Various relatives are having clearouts and there seem be be reams of stuff that nobody wants to store but nobody wants thrown away.

I don’t mind taking small documentary stuff with lots of history but we’re getting to the point where I’m under pressure to take massive useless furnature because it ‘belonged to your great Grandad’.

Then there’s stuff like an old wedding ring that has been kept but nobody knows what it’s significance to the family is. I see no point in keeping that, it’s not bulky and it might be important but without knowing who owned it what’s the point?

I’d *love* a museum to myself and my family but it’s just not practical.

Rant over. 😀

I feel your pain. We get quite a few things from the wife’s mother. Things that need to be kept in the family but she doesn’t actually want in her house. My wife is being pretty good about it but we do have a few things around, some are OK, some less so. I do have some of my dad’s plumbing tools and my granddad’s upholstery tools. Very happy to keep them and it means something to me when I use them. Also have my dad’s great-aunt’s crystal ball from her gypsy fortune telling days.

Yup. I have a campfer wood chest that belonged to my parents but none of the siblings want it and it doesn’t fit in my house so it’s in the attic. Also loads of other stuff coupled with the stuff that my brother doesn’t need while he lives in Japan! He has married a lovely Japanese woman now and got a flat so I don’t think he’s ever coming back….

Three options.

1) Sell it.
2) Suggest they hire a storage unit, see how keen they are to keep it when it’s costing them to do so.
3) Tell them to jeff off.

I have a campfer wood chest

Does it have toy soldiers in it?

Give it to my girlfriend if you like – she’s obsessed with keeping tatty old junk because it has “sentimental value”.

*Camphor. Yea thanks Cougar. 😛

The garage is still full of stuff Mrs B took from her Grans. All apparently has sentimental value, none of it goes anywhere in our house. So it looks like a few more years of mourning storage before I can sort it out.

“1) Sell it.
2) Suggest they hire a storage unit, see how keen they are to keep it when it’s costing them to do so.
3) Tell them to jeff off.”

4) “Accidental” breakage.
5) Bin without asking.

I used to keep a lot of sentimental crap. stuffed away in a wardrobe. Thought it was cool to have

One day in a fit of clarity I threw it all out. Filled the main hallway of the house with bin bags. It felt amazing, and I’ve never regretted it.

Does bike crap and parts that “will come in useful one day” count?
How should I get rid of all that with minimum effort?

Apparently those big wooden display units with glass doors and shelving for ornaments are the least-wanted thing by furniture recycling shops.

Does bike crap and parts that “will come in useful one day” count?
How should I get rid of all that with minimum effort?

It never does. Bristol Bike Jumble? 🙂

I hate clutter and would happily bin anything I can’t ever see a use for but my wife not so much.

One positive though – she inherited some gold jewlery from her nan which was sentimental but in a style she’d never wear. She was always unsure what to do with it so took it a local jewellers who valued it and then worked with her to design a silver bracelet and ring but to also incorporate the melted down gold from her nans stuff into a new design. She’s happy as she hasn’t just sold it but can actually get some use out of it and can hopefully be passed on to our girls (who may or may not like the style!).

*Camphor. Yea thanks Cougar.

I think he was probably referring to something else, such as it’s usefulness in being burnt for fuel when marooned (and the unmistakable aroma) 😀

My wife was left a collection of 68 porcelain owls by a mad aunt, trouble is her uncle is still alive, so when he comes round, we have to display at least 10 from the box in the loft.

So are you saying that the owls are not what they seem?

Seems a little heartless but just take a lot of it to the tip. I had the same issues having lost most of my family over the years. All that will happen is that you’ll keep them stored somewhere then eventually you’ll die and your younger relatives will have the same issue.

I had a loft full of stuff from people I loved that I couldn’t bare to throw away. Then I realised I never used or looked at it and it served absolutely no purpose keeping most of it. I don’t feel guilty or any worse for having cleared most of it out. Thankfully my wife was less sentimental than me and she made me see sense.

*Camphor. Yea thanks Cougar.

I think he was probably referring to something else, such as it’s usefulness in being burnt for fuel when marooned (and the unmistakable aroma)[/quote]

There’s no way I’d burn that chest, I’d burn my guitar before I did that.

I’d burn my guitar before I did that.

Your guitar was made of camphor wood? It must’ve been worth a fortune!

I know your pain, we’ve become a storage facility for my Late MILs stuff and her Mums before her.

Boxes of it, not even what you’d call keep-safes, just ‘stuff’. When I moved into our last place to co-habit, I’d ask about these boxes, frankly the house was small before I moved in, within a few years it was like living in a camper van, if you wanted something you had to move 3 other things first to get to it and put them back in the right order or wherever it was stored wouldn’t close.

I let it go, after all my MIL was taken young only a year or so before I moved in so it was a lot of emotional baggage, but after a while Wife didn’t want it either so I said get rid “no, I can’t” it seems to free us of it, we need to consult with her sisters

“no, you can’t get rid of Mum’s stuff!!” They’d cry.
“Do you want it?”
Followed by a fairly detailed list of it all.
“I’ll have X & Y” other sister “I’ll have A & B” etc. Okay, I said…

6 months later and it’s still there.

Most of it still is…

It seems they can’t bear to be apart from it, they’d just rather it didn’t mess with the feng shui of their place to have it.

It now consists of 3x 500mm3 boxes, they were collected from our old attic and taken to our new with the Xmas Decs, I suspect they’ll move to the next place, and probably the one after and one day many years from now they’ll move to the attic of one of our kids who’ll probably open them as much as we do, never. They’ll assume perhaps it represents 3 generations worth of heirlooms and keep-safes and perhaps, although they’ll only dare to use the words with their nearest and dearest it “might be worth a few quid”. But it doesn’t and it isn’t. It’s a collection of the sort of brickabrac you find in ‘the drawer’ – a collection of adapters for stuff you don’t own, fuses which may or may not be blown, buttons for shirts no longer sewn and maybe the odd bone. Crap in other words, only instead of 3 boxes, there will be 4.

It was my father’s Nokia charger – it must have meant a lot to him or he wouldn’t have kept it…

Interesting point about box sizes. I’m tempted to set that kind of limit: The family museum will be 1m*1m. No more. I can’t see any other way to deal with it.

Your guitar was made of camphor wood? It must’ve been worth a fortune!

It was, it’s an authentic Les Paul copy.

P-jay, that’s beautiful mate.

6 months later and it’s still there.

“If you want this you’ve got a fortnight to come get it, or it’s going to the tip charity shop.”

Auction, freecycle, charity shops. some stuff just isn’t wanted, some stuff can make someone else happy rather than sit taking up space. We went to a couple of car boot sales and auctioned a load of stuff when emptying my granny’s old house recently. Made several hundred quid, certainly more than if the stuff had sat in a garage for ever gathering dust. And I like to think someone else will appreciate it.

On a related note, father-in-law visited recently and reminded us to take good care of a table that he remembers was made by an old relative and handed down to his ownership many years ago. The same table that he refused to house back then, leaving it with other relatives instead, then forgot existed, and again refused to take when re-offered more recently. I threatened to take it round to him and that shut him up 🙂

Roll rasins between fingers, sprinkle over content of boxes, buy rabbit from butcher, leave in box for several weeks.

Dispose of box and dead “rat” once smelly along with other boxes containing “rat droppings”

Interesting point about box sizes. I’m tempted to set that kind of limit: The family museum will be 1m*1m. No more. I can’t see any other way to deal with it.

You’ll not fit much in a 2 dimensional box

I’ve got some stuff I must say after clearing and recreating folks’ house, so I understand.
Smaller items, we have kept, some stuff will eventually go, but yes little trinkets that no-one knows any more where they came from – really hard.

We have given stuff to charity shop, not much sold, have also donated to local scout group or similar and they’ve raised quite a lot so win win..

My MIL keeps giving us shite that she has dragged across the world (and back sadly) doesn’t want clogging up her house but wants kept.
We just give it away, if she asks we say we gave it away ‘like you did’

With my Mum we just tell her straight, why on earth would we want an unused 10,000 piece dinner set.

We have too much stuff.

It pretty much comes from several categories:

1. Stuff we buy. Latest was a huge volume of baking kit when Mrs North made her friend’s wedding cake – I wasn’t impressed to have paid for it all and then heard the words “Never again”..!.

2. Second hand furniture. We set up home with hand-me-down furniture and took on those items that my in-laws didn’t want to leave their family but – aha! – weren’t prepared to keep at home themselves. Now that my BIL has got his own place, it would make sense for him (someone on a low income) to equip himself with free/second hand stuff. But oh no! It’s important that he feels his home is his own and buying entirely new furniture is the best way to do this…. I did manage to foist an Ikea Billy bookcase on him, but only after he said he wanted it (but only when he was “ready” – date not specified, natch), so I turned up at his house and just dropped it off.

3. Mrs North’s childhood possessions. These just arrive at our house. My inlaws live 10 minutes away and look after our daughter after school, so are often in our house when we’re not there (don;t get me started on the time I returned from a woek trip to find they;d rearranged the bedroom furniture). Mrs North puts these bagged (always a Tesco carrier) items in the spare room and closes the door.

4. Limitless gifts for Miss North. Our daughter is our only child, and she is also the only granddaughter for my parents and Mrs North’s parents. She’s also doted on by various extended family and non-family members. Consequently, she experiences a near constant influx of small gifts. Nothing expensive, but enough to take her room from a lovely, airy space to an over-flowing turmoil of books/teddies/crayons/colouring books/dolls/clothes.

Coupled with the fact that Mrs and Miss North are both very untidy, it’s really beginning to do my head in. Fortunately, we’re due to start some building work soon, so inevitably are going to have to clear much of it out. Painful though it will be, some stuff is just going to be slung away* without even considering its future usefulness or value….

*Except perhaps a couple of bike frames that I remain sentimentally attached to. Aarrgh that’s how it starts….!

. Limitless gifts for Miss North. Our daughter is our only child, and she is also the only granddaughter for my parents and Mrs North’s parents. She’s also doted on by various extended family and non-family members. Consequently, she experiences a near constant influx of small gifts. Nothing expensive, but enough to take her room from a lovely, airy space to an over-flowing turmoil of books/teddies/crayons/colouring books/dolls/clothes.

Ha, this is my daughter! Between my mum and the in-laws, plus other family and two elderly couples that are neighbours and seem to dote on my daughter, especially since her T1 diagnosis, she has a total of 58 soft toys! We could open a soft toy museum and she wouldn’t miss them, got to the point where we had to buy her a bed with massive storage underneath just to house them, even then they are everywhere.

Do what I have done and take it to the local Auctions. My take on it is, It’s been purchased initially, some one further down the line will only Bin/Sell it. If someone wanted it then let them go and buy another. Get shut before your siblings have to deal with a pile of old gear and dump it all.

Glad to hear I’m not the only one experiencing this. I decided to get a bit ruthless and make small sneaky deposits in the bottom of the kitchen bin, as well as adding the odd item to my trip to the dump. Slowly working my way through it! 🙂

“small sneaky deposits in the bottom of the kitchen bin, as well as adding the odd item to my trip to the dump. Slowly working my way through it!”

That’s my chosen method.