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When you're in your 60s or 70s years from now. What you gonna do with your junk?

antichristhill said:
A big problem is hubby wants to keep paper records of all bills for the past 5 years. I think this is ridiculous. We have a big, wooden file cabinet for all this paper. Other than tax records, I don't see a need to keep all this crap. If we had a fireplace, I'd probably burn most of it.
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:lol:

I sometimes wonder if men have more of a genetic disposition to this than women, as I know both my dad and I tend to be selectively creative hoarders (it sounds somewhat better that way... :whistle:). I've always been slower to get rid of older stuff than perhaps I should be, but it's partly due to being an epic nerd. :angel:

I'm in the middle of doing some reorganizing now, and I have an oddball question someone might be able to give advice on. My bed's headboard is the type with shelves for smaller books, and it's been very handy for years. I've never really experimented with putting heavier books on the flat top shelf, and I don't know if it has a max weight limit that I should be concerned about. I Googled the model (or one extremely similar to it) on several online shops but none of them listed such a specification.

Does this mean I could theoretically put a lot of stuff up there, or is less better? I'm thinking about putting a new bookshelf in my closet soon, potentially, so it might render the question moot.
 
Being able to show a record of one's payment history can show up as a need in many legal situations, like bankruptcy, divorce and the like.
 
I am in my 60s and I do not have any problem throwing out stuff I have bought myself but I have trouble throwing away things that I received as presents from other people. This is not because I am sentimental about those things (except for a few exceptions) but because I would either feel guilty or be worried about affording people if they were to realise I had gotten rid of something they bought me.

Nowadays I ask for more practical presents, things that I can use up or have a limited lifespan.
 
We are trying to downside, but we had to downside my mom by a lot when she went into a care place. So now we have a lot of her things, that I don't want to get rid of yet, mainly because of memories the baking/cooking things. Have a lot right now. When it does not hurt as much I will get rid of more. But for now, we have a lot. Since we do a lot of Christmas baking/cooking anyway all the things will get used, like 3 rolling pins, two mixers, and many cookie sheets and tons of cookie cutters, I mean tons!! And tons of the little candies that go on the cookies. :)
 
I'm 53 and really want to downsize some as our poor little 1200sf house is bursting at the seams! My hubby is a bit of a "material girl" and he and my parents still like buying me Stuff for Christmas and my birthday. But I really want more experiences than things now. We cleaned out a ton of old clothes 2 years ago and I found it freeing.

We have talked some about this. We don't have kids and the only "next generation" is his sister's grown son, who lives in a tiny house (by choice not necessity) with his wife. My mother-in-law's house is full of beautiful things, but there's almost nothing there we want to ship cross-country. My parents house is full of mostly crap and the only things I want are family photos and a few pieces of art. Talking about the hell we'll eventually deal with cleaning out their houses has made me decide that if my husband dies before I do, there will be some Serious Purging. :lol:

In that scenario, I'll give stuff to our friends and their kids and whatever they don't want will be sold and the money donated to charities. Two of the kids already want my LPs. :)

Non Sync said:
I've got family photos and documents going back five or more generations.
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I wish I had more family photos, especially of my grandparents as I was lucky enough for them to be around until I grew up. I have some antique teacups & saucers from my maternal grandmother that were her mom's and may be from Italy.

antichristhill said:
I also have some stuffed animals (yes, at my age) that were gifts from people or collectibles from trips (beefeater Bear from Harrod's, Star Trek bear from Vegas); I find myself emotionally attached to them as mementos.
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Me too. I've been gradually paring them down to the ones I *really* love.

Unicron said:
I sometimes wonder if men have more of a genetic disposition to this than women, as I know both my dad and I tend to be selectively creative hoarders (it sounds somewhat better that way... :whistle:). I've always been slower to get rid of older stuff than perhaps I should be, but it's partly due to being an epic nerd. :angel:
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I was about to say Yes, then thought of my mother-in-law. My FiL died 15 years ago and she still hasn't gotten rid of his clothes! :eek:
 
It's not the books, CDs, DVD, etc that I care about - those can be donated to charity or Half Price; it's the scrapbooks and photo albums I'm worried about.
I doubt my niece or nephew would want them but some of those photos are almost 100 years old and picture their great-great grandparents as kids. That kind of history should be preserved.
 
My plan is to digitize my old family photos along with metadata that I can gleam about them.

Biggest headache is finding a scanner to do the job properly. The scanners I have just don't handle photos very well. Thinking I'm going to have to invest in a proper document (photo) scanner.
 
I digitized all my old printed photos long ago, then got rid of the lot. My photo library exists only on the computer (and iPad).

As for books: My ultimate goal is to get e-versions of all of them as well. Ideally I will have no printed books at all by the time I get through with them.

And music? Got rid of all my CDs long ago. In fact, not only do I not have any CDs, I have no CD player!

Unfortunately I can't do the same with my DVDs/BluRays. Some of them will never be available on iTunes or streaming. But I can dream...
 
Dr. San Guinary said:
As for books: My ultimate goal is to get e-versions of all of them as well. Ideally I will have no printed books at all by the time I get through with them.

And music? Got rid of all my CDs long ago. In fact, not only do I not have any CDs, I have no CD player!

Unfortunately I can't do the same with my DVDs/BluRays. Some of them will never be available on iTunes or streaming. But I can dream...
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I need to get used to reading on a screen. I have WAY too many physical books.

I still have CDs because I have a player in my car. But I can work around that now with Bluetooth, so time to go through those as well.

Thanks for making me think about ways to cut down!

My friend Sam put all his DVDs and Blu-Rays on an external hard drive. I'll find out how and let you know.
 
The way this thread was titled I was tempted to say that I'll hopefully still be using it; but I digress.

While unfortunately the lower limit of that age ratio won't be that many years off, I trust I'll still own most of my collections of stuff since I'm reluctant to thrown away anything that might net me some change; yet I'm equally reluctant to sell anything even if I needed the change.

Unless I have to downsize my living space or something, most of my haul will be with me till I kick off and then likely my kids will inherit it where they will surely view it as junk and throw most of it away regardless of how much it's worth. Assuming they don't throw me in an old-folk's home first. I have tried to inventory and price-estimate some of it over the years as I can at least trust the wife to pawn some of it off should my life functions cease first.

Of course realistically I will likely try to sell some it, mostly the books and video games on ebay before then should we ever decide to move; but some of it will no doubt end up in a landfill since I can't imagine anyone would pay a even a dime for some of the most obsolete things like say the entire collection of Encyclopedia Britannica circa 1983 or the complete Sims 1.
 
Wednesday Addams said:
I need to get used to reading on a screen. I have WAY too many physical books.
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I once thinned my book collection then regretted it.

I still have CDs because I have a player in my car. But I can work around that now with Bluetooth, so time to go through those as well.
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I transferred a 7X5 foot bookcase of VHS tapes to fit in DVD case-books that all fit on less than one shelf of the original bookcase and I don't regret that one dammed bit.

When I am gone surviving family members are welcome to take whatever remaining treasures of mine they want. First come first served.
 
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