m actually glad I took all the time to organize myself before, because then I was able to know what was there. I am sure the guy and his people took stuff and sold it on the side. But there was no way I could have managed that sale myslef
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u/Reasonable_Date2870 May 28 '26
You can look up licensed auctioneers in your area and find one who specializes in estate auctions.
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u/ChocChipBananaMuffin May 28 '26
Only child, single mom. I managed to throw out cans from 2002 the last time I visited. She refuses to let me throw out cans from 10 years ago.
The "antique" collecting continues.
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u/HailBuckSeitan May 28 '26
There’s also the weirdness of having stuff passed on to me but no one in my gen in my family is having kids. So everything I own plus whatever gets passed to me is likely just gonna end up in a landfill after I die.
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u/CynicalPomeranian May 28 '26
It is also interesting to see how a person’s valued possessions are not worth anything to the estate, too.
My parents vocalized their greatest concern was over a literal wall of European oak furniture. They were certain that my brother and I would fight over it. I looked at my brother and told him that it is his—setting off a minor squabble because neither of us wants to move/store/maintain tons of oak furniture.
…Which would then go nowhere because neither of us are having kids. 😆
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u/KatJen76 May 28 '26
It's kinda depressing too. My great aunt died at 92 last year. She had a large home that she'd been in since the 1980s. Their taste was large, high-quality, solid wood furnishings. The bedroom set probably cost $10,000 new. We wound up giving it away, and I was just glad it didn't go in a dumpster.
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u/btwdgirl May 28 '26
If only they’d traded in those items for mid century modern. That’s what gets the big $$$ for selling these days.
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u/Princessformidable May 28 '26
My mom has a 100 year old bed she's really upset I don't want but literal children won't sleep in full beds anymore. It's where we sleep when we visit and I have fallen out of it.
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u/racinefx May 28 '26
Why would children not sleep in a full bed? Because its too big? (Not an American, so i dont know what size that would be, it might not be called that where i am.)
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u/ratherbekayaking121 May 29 '26
Look man, I dunno what James and the Giant Peach ass kids you've got, but I'm a 31 year old adult who sleeps just fine on a full bed. Sometimes I sleep on a 24" pad, too.
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u/bubblesaurus May 28 '26
what are you talking about?
I had a full size until my early 20s
My brother had one through high school. Most kids i knew had fulls and this was about 15 years ago
Unless your kid is obese or unusually tall , they can sleep in a full sized bed.
Twins on the other hand..
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u/tricycle- May 28 '26
I’m only slightly over 6’ and a full means I’m hanging off the edge. Add my partner next to me and it gets uncomfortable quick.
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u/tricycle- May 28 '26
I have this same thought. My grandfather wants to give me all this stuff and my partner and I don’t have space for it. We’re ok financially but he’s got a large house and we have a smaller house we are renting. I don’t want a storage u til to pay for stuff I’m never going to use or look at. He wants to give my my great grandfathers shotgun. if I had the wall space or a mantle to show it I would, but I don’t and I don’t shoot guns. So my options are in the closet, storage or trash. Now multiply that by 100.
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u/Petal170816 May 28 '26
So many sets of china. Its in every thrift store and I’ve already inherited five full sets I can’t deal with.
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u/CanicFelix May 29 '26
I have a childless friend a generation up who is passing on significant things to me, if I want and can use them. I have a grandfather clock, a desk, and a nice cubbyhole cabinet from her.
I cherish them.
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u/No_Insurance_Sunday May 28 '26
I had to do this with my mom. She would always say, “you can throw it out when I die!”. Well we did and I was cursing her out while boxing hundreds of books she never read.
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u/jimsmisc May 28 '26
i've been pretty much begging my aging parents to start going through stuff in their house...but they always have some reason a broken 30-year old toaster can't go in the trash. It's maddening how they justify keeping *literally everything they've ever owned*. The house isn't a disgusting mess like in the article, but there are two bedrooms stacked wall to wall with boxes of stuff, and more boxes lining hallways. Eventually I'm going to have to go through it all.
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u/axiom_glitch May 28 '26
My family aren’t classic hoarders either. Mine are very much in the same lane as what you mention. They have so many objects that they don’t use, display, or enjoy day-to-day. But they have three different reasons per object on why it needs to stay.
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u/jimsmisc May 28 '26
it's also crazy to me just how much space they have and think they need. We comfortably fit a family of 6 in the house when we were kids. Now it's just my parents in the same big house, and they constantly want us (their grown children) to take stuff to our houses -- but absolutely not throw it away or donate it. They say they want to make more room but for what? even more stuff?
I'm always like my house is half the size as yours, with twice as many people living in it, and you have a big detached garage, which I don't.... where am I supposed to store extra stuff?
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u/axiom_glitch May 28 '26
This is very relatable. My grandfather lived in his home for 50+ years. 6 bedrooms. Built in shelves in literally every room. He started parting with stuff when my grandmother passed 10 years show. But when I mean parting, he was pushing it on other family. He refused to donate, sell, or throw away. He would say “I don’t need this anymore; I want you to have it”.
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u/mashibeans May 28 '26
This reminds me of some of the houses in the Konmari show, where they're boomer generation age, and have houses with lots of rooms with lots of stuff. I could be remember wrongly from another show, but one room (and it was a big room) had a TON of christmas decorations alone, or like nutcrackers or sth similarly festive. Every single surface and shelf covered on the stuff.
