You’ve been through a lot @MaineLonghorn. Enjoy your BFF and be gentle with yourself.
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I’ve been caught up in family medical stuff and just catching up. So glad that the service for your dear mom went well. Please take care of yourself.
Glad both @MaineLonghorn and @momofboiler1 were able to have these services to celebrate your mom/parents. I’m sure they were all looking down on you all with big smiles and lots of love.
20 months ago my mom was given a death sentence. 2-1/2 months to live if no treatment and possible a year with treatment. Obviously, it’s been more than a year. We lived our lives on eggshells weary of planning trips, etc. My husband and I were supposed to go to Portugal last summer and worried so much if we were doing the right thing or would be able to go. Then of course, covid happened and it didn’t matter. A year later, turns out we could’ve gone on many trips. It has made me realize we have to live our lives to the fullest and when her time comes it will come we just have to enjoy every minute together with her while we can this time. We are so fortunate as well as there has been very little progression. These things really make you appreciate the people in your life more than you ever thought you would. That said, I am freaked out at what the process will be when she goes because she doesn’t think at all about the end and has done no type of purging whatsoever so god help me. That just brought a lol to me.
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@srparent15 when we did an estate sale, the guys told us not to clean out anything (obvi not a hoarder house or anything!) as they knew what would, which would include stuff we would never have imagined. So, other than private/financial papers, I say, ‘don’t stress it.’
So exhausted. The mountains of stuff are endless. Between us, Sis and I probably spent 15 hours clearing out a fairly small closet in my parents’ office. I found a full box of letterhead of Dad’s from our OLD address. We moved from there in 1973! Why was it sitting in their “new” house 48 years later? And there were binders and binders and binders and binders of religious stuff. My parents’ church is very legalistic and the material is all this nitpicky stuff. I texted my middle kid and told him that for all my failings as a mother, he should be grateful I got out of that church and didn’t raise him in it. It’s sad, because I know Dad stayed in it just because that’s how he was raised.
@somemom, that’s what we were told. But now when two different companies have come and seen the amount of stuff, they’ve told us it’s not worth their time to sort everything out because they wouldn’t make enough on the sale. The guy Dad hired to oversee the move says my parents aren’t considered hoarders, but they have to be borderline. We were devastated to learn this yesterday. What are we going to do with everything? Through someone we trust, we found a respected liquidator who’s going to come Friday to see if he wants to buy anything. I hope so. It truly isn’t the money - we just hate to see so many beautiful things go to the dump. I don’t think my sister has time to sell items individually.
The other low point was learning that we have to have all my dad’s stuff picked out TOMORROW instead of Thursday, as we had thought - Thursday is moving day, but tomorrow is when they will box everything. Ugh. But the move organizing company showed up today and did an outstanding job. They took many, many bags of trash down two flights of stairs to the basement. They sat with my dad and actually got him to pick which books he wanted to take (he has so many!). They said we needed a dumpster and arranged its rental for us. I also found a jewelry appraiser who will work by the house to give us an idea of the value of my mom’s pieces. I called my uncle and he’s going to get a group of volunteers on Saturday to help us throw out more stuff.
We still won’t get everything done, but it will be OK, I think. Sis asked if I could stay past Sunday, but I just can’t. DH has put off our clients for more than a week. They’ve been understanding, but I just have to get out structural drawings for them soon.
Thanks for listening. It’s tough. When I told my son’s psychiatrist about it, he responded that he understands. At this moment, he is in Massachusetts, clearing out 65 years of stuff from his parents’ house!! I called my husband and informed him that we will be clearing our house out as soon as I have a couple of weeks to recover. I am NOT putting my children through this nightmare.
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That’s funny about the papers and just reminded me of when my husband moved into my house in 2011 and maybe 2 or so years later I wanted him to start cleaning some boxes of crap he had sitting in his office in the basement. Well, talk about wow. He had copies of his parents tax returns from the 60s! I mean, really? Thank god I got him to get rid of those, but seriously, no idea why he would have kept those for 50 years.
@somemom Trying not to sweat any of that now, but eventually I will, and I will definitely be sweating, lol. My father has no plans to leave the house so there will be lots of time. But it will take forever to purge or just clean stuff out. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about my brothers running over there to “steal” anything they think they’re entitled to first.
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I am trustee for my aunt’s estate and responsible for the clean out and sale of the house. We spent a week with the help of my nephew and his family doing the initial clean out with one dumpster. The estate sale people gave us some guidance. Now they are doing the rest. They have a dumpster and are sorting as they set up. We don’t expect much but it will go to folks who care. So maybe approaching it that way will help.
When I applied for SS last year, one of the questions was ‘Did you ever work for a non SSA job’ and yes, I had worked for the State of Colorado so I answered Yes and then they sent me some forms and asked for copies of my tax returns for those years. When I called, the woman was very nice and she also said "And you also worked for the State of Maryland. I hadn’t even remembered that! She was able to waive the requirement because she could see that I’d worked for each state just a short time, wasn’t collecting a pension, and it wouldn’t change my claim.
But yes, they expected me to have tax returns from 40+ years ago. I have lived in many homes, and 5 states (one 3 times) since then. Even I don’t have that much crap!
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we moved my 90 yr old in-laws out to a nice facility this spring. They were very organized and tidy in their house, but had TONS of stuff after being there 52 years. We’ve been in ours for 20 yrs; so that persuaded us to get a dumpster in June. We went through so much stuff and filled it. We did have some dumpster divers and told them to go for it. i
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@MaineLonghorn I did everything you are doing but I did it over FIVE YEARS! I can’t imagine doing all of that on top of planning a funeral too. I can imagine you are exhausted. I kept downsizing my parents every 2 years. Selling their home of 50 years was the worse though, since they kept everything. I had a local guy who knew them well help - he took so much stuff, either to a dump or a thrift shop etc. But just sorting it all out was exhausting.
We had a joint funeral service for my parents this week. It was ultimately very healing and many of dad’s old colleagues came which was very nice. There is no such thing as ‘closure’ but it was another step to take in moving forward.
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When we cleared out a home of 50 years, same thing with the bills & tax returns back to the '60s. We took sensitive papers and had a big burn pile (winter.)
We had gotten a dumpster about 5 years prior to all this and done the first go through of the office and basement, so much work.
I totally understand why, so often, estate sales result in lower priced, quicker sales of real estate and why you end up dumping, or selling cheap, items that others might perceive as having value.
There becomes such an overriding yearning to just be done. Honestly, after 5 solid years of failing parents, I am still working through the piles in my own home. I just stashed stuff in my office that I could not deal with at the time. I am working my way through it now and so glad to do so.
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I purge a lot of stuff every summer when I’m not working and once my kids are all at school in August and I’m officially an empty nester I will do so again. One problem I have had with my daughter’s as far as purging their clothes is that they’re the same size now as they were when they were 13, so they don’t get rid of their clothes AND they have a lot of stuff with tags still. Finally, I told them I didn’t care just put the stuff tags and all in the charity pile. It’s time to get rid of it. So, little by little.
As for paper, I do purge our tax return information regularly since you only need to go back a certain number of years, but I still have to sort it out and I have to make sure there’s a trash pile and a shred pile due to sensitive info.
My mom also paid my son to come over and organize some of her papers and filing so that was actually good. Saved me some time since I usually have to do it and he was much quicker than I was. Plus she doesn’t pay me, so he was really motived to do it, much more so than me. So win win. 
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My mom was a hoarder and I’ve spent hundreds of hours getting her house to where I could see a tiny path on the floor, then a bigger one, and finally, most of the rooms to a state others would call very cluttered. My H and S made a trip out to that house recently to retrieve remaining personal files, and now I have a garage mountain of stuff from the house, including the taxes I hadn’t found previously, from the 60s!
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I’ve been going through our tax stuff (1982-present). H wants to keep the returns. I put the EOY mutual fund statements in our tax file for each year, so I am now pulling those for future use in calculating capital gains. We hardly ever sell, so we have many years to recapture.
My dad won’t let us touch much of anything. I have been slowly getting the pics and genealogically interesting stuff out of the house so I can scan and share with the sibs. He doesn’t even like when I take aluminum cans to the recycling center, because “we can get money for those” if he takes it to the metal processing folks 25 miles away.
Am trying not to do this to my kids!
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@MaineLonghorn Hugs to you!!
I know people probably thought I was a wee bit harsh with my parents when I posted a couple months ago. They decided to sell and move in with us. It was 6 weeks from that decision until they moved, 50 years worth to get through in less than 2 months was overwhelming for everyone. They ended up taking most of their stuff to their church for an upcoming rummage sale. We filled 4 closets with boxes here and rented a 10x10 storage unit for everything else. They’ve been here just over a month, and it’s going pretty well. I suggested they focus on the boxes here (all of the “memory” items); they’ve gotten through almost all of the boxes. We’ve had fun looking through all of the items, and they were able to let go of much of it. We put things that were important to them on display throughout the house and decorated their bedroom with a natural lake/beach vibe, very relaxing. I asked them to wait one month before they go through anything from the storage unit. It’s full of “stuff:” winter clothing, everyday dishes, Christmas decorations, small appliances they don’t use, etc. I think it helped to get some distance from the items.
Dad was in much worse physical condition than when he was here at Thanksgiving. They’re evaluating him for Parkinsons and Lewy Body; hopefully we’ll get some answers soon. The memory loss and falling are definitely getting worse, so I’m glad they’re here in our one story house. He fell yesterday and is now in the hospital for a collapsed lung. He’d forgotten to use his walker. Luckily it was here with us to respond and not in their 2 story house. They’re enjoying the views, especially their family room; it has a big window, and they can watch the deer in the backyard. They get excited every time the fawns come though. We’re adjusting to living under one roof. Mom and I are both type A, so there’s a learning curve. We haven’t lived under the same roof in well over 35 years. I’m so thankful we were able to do this; I don’t think dad has much time left, so we’re going to enjoy all the time we do have together. He keeps apo
logizing for being a “burden;” I keep telling him it’s our privilege.
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@bgbg4us there are people that drive around the next neighborhood and ours maybe twice a week, and anything they think is usable/sellable left at the curb, it is gone.
We have been in our home almost 30 years. A daily task in retirement is going through stuff. I have kept some things from my mom’s estate that is in the garage, and DDs have used some of her things. Mom had some decorative copper items, tea set and tray, etc.
We have sturdy toys that we pass down now to the grandkids. Eventually we will part with things either curb side or donating to church thrift shop.
DH and I are going to help BIL with finishing up their parents’ home to sell. Some use this summer yet (it is in a vacation spot on the Mississippi River). So few houses available in the price point that the house will sell pretty quickly even in the fall.
I keep all of my EOY statements as well for my IRA’s (since 1990!), and every other account, but I also know almost all of those are available online as well as the fact that many of them I don’t need to keep because the cost-basis is all already done for me automatically if and when I sell, so if you are not like me and really don’t want to keep all of that, you can probably contact the mutual fund company and speak to a representative to see if they keep all of that information or not. When I first opened my accounts when I was in college, I was the one who had to calculate the cost basis for anything I sold. These kids have it so lucky nowadays that they don’t have to do that. Of couse, I’m sure the IRS had many people under-reporting taxes/capital gains because of that and not having any clue how to figure out cost basis, so now that it’s computerized it’s automatic. But just something to think of and know that you may not have to figure it out.
That cracked me up about the recycling. My mom is so cheap about some stuff, but I don’t think she realizes (or may just not care) that sometimes cutting the coupon and running to 3 grocery stores, costs her more in gas than saving the $1 by going to the 3 stores. Lol
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IRAs are taxed as regular income, so no worries there. We have a couple mutual funds (non-retirement) where we do automatic monthly contributions, and those will be a pain to do cap gains.
There are now a couple ways to calculate the gains, and we can use average price instead of FIFO. Vanguard provides that number online, but if you’ve graduated to Admiral shares, I’m not sure how that works. Need to call them. They also only have ten years of data online. We started some of our Vanguard accounts when I was an employee there in 1985!
We were with the jewelry appraiser this morning when my husband texted me that there was a huge crisis at home. Can you just shoot me now? was my first thought.
Our daughter had planned for months to go to our cabin with friends from Pennsylvania. Lots of prepping her was required since the cabin is off the grid. On their drive up, they ran into Walmart and left our dog in the car. It was not hot. When they came back, the dog was not breathing. D freaked out, of course. DH found a nearby vet the girls took the dog to, but it was too late. The vet said it was not heat exhaustion. They said the girls had done everything right.
DH drove an hour north to retrieve the body and the girls canceled their trip. The dog was 9 and had no issues we knew of.
My daughter took this photo the day my mom died. It’s the dog on the left that died. His “brother” will be very lonely. Ugh, this is almost too much to take but what choice do you have? For some reason I’m more teary now than I have been the last two weeks.
This is so sad and just amplifies grief already existing. So sorry.
I wonder if the vet was being kind.