Aging Parents with Lots of Stuff, and Children Who Don’t Want It
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Before anyone accuses me of slagging on Millennials I don't mean it that way. I mean since we have a manufacturing base that is in my opinion far more aggressive about planned obsolescence than 50+ years ago and several generations used to cheap, low quality goods manufactured overseas why would they want or need anything else? We value the novel and inexpensive over the durable.
[1] when I was a kid we'd go shopping in Italy or Austria because so many things/brands (clothes, toys, food, everything really) simply weren't available at home or were significantly cheaper across the border. We would also repair eeeverything for as long as we could and take extra care to treat things nicely so they wouldn't wear or break.
On the other hand, my parents put away all leftovers and eventually also eat it. It is pretty similar with many other every-day things.
I just lived with my parents for a few weeks after living abroad for 5 years and noticed how they have kept so many things that I have seen when I was a child. I am not even talking about 1 or 2 things, but many (or most) things.
Sure, but it's time I enjoy spending. Some people play computer games or watch TV for an hour after work to relax, I cook dinner.
If you enjoy handling food then learning about handling left overs is a big part of that. If you go back and look at weekly food schedules from the past you will see patterns, were people cook one type of food day one to have base or ingredient for the next few days of cooking.
Anything spicy improves with a little time, and I've found the same to be true with tomato sauce and cooked cheese - so curries, chillies, lasagna etc etc all improve. soup is often better the next day too.
At the end of the gathering, everyone "fights" (politely, but very insistently) not to be the ones to take it home, 'cause they'll be forced to not let it go to waste.
I usually throw these because I don't mind binning unhealthy food I can easily replace rather than further harming my health. The latter is a far more useful and expensive acquisition than a quarter-pound of $25/lb cheese.
A staggering 50% of the food produced is wasted somewhere along the line. If you look at moving towards a sustainable society, food waste is actually a huge sub-problem of that, which has to be solved at some point, instead of cutting down ever more rainforest every year etc. etc. to sustain the current wasteful lifestyle.
Our parent generation didn't waste food, and the next generation will probably not be able to either (simply from rising prices).
In a world that sustainably generated enough food for everyone, it would not be wrong to throw away food. It might be that we can get there. Food production today is not sustainable, so at least let's not waste it.
If you press me, yes, I'm sure there's an element of "it's in bad taste" there too that made me react so strongly (it's similar to how rich kids pour out good champagne on the floor to display their wealth). That's closer to your suggestion.
It obviously depends on the circumstances. I am more talking about the pattern of wasting, than accidentally wasting food now and then.
I find it difficult to appreciate this viewpoint. There's a certain elegance in using your resources efficiently and not wasting things. I find it significantly more satisfying to find a use for things rather than discarding them. This also applies to possessions, and more abstract things like writing code and not wasting lines of code or memory, or writing and not wasting words.
I prefer to buy fresh food because I believe it's healthier and I have the money to do so.
My mother wasn't quite as bad, but she used to have her own mountain of decorations until I got her to agree to let me get rid of about 75% of it. It's still taking up about 12 or so large plastic storage bins, but it's way less than it had been.
Nowadays we do want durable items even if we are more at leisure to replace them. I am very happy that most of the easy to fail components in my MacBook Air are replaceable (I/O board, fan, battery, SSD) and would love it if other parts were too. Working on computers for as long as I have I know people like to get what they can out of a computer; the number who just go buy a new one when it dies isnt as high as you'd think. Same with other items like phones, cars, etc.
It's small enough that it isn't an issue, and it's nice to look at the refrigerator and remember all the places we've been.
Of course, now I realise jus how close the Second World War was. If the war had finished in 1997, with rationing continuing until 2007, I too might be loathe to throw things away.
But I draw a line at normal paper :)
She also used to wash ziploc bags for reuse.
There, it is just not so visible because disk space is ever increasing as well as getting cheaper.
In the days of Napster, people collected gigabytes of music just to have it - at some point this was more minutes than they could ever listen to in a life span.
Few people actually care to collect that stuff in order to make it accessible to more people. For example, the people at archive.org, as well as many libraries, are doing a great job.
But the majority of collectors collect only for their own, usually with an unwieldy directory structures and meaningless file names (track1, track2, ...). They won't ever find anything they search for. It's often faster to search & buy those via Internet. Same with movies.