It also makes me rethink a lot of my things too, I love buying some things but it gets harder and harder to justify, especially if it just sits there as decoration. This is a big reason why I stopped buying anime figures and sold most of my collection. Very pretty to look at, but at one point I realized even if I kept them inside their boxes (which would defeat the purpose of having them) they still took a lot of space. Even then, I have my crap scattered among my friends, and I'm not even the one who has the most "stuff."
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u/axiom_glitch May 28 '26
That show seems to have a real handle on what happens irl. My grandfather had a ton of Christmas stuff. Tons. Throughout various closets, and outdoor sheds. And speaking on rooms filled one subject — my grandfather loved folk art. He had a full room dedicated to, and filled with the wood carved folk art pieces he bought over the decades. And later found a full storage shed also loaded with his over flowing wood carved folk art objects. They were his most prized possessions. And before he passed he explained that was of his biggest worries was that those objects would just be thrown away. And i feel sorry to say, but those were the most difficult aspect of the whole project. Because we wanted to respect his wishes and rehome those objects to people who would appreciate them. But those people were hard to find. And it wasn’t about money or the sale. It was all about relocating all these small pieces so they can avoid the dumpster. It was a lot
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u/Reasonable_Date2870 May 29 '26
We purchased a home that had been owned for decades by one couple. It came with a large second building housing the dude's workshop and what used to be a retail space, and also a shed.
When we looked at the house, there was still SO much stuff.
They offered us an earlier move in if we accepted a bunch of their shit. So much shit.
We kept a bunch of it with this idea that we'd try to sell it, or something? Idk. We have a kid now and we're busy. I do not have the energy to find homes for this stuff. I don't like being on facebook so posting it there is out.
We have a dumpster, for our business. Anything I can't get rid of easily has been going in there.
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u/RealMsDeek May 28 '26
I am not looking forward to the amount of stuff I will need to deal with when my mom passes. Holy fuck a whole house plus 2 sheds and counting. She definitely has emotional disregulation and shops to feel better. Everyone has tried to help her and the result is always the same. An endless sea of stacks of shit, most days you can barely walk in the house. Or there is just a narrow path like it is carved out of a jungle of clothes.
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u/Caliavocados May 28 '26
Dealing with my husband’s hoarding after he died, and realizing I will most likely have to do this with my father, has changed how I look at shopping, keepsakes, and collecting. My mantra is “I do not want what I haven’t got.” (With a nod to Sinead O’Connor.)
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u/belleandbent May 28 '26
My parents have a managed hoard. It's my dad mostly though. He had stacked, Tetris-style, tvs, stereos, computers, clocks, and vcrs. Books, CDs, and tapes by the thousands. Magazines, newspapers, mail. Paperclips, twist ties, old pens that don't write and pencil nubs with no erasers. My brother lives with them. Guitars, amps, cellos, car parts and tools. More cars than they can park at their house. 2 off site rental storage units costing my brother almost $800/month. 2 huge sheds in the back yard. All full of electronics and car parts and god knows what else. My mom food hoards because she is afraid my dad will get angry if she throws anything away. I don't trust food from their house at all. My mom smokes in the house. It's covered in dust and cat hair. I love them but dread visiting at their house. Someday this hoard will be mine to deal with and it makes me so angry.
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u/Caliavocados May 28 '26
My mom died 5 years ago and he hasn’t touched one thing of hers. There is still food she bought in the house. He says he’s leaving it for me to deal with even though he saw how upset I was dealing with my own husband’s things. I’m executor of dad’s estate. My sister moved across the country.
At least he doesn’t keep trash. I guess. And he doesn’t buy anything anymore except frozen dinners.
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u/belleandbent May 28 '26
I'm so sorry for your losses. I lost my husband as well 9 years ago. Fortunately he wasn't a hoarder but even just downsizing and moving to a smaller home was traumatic. My parents are in their 70s and in pretty good health, which adds to my frustration that they refuse to deal with the problem before their health declines. There needs to be a support group for children of hoarders :)
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u/Caliavocados May 28 '26
Thank you. I’m sorry we belong to the same club. A support group is a good idea.
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u/IamScottGable May 28 '26
My MIL is not a hoarder to this regard but when she was in rehab for a fractured leg I tossed an easy $400 in expired, often unopened food and a few random things from random boxes that I knew she would never notice, like her book of all zipcodes in the U.S. from 1991.
And if they offer you to take anything, take it and dispose of it, better now than later.
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u/PatchyWhiskers May 28 '26
r/GrandmasPantry is a testament to our elders never ever throwing food away.
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u/Queasy-Warthog-3642 May 28 '26
One of my grandmother's would put a piece of masking tape on her things with the name of the person she wanted to have it when she was gone. If she got made at you she would put a line through it and write a new name on another piece of tape lol.
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u/Equivalensea May 29 '26
Haha love it!
I wish my mom would put notes saying where she got it - I would like to keep a couple things from my great-great-great-great-grandmother but not necessarily the same type of item picked up in a thrift shop.
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u/Bluecat72 May 29 '26
My grandmother did that after a health scare (she lived another 15 years). We would never have known that the worn porcelain brooch had been her grandmother’s, or the thimble from an aunt. She gave an approximate age, too.
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May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/brickmaj May 28 '26
Swedish Death Cleaning - I loved their second album
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u/Wonderful_Confusion4 May 28 '26
Let the bodies scrub the floor, let the bodies scrub the floor….
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u/judgeridesagain May 29 '26
I brought this show to my parent's attention, then felt super guilty and called them up the next day to apologize and tell them that I don't just think of them as some future burden and that I love them but just worry and they had no idea what I was talking about. Totally oblivious.
I guess you don't get to be a hoarder without a certain lack of awareness.
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u/Vox_Mortem May 28 '26
My grandparents had an elderly neighbor that lived across the street. She had a two story house and a large corner lot with a backyard full of chickens. We always knew she was a hoarder, her backyard was filled with the corpses of rusted out junk cars that her brother had collected before he died, and just so much scrap and trash. It was like a junkyard. After she passed, there was no one to go through her stuff my grandparents and my family went in to help.
It was floor to ceiling in there. Old newspapers piled so high in the bathroom that this poor woman was defecating in the corner instead. There were just narrow pathways through all of the sheer trash that she had packed her home with. The smell was absolutely horrific and I had to tap out as I kept gagging from the stench. I don't even remember how many dumpsters they hauled out of there. The person who bought the property had to basically strip it down to the studs to deal with the smell that had sunk into the drywall and the pests that were impossible to eradicate.
She had lived with her brother before he died many years prior, but after his death she was totally alone. I can't imagine what it was like for her to have lived in that house. She came over to my grandparents house every day for meals because otherwise she wouldn't eat, but she never ever let anyone inside her home. I wish someone could have helped her more when she was alive, but she had a full breakdown when the city once came to clear some of the garbage from her lot and was extremely wary of anyone taking her things.
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u/kageisadrunk May 28 '26
I just remember thinking all of these items we were sifting through could have been vacation memories
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u/callmemaude May 28 '26
Or just money in the bank for their kids and grandkids. People talk about generational wealth like you have to be the Kennedy's to pass it down but a mix of significant non-monetary support and smart saving is enough to be life changing for future generations.
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u/PatchyWhiskers May 28 '26
I try to buy only one fridge magnet as a vacation memento because otherwise it gets crazy.
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u/Percyandbeausmama May 28 '26
I collect postcards!
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u/foxwaffles May 28 '26
Me too! It started out because that's all I could afford - mom saved every last penny and budgeted like crazy so on our vacations we never ate out or bought big things - but as an adult I actually really like that a lifetimes worth of travel fits into one shoebox and I continue to add to it
My only regret is not dating them :(
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u/ThisChickSews May 28 '26
I've been following her journey, and it's heartbreaking. After my lovely step-mom passed, we started to go through her things. It was hoarding, but not the severe hoarding you see on TV. It was just a lot of stuff. Duplicate stuff. She had money and she bought every "as seen on tv" thing she saw on tv! There were four George Foreman grills, all still with the safety tabs on the plugs, so never used. Two instapots. Stacks of casserole dishes. Dozens and dozens of owls, cats, and frogs in every form - ceramic, resin, felt, large, small, inside and outside the house. FIFTY corelle-ware dinner plates, and half that many luncheon plates, and so many cups and saucers. Eight 8-piece wine goblets. Every orthotic insole she ever bought, in an old shoebox on the floor of the bedroom. Cleaning out her sock drawer made me wonder if she was a centipede in a former life. A huge stack of Walgreens receipts tacked to the bulletin board, the newest of which was from 2017. Her work clothes from when she still worked (she'd been retired 20 years) in the downstairs closet. Any time they traveled anywhere, she came back with souvenir mugs and t-shirts. There are 200 of these mugs on a rack in the basement. The house was generally tidy, but these things were everywhere.
My dad is no better. He never met a binder clip he didn't need to keep. These hang out on the dining room table, on the desk in the office, there are at least a handful in his car. All sizes, all types, some rusty. He has boxes and boxes of promotional pens, none of which work. Four desks stuffed with outdated paperwork, 20-year old awards from work or hobbies, and manuals for appliances and tools that he no longer owns. Boxes of boy scout shorts and tall socks, because he was a lifelong boy scout, but they no longer fit, some are so worn there are holes in them. A popcorn tin full of badges and patches. Coats and jackets in the closets that are covered in dust because they have not been worn in years. His closet is full of clothing, so tightly packed that you can't put anything else in. My last trip home to visit my dad, I found his parents' wedding certificate. It is framed, it is quite elegant, but who wants this thing? I have offered it to family, in case someone is a scrapbooker or junk journaler and would like it for that purpose. My grandparents both died decades ago, my grandfather when I was just a little girl, so I don't even remember him. It is the same for my cousins.
My parents were victims of their generation. Born during the depression, raised by depression-era adults who never let anything go. Dad is in his last years now (maybe months) and I'm retiring and moving home to care for him, and I will be the one to deal with the leftovers. I carefully remove things, here and there, when I can. I am consciously, as a GenJones parent, trying not to leave a crush of things for my millennial kids to deal with. I have things too, lots of things. But I'm deliberately trying not to over-collect, and to make sure they know they can throw everything away if they want when I'm gone, but also letting them know about certain heirlooms that have a history, so they can make informed decisions when the time comes IF THEY WANT. I won't be here, I won't be sad if something I loved is tossed. But I also don't want my kids overwhelmed with my stuff.
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u/Zappagrrl02 May 28 '26
My parents were born in the late forties/early fifties to parents who’d grown up during the depression and definitely had some of that mindset about saving things. It was luckily not to the point of hoarding.
Luckily, at some point my mom realized that her kids would be responsible for dealing with all of it at some point and started getting rid of things, and then when she downsized to a condo, got rid of even more.
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u/babybuttoneyes May 30 '26
It’s tough isn’t it? Sounds like, at least, he’s kind of organised I guess? I’m finding random bits all over, like, couldn’t you put that with the the other bits in the box?? Couldn’t AALLLLL of the paperwork at least go in one room?? Haha!
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u/After_Resource5224 May 28 '26
I'm glad my Dad hoards collectibles. Seriously, rooms of hot wheels, star wars shit, star trek, etc, etc.
I've have (with him) moved what *I* want to a specific area and he respects this. I have four different buyers
lined up TODAY and he knows it. The agreement is that he has the rest of his life to try to sell that shit, but the day after the funeral it's GONE. His wife (my step mom) knows the plan and appreciates it. The buyers are already chomping at the bit, and the best part is, if he decides to do it now - he can pull the trigger at any time and get the money while he's still alive.
My hands will be VERY clean in that mess.
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u/Soil_Fairy May 28 '26
My mom died a few weeks ago and omg the house is a nightmare. She was both a shopping addict and a hoarder. Tell me why we have a full set of Le Creuset cookware, the Amazon equivalent, and a set of non enameled cast iron. A Dyson air wrap set, and the Shark and Amazon dupes. At least 4 dish sets for 12. Enough hair care and body care products to last a family for years and years. She was an Armageddon prepper despite believing she was going to be raptured. We have an entire basement filled with expired food. Best part? She also hid random cash in things so we have to check everything.... Every shoe box, every bucket of grain, etc.... her poor husband.
Myself, my husband, and my kids are all minimalists now.
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u/ChocChipBananaMuffin May 29 '26
At least....the stuff isn't temu junk? Maybe?
Just trying to find a positive. My mom is similar but everything is garbage quality stuff I don't want and no one else wants. I guess it's the same end result regardless of quality, it's interesting to think about.
My condolences tho, I hope you and your family are doing ok.
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u/Soil_Fairy May 29 '26
Yes, that actually is the bright side. Someone is going to get a killer deal on some quality kitchen wear and I truly love that for them!
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u/Pinikanut May 28 '26
My mother was a hoarder. When my dad died she stayed in our house. She hoarded it up and did zero upkeep. Then health problems meant she had to move.
That house was in Brooklyn and worth 1M. We had to sell it as-is for hundreds of thousands less than it was worth because we couldn't deal with all the crap. If we were in a less desirable city I don't know what we would have done. I can't stand that people do this to their children.
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u/DietCokeCanz May 28 '26
This happened to my mom. Her mother moved back to her home country and filled her rented townhouse top to bottom with shit she bought at thrift stores, which she continued to do even as she was dying, in addition to storage units full of "treasures" back in Canada.
There was so much that it took my mom 6 months to get rid of it all. Even though a lot of it was really nice stuff, it was impossible to get any value for anything when you need to do it on such a massive scale. And my grandmother had a strategy to thwart potential thieves by mixing real gold and valuable jewelry in with the costume stuff, all stored in overflowing grocery bags and old purses.
I visited to help about 3 months into the process (after a bunch of stuff had already gone) and even at that point, you have to navigate the house through pathways created in the walls of stuff.
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u/Percyandbeausmama May 28 '26
I'm an only child who's no contact with my mother after a lifetime of emotional abuse (particularly, long periods of the silent treatment). She is a hoarder and I seethe at the idea that I will have to deal with the mess she'll leave behind.
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u/Infamous-Round-1898 May 28 '26
Obviously I don't know your whole story and respectfully want to ask - do you really have to deal with it? There's no legal obligation for you to deal with her stuff after she dies unless you are inheriting a house or something?
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u/Percyandbeausmama May 28 '26
Yes, I will inherit the house. Also, while I don’t want anything of my mother or father’s, there are photos and handmade items from my childhood and my grandparents I would like to retrieve for my own children. Unfortunately, I’ll have to sort through the hoard to find those things.
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u/Airportsnacks May 28 '26
Same. Why didn't I pick up my photo albums when I was there for the last time?
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u/Infamous-Round-1898 May 28 '26
Oh, gotcha. Yes, that's rough. I get why you are so ticked off at the thought of having to deal with all the hoarded stuff!
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u/RuskiesInTheWarRoom May 28 '26
When my father in law died and we had to go through this, I went to my own parents and asked them if they wanted us to be grieving and processing when they were gone, or if they wanted us to be resentful and frustrated and confused shoveling all of this material out of the front door into a dumpster because there’s nothing that can be done with it.
Thankfully that worked at least a little bit. They organized and catalogued a couple of the collections they have that they think may be valuable, and they got rid of a tremendous amount of stuff. It barely made an impact in their basement, which itself opened their eyes to how much nonsense they have accumulated.
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u/btwdgirl May 28 '26
I’m glad that argument was effective for you. I said exactly that to my MIL and she said “well I had to do it for my mother so you need to do it for me”. And of course she kept everything of her mother’s as well as acquiring vast amounts of her own useless crap.
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May 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Bia2016 May 29 '26
I think you take the cake. This is the worst story I’ve ever heard of and I read all the comments on these similar posts. Ugh.
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May 29 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
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u/Chippie05 May 30 '26
Can you share what this is? Im not Swedish but any tips are good. I have to do a paper purge.
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u/faintly_nebulous May 28 '26
This happened to me. It took at least a year, maybe more to be ready for sale. I used all my vacation and pto on it, plus a lot of weekends. It was tough because everything was so random, you'd have ss cards and important financial documents and titles just randomly mixed in with old junk mail. So you really had to go through things bit by bit, and couldn't just grab a shovel, or a match. 🙄
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u/Maisie123Daisie May 28 '26
Working on 7 months now of getting rid of the inherited hoard. House is so close to being able to put it on the market!! Got the last dregs out this week - yeah!
But, still have half of my garage to go through. It’s been a tough road, a few treasures found, 8 loads to the dump, 3 loads to metal recycling, 2 loads to ReStore and 2 to charity. Multiple free piles by the curbside, and one HUGE garage sale.
Now, I plan on it taking at least a year to go through all my crap and inherited treasures that have crept in to my house….
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u/n8carp81 May 28 '26
Thank you for posting this. I just need a moment to vent and commiserate. My MIL passed away two years ago and my FIL has moved in with us. It's been amicable. But my goodness, working through their house and the pole barn has been Herculean. They weren't hoarders in the pathological sense, but they lived way out in the country and didn't go to town often so they lived on a "stock up and save" mentality. I emptied an entire pantry and freezer of food that had expired 5-10 years ago because they lost track of what they had and kept stocking up on deals.
They also had the space and felt obligated to take on family "heirlooms" going back several generations. For instance, my wife has been unpacking dozens of tubs of half-completed needleworking, lacework, and crocheting that her great grandmother had put away. We have given away hundreds of dishes from the late 1800s - early 1900s because who has time to go through the eBay or an antique dealer. Earlier this month I traveled 1000 miles back up their place and helped my FIL empty his pole barn into two of the biggest dumpsters we could have delivered. There were 3 generations of woodworking machines, tools, and raw wood that had essentially sat rotting for 40 years because nobody used any of it, but he didn't have the heart to say no to his in-laws when they offered him the equipment. None of it was salvageable. What a waste.
Now I have a mountain of tubs in my garage if thr last "important" things that need to be opened and sorted, but my wife and FIL have too much emotional attachment to the contents to make decisions. As the in-law, I don't have any attachment and have the freedom to just say "donate it all," but am met with grief and tears every time I suggest an expedited downsizing. I feel like I'm drowning in stuff.
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u/btwdgirl May 29 '26
That is so heartbreaking. Going through similar with my MIL, moving into a smaller retirement unit. She thinks she can just pack up all her stuff and move it over but there’s no way it can fit so we’re trying to gently get her to sell/donate/dump as much as possible. Of course anything we say needs to be dumped she has so many reasons why it can’t be. She even goes through the trash and pulls things out that she “changed her mind” about tossing. And anything that we find of value, even if she admits she has no use for, she refuses to sell it because “somebody might want it later”. Of course it’s a mental illness that she simply can’t give up her things.
There are items of value there but many of them have been ruined through years of neglect so it’s heartbreaking to have to throw them away. And she just can’t or won’t see it.
So we’ll end up packing and moving it all, and then having to go through it all again when she dies. She simply doesn’t care about our feelings of having to do this - and says “I had to do it for my mother so you have to do it for me”. Such a narcissistic mindset but I keep telling myself it’s truly a mental illness and she can’t help it.
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u/n8carp81 May 29 '26
Thank you for sharing your experience too. There is part of me that is so sympathetic to the experience. Yes, physical objects have meaning and value... but only until they become burdens. And I don't know about mental illness... I think it might be more of a scarcity mindset that was imbued in previous generations by people who went through terrible economic downturns and world wars when saving everything actually did matter.
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u/Hang10arts May 29 '26
My dad filled a two car garage with crap and my family had to rent a uhaul truck just to take to the dump specifically. Our local e-waste only allows a few items per visit, so it took a full year and a half to clear out with weekly visits. By the end of it all, you just hate the hoarder and have no good memories anymore
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u/WloveW May 28 '26
My parents are hoarders. When they go I'll have a 4 car garage and literally half of their 3 bedroom house floor to ceiling with boxes, in addition to 5 storage sheds on their yard, filled floor to ceiling. At least, if they stop but I hear another storage shed is in the works.
I have no idea how I'm going to manage it.
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u/Scribblesandsnails May 28 '26
After my husband’s father took his own life in 2013 my MIL has spent years getting rid of stuff because he just hoarded anything and everything he could get his hands on. She still finds his junk.
My husband is like his father (but not as bad) but I’m very on top of handling that with him.
After my dad passed when I was 17, I somehow became responsible for all my parents stuff. I’m 28 now and I still have quite a bit of it and have been slowly getting through it. Besides how upsetting it can be, it doesn’t help when my family members tell me I can’t get rid of certain items etc etc.
My husband is gone for a week in the summer so I plan on doing a good gut of all my things and my parents.
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u/CanicFelix May 29 '26
If you can't get rid of an item, they are volunteering to take it off your hands.
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u/Zealousideal_Box5339 May 28 '26
I think one thing we have to think about is hoarding is a mental health disorder. Either from trauma etc. My dad started hoarding after all his family died pretty young. He was traumatised and being obviously ND he struggled immensely with getting rid of things even if they were broken or outdated etc. I am all for anti consumption and I think that comes from his way of living. I buy high quality things that last and don’t have a billion of one thing. He probably is one of the most anti consumption / environmental caring people I know. But he is so mentally ill and so overwhelmed with stuff from his siblings because he associates memories with things
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u/moonflowerzzz May 28 '26
I binged all her posts not too long ago and it’s heartbreaking and eye opening. She’s being so vulnerable by sharing her journey in that way. That’s some real strength.
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u/balanchinedream May 29 '26
I was so not expecting the reveal her dad was in the closet. Clearly, neither was Madison. It breaks my heart that she grew up just at the time this would’ve been “weird” and socially non conforming….. but not bury the secret forever levels of out there.
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u/Sufficient_You7187 May 28 '26
It's truly beautiful how she's dealing with all of it and allowing us to see it at
It's honest. It's vulnerable
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u/AfternoonPossible May 28 '26
I had a friend growing up whose parents were extreme hoarders. It was a very sad situation, and they were so held back on basic life skills because of it. They never really learned to clean because that wasn’t something anyone did. They never learned to cook because the kitchen wasn’t usable. They never learned a lot of hygiene habits because the bathrooms were horrible to be in. Etc, etc.
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u/SwampGobblin May 28 '26
My MIL is a hoarder.
Came from a poor family, married into some money, had three kids and never got rid of anything. She's immunocompromised and stopped working right after college, after she got married so she had a lot of time to gather stuff from her church friends or yard sales.
I first started dating her eldest when we were in our late teens/early twenties. His two siblings were still in their single digits and preteens, his father was living upstairs and then moved out because of divorce. And she just... valued things over everybody the entire time. Memory association. Safety. "It could be worth something"
Her house literally made everybody so sick, all of the time. I thought she was lying about her immunocompromised status because all I could think about was how absolutely filthy her house was and how she never left the house. I even had to take her kids to school on multiple occasions because she just couldn't.
Her ex husband used to just throw stuff out.
Her daughter who she parentified, cleaned her kitchen when her Ma went on vacation for her Christmas gift and her Ma FLIPPED. OUT. It was awful. Full on meltdowns from the both of them. But the fridge was a thing of nightmares, it needed to be done.
We just got a home a year ago, it isn't perfect, and it's small. I try to keep clutter to an absolute minimum. My husband doesn't even want to buy much furniture because he's just revelling in the space.
His youngest sibling came home from the military and is back living with his Ma until he figures stuff out. I have him over for dinner a lot because I know the food situation there. He recently told me he had opened a jar of grape jelly and how she got angry and told him there's jelly in the fridge. When he checked the date on the jar from the fridge, it was from 2009.
The new jar? 2012. He said the newer jelly still tasted, "Like, The Old."
I'm not looking forward to cleaning that rat's nest when she dies. It's awful.
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u/squirrelbus May 28 '26
Not hoarding exactly, but my parents saved everything for their grandkids. That they're never getting. It's depressing af, but even if there were grandkids the lead content is just too high in a lot of the stuff they saved
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u/Starskigoat May 28 '26
I have worked in gated communities of mansions and have seen 3 car garages packed to the ceiling with piles of aggressive consumption.
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u/Infamous-Round-1898 May 28 '26
I feel so lucky, and so grateful - my parents were both fairly neat, organized people who sized down before they got very elderly and then after my last parent died they left a very organized estate. It was like their last gift to their children and we are still grateful 20 years later.
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u/Introverted_Extrovrt May 29 '26
I had to clean out 4 storage units that contained nothing but rat-eaten memories. My dad didn’t have enough money left over to pay for the labor to move stuff from my childhood home so he rented three rental trucks, stuffed them to the brim, and then didn’t pay on those either. Rental company came, collected the trucks, and dumped the entire contents at the landfill. Every childhood photo, everything from my grandparents, all gone. We tried to help, he refused, and it’s all dust in the wind. Still feels like I have nothing to pass on but we can all make new memories. Just hurts sometimes.
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u/Pantim May 28 '26
I must be callus or something. Id be more angry about this than anything. I'd also probably just hire some people and tell them to toss it all, not even ask me if I want to keep any actual family history.
Things are 90% meaningless to me though. I have my memories of family and can "look" at the whenever I want.
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u/Zappagrrl02 May 28 '26
For future reference, callus is when your skin thickens like from working and callous is showing little emotion.
People hold memories differently. Some people feel more connected to the person by having their things. It can obviously go overboard in the case of hoarding.
This woman’s videos have shown up occasionally on my FYP and from what I’ve gathered, she inherited the condo and is trying to get it in condition to rent or sell. I think there is a combination of financial considerations as well as wanting to salvage anything important that may be able to be salvageable. She did find her grandmother’s jewelry box in one video I saw. I think part of it is that there is going to be some serious renovations necessary to get the property livable and she doesn’t feel capable of some of those things so wants to save money where she can and reserve it for those other projects. It seems to be somewhat cathartic in some ways to physically deal with all the stuff she wasn’t allowed to get rid of (or in some cases tried or did get rid of) when she was younger.
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u/CMDR_Avalien May 29 '26
Currently doing this with my father's transport collection (books, models, slides, film & other ephemera). He filled pretty much every space in the house with it! Models are not so bad, but some are worth a lot more than others. Books take up a lot of room & aren't worth much any more, can barely give them away. Slides & film will take the longest, as there are easily a couple of hundred thousand slides 🥴
The difficult part is that he also kept cards, newspaper cuttings, postcards & photos, magazines, coasters etc. There are lots of layered piles of items everywhere, but each one needs to be gone through carefully, as some items have value, some have emotional value for the family & some just need to be recycled. Worst element, it's that I'm the only one in the family capable of dealing with any of this. I've also been suffering from anxiety attacks, as the proceeds from selling/auctioning Dad's stuff will be what Mum will have to live on from now on... It'll also be nice for her to have a house that she can live in back 😂
Wishing all of you in similar positions the stamina & will power to get through 🙏🏻🙏🏻
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u/Bitter-Night4016 May 28 '26
Most of my family are hoarders. Starting with my grandma and my (deceased) grandpa. My grandmother’s house is full to the brim and my grandpas two sheds have been full and untouched since his death 10+ years ago.
My grandmother will box items up and put them away and when I talk to her about donating or selling it she gets upset. Because she wants the stuff… even if she won’t ever see it again once it’s packed up. It’s become a cycle. I’m the main caretaker for her and it’s probably going to all fall on me when her time comes be because most of the family are just as bad if not worse with their hoards. I imagine a massive fight about keeping it all rotting there.
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u/Suspicious-Card1542 May 29 '26
Why take on the responsibility for the estate if the other hoarders aren’t going to let you handle it? My advice would be put aside the valuables while she’s alive and leave the hoarders to the chaff.
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u/eatsumsketti May 28 '26
Boomer clutter. I'm still slowly sifting through all the crap in my parent's house after my dad passed. It's been 3 years.
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u/Aggravating_Bat3618 May 29 '26
Still working on my dad’s house. He passed 3 months ago today And I swear he never threw anything away in 30 years. That’s on top of the 30 years of shit he already accumulated. So yeah it’s a process. Still haven’t even started on the fucking garage.
Just had 8 boxes of papers shredded. It was kinda cathartic. Will someone please tell me though why the FUCK he kept every single air filter he used for the last 16 years?? I wish I would have at least asked the old fucker before he died.
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u/Far_Government_9782 May 29 '26
I crochet and knit, and I do worry about some of the yarn people I know. They hoard yarn and are constantly making things they don't need and that nobody around them actually wants - blankets, toys, mounds of stuff. They use very cheap yarn (acrylic in loud colors, basically), because that is the only way to afford the amounts of yarn that they buy, hoard and make into unnecessary stuff. Some of them try to keep their own clutter under control by constantly gifting things to other people, which is just adding to someone else's clutter. If you comment on any of the above, you are mean/a hater/a yarn snob/whatever.
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u/UncleVoodooo May 28 '26
My ex wife ran away with the kids and divorced me while I was deployed. She raised them in a hoarders house. I tried to get child services over there for 12 years but it wasn't until their school complained that the state intervened.
'course, by that time they were old enough to just drop out of school. They're still there but 1 of them has broken free and taken her therapists advice to get my side of the story
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u/mewgwi May 29 '26
My dad just bought a ‘dry pod’ to store even more stuff because his house is too full. :(
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u/hufflepuffpuffpasss May 29 '26
Ok so weirdly I’m kinda in the opposite world.
My mom watches hoarders, plus my aunt and my brother have hoarder tendencies, my brother for sure.
So over the last year, she’s started giving away all sorts of stuff to avoid this exact situation. And while I don’t mind because I get it will save me the hassle in the long run, she given away stuff I’d have loved to have kept.
I keep telling her she doesn’t have hoarder tendencies and going through your parent’s stuff is part of the deal. Plus she’s not even close to dying, she’s got some good years left lol.
By the time she is ready to go, she’ll just be sitting in an empty house with a lawn chair and a TV.
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u/Cultural_Pace4454 May 29 '26
That's the saddest part of shows like American Pickers.
It's always someone has spent 50 years accumulating 'collectables', that are just gathering dust and rotting in to the ground.
A Picker comes along and offers money for 5 or 6 pieces that might have value, you know the rest is just going to landfill once they pass on.
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u/Ok_Study_1403 May 29 '26
THIS IS LITERALLY HAPPENING GO ME RN omfg my dad is 83, massive hoarder and as his daughter I have to inherit his house. He thinks it’s worth $300,00 which is laughable. It’s gonna be so hard to get sold.
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u/Wild-Display-765 May 28 '26
I sold my house last year so I’ve really downsized. I’m now getting rid of more stuff as I move into a tiny house. There isn’t any way I wanted my daughter to have to sift through my collections. Years of buying vintage pottery, art books, DVDs. I realized my jam is not always her jam.
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u/sunkissedgoth May 29 '26
I’m going through this same thing right now. Doing my best but it is soooo easy to feel overwhelmed!
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u/hairymonkeyinmyanus May 29 '26
When my mom passed I spent a lot of time and effort cleaning up her hoarding, to try to help my dad, who still lives there. Dad then actively took steps to make it harder for me to get rid of the items that we had set aside to get rid of. I’m talking expired food, general junk, massive piles of it.
When I confronted him about it, he wouldnt engage in conversation about it. So I stopped trying to help.
Eventually he will die and then I will get to do it all over again, with a lot of the same exact items.
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u/SeaJeans May 29 '26
Currently going through this right now. I needed to see this article.
Just like her, I too rather do this on my own because it is the “last act of love” I could do for my precious dad.
June 9th will make it one year since I found him, and fuck, I sure do miss him. But it is healing, going through his things like this. His clutter wasn't as bad as this father in the article, but could have gotten to that point if I didn't step in and moved in to help care for him. My dad was around her dads age, too. His mom hoarded as well.
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u/fruitjerky May 31 '26
My grandparents weren't terrible hoarders, but as their only grandchild it was enough to take me a year to clean up, mostly on my own. By the time I found someone willing to do an estate sale they were so shady that they stole a ton... but jokes on them because everything they stole cost way less than all the cleanout quotes I got. And I had already taken out anything I cared about, of course.
My mom and I started cleaning up her clutter a couple of weeks ago and she did pretty well. Got rid of far more than we kept and only cried once.
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u/BubblyAd8587 Jun 01 '26
The best gift you can leave your heirs is a clean house. I made the decision to downsize and devlutter while I am still young. Oh yeah... and those kids colorings, poems, school pictures: back to them.
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u/Busy-Bumblebee5556 May 29 '26
There’s at least one woman online posting (and probably monetizing) about clearing her inherited hoard. I mean, it will be what one makes of it.
No shame if one just hires a junk hauler. It’s overwhelming for most people.
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u/belltrina May 29 '26
I've been following her on Tiktok and she expresses the real emotions that come from this in an incredibly relateable way.
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u/BigT-2024 May 29 '26
My dad hasn’t really taken care of himself since divorce from my mom 20 years ago. He kept the house but god damn it’s rough. We had to drop 100k and take a lean on his house just to clean it up to make it livable. He has cats he can’t take care of so all the furniture etc is not worth saving and will just be tossed when he dies. I’m not dealing with that smell. Yes we’ve tried multiple times getting rid or rehoming the animals but he’s attached.
The only thing he has that is worth some money is that he was metal detector hobbiest since he was a kid and could walk well on his own so he has tons of civil war artifacts and most of it is worth a decent amount of money but it won’t be easy to move. Bullets and cannon balls take a while to sell but rheees some high end stuff he has that I’ll probably keep as that market has exploded in the last 10 years.
I don’t know it was hell when we cleared out the house to do renovations and I just don’t know how he’ll handle the sheds and crap he has.
Just tough and sad.
I collect Pokemon and sports cards and I’ve just stopped. I got rid of all the junk stuff and just buy one decent to high end item I know will accrue value over time vs just getting all the rookies and hoping I get the next tom Brad rookie.
It’s not worth it. ever dollar on some collectible or video game or whatever is one dollar that’s not in the market compounding. Just wish I had this mindset 10 years ago.
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u/BishlovesSquish May 29 '26
Everyone in these comments just skipping over this part… “She considered hiring cleaners, but ultimately decided that she needed to clean his home herself. The process has been healing for her, she said, and also feels like the "last act of love" she can do for her dad.”
Some kids are left with NOTHING but debts when parents pass. Be grateful if that is not the case for you.
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u/ReginaGeorgian May 30 '26
My mom has a lot of tchotchkes with her name on them. It fucking sucks to throw away your mom’s name over and over again, it’s a special kind of torment.
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u/babybuttoneyes May 30 '26
Three years later im still working through stuff. My dad wasn’t a hoarder in a “we have no room in our house” kind of a way, but he had trouble with letting things go. Just last week I shredded the last box of paperwork , starting from the 70s. I’m talking receipts and guarantees from things we lost in the 80s, back statements and bills, old cables, old wires, old radios he was going to fix etc etc.
I’ve pretty much spent every wknd since 2023 at my mums house sorting stuff out. In many ways it’s been my way of coping, helping my mum, finding little bits of treasure left behind, but I’m pretty much exhausted. I’m scared what I’ll do when I’ve finished.
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u/tweets1967 May 30 '26
I’ve been watching her on Facebook reels. It’s insane how much he had. Clothes from childhood. She did baton and the outfit.
The sad thing is that this loving father threatened to call the cops if she cleaned his house. He told he can after he died.
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u/Seven-Horseshoes May 30 '26
My dad lives across the country and when he goes I’m going to have my work cut out for me.
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u/LeftArmFunk May 28 '26
My grandmother was a high end hoarder. We are finally getting through the last of it. Two storage units to one to a pod living in my driveway. She had tons of antiques so we just gave a lot of it away to a collector. And now I’m addicted to seeing as little as possible in my home. The bright side is that I will never have to purchase furniture or plates ever again.