It is even worse with personal photographs and videos. The same way some people have loads of paper photographs around, other have disks full of digital photographs. 200+ photographs per day of vacation are not uncommon. Who will ever look at those?
Reducing those to the "best" 10-20 items already feels like an imposition to most. Reducing those further to 1 photograph to summarize the vacation is considered extremist by most. And even then, they will just mark the best photos, but won't delete anything except for the most blurred garbage photos.
Even more strangely, some people do feel the urge to clean up their mess, but as with physical items, deleting loads of digital items takes a lot of time for them. This is the next round of absurdity: They would rather spend a weekend (or full week) on finishing their photo/video archive than to go out for another trip.
Maybe we need a "digital item" version of Paul Graham's classic "stuff" article? http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html
I have thousands of albums in my google play account, go through spurts of adding more, and constantly listen to the whole collection on shuffle. It shows how many times each song has been listened to, it's rare for me to ever see a song without at least one play.
(And playing it on a TV screen in the background while doing computer/tablet/smartphone stuff is not what I would consider "healthy" consumption, because then it is more a source of noise than anything else. You can't really enjoy it and miss most of the movie.)
I think this trend will actually change with us, my parents have loads of stuff that I'd like, and I've build half my furniture myself, and regularly fix things rather than buy new ones, despite not being handy at all, with YouTube teaching me how. The other half is things I've inherited from my grand parents. Not because I liked it, at first anyway, but because I don't really want to own something with a CO2 footprint leading all over the world or things were build by slave labour.
Besides, the quality and detail in old hand made stuff is so much better than the shitty gluewood you buy in ikea.
Of course that's just my view on things based on myself and my circle of friends, who are strikingly similar to me when I think about it, and we could simply be odd millennials.
As far as your concepts go on C02 and inherited guilt..grow up.
Are you suggesting only children and youth care about the environment? If true, that's terrible!
(Edit: A downvote doesn't explain what I've misunderstood.)
But note that in particular is a cultural thing where people are cooking at home less, smaller families, less formality, etc.
On the flip side, it's kind of interesting that products made in china are now synonymous with "cheap crap", while at one time we held finely made, fragile cups from China on display in our homes.
Low-end auction houses are also great places to pick up whole sets on the cheap. At the very worst these are a lot more interesting than plain white junk.
We only took the silver cutlery and use it as every day.
There is just no need and space to waste for stuff that is kept out of usage, especially with something like silver cutlery which doesn't degrade by usage and even stays shiny if you use it constantly.
To me it seems more wasteful to have junk taking up room in your living space. Living with less is desirable.
A few months ago our 11 year old Nilfisk vacuum cleaner broke down. Back then it was about A$450. Instead of buying an equivalent new one for ~A$700 or so, I repaired it for ~A$250. I figured it'd still be better than buying a new $200-300 vacuum every 2-3 years.
Sometimes buying expensive stuff is the cheaper option.
I have Oneida flatware, solid wood furniture, and a Blendtec blender because these things will last. I don't want to buy flatware ever again, and, because I bought quality the first time, I won't have to, and I wish there were more things I could buy for life.
At the point that the fountain of artificially cheap consumer goods from China dries up, they are in for a rude awakening. Suddenly quality items made to last by local craftsmen won't seem so old-fashioned!
Unfortunately this is a problem that perpetuates itself. As more people buy the throwaway goods, repairmen see business dry up, and become rarer. The ones left are expensive.
Quality items made to last by local craftsmen sound great! As long as there's any craftsmen left by the time people turn to them for business.
Fashion-driven, low-quality overpriced US cars left the market wide open for cheap, high-quality foreign imports in the 1970s - and forced US manufacturers to significantly increase quality. That's pretty much the opposite of the story you're telling.
Instead I see a society which had a post-WWII manufacturing abundance just binging on material goods to the point that they were buried in stuff in a way that has never really happened before and people don't have good mechanisms for dealing with. At least not until they realise that "stuff" is the problem.
Both my parents and grandparents would claim that they bought stuff that lasted but they just bought the trendy items of the 1950s and 1980s respectively, and 90% of it went in the trash years ago.
That's what we're sold, it doesn't mean it's what we value. If there was an easy way to tell durability at time of purchase, I think the trend would shift very quickly.
It's very easy for the floor space consumed by an object to exceed its value. Especially if you're renting, in which case you could probably assign an actual monthly monetary cost to keeping every single object in your flat.
Absolutely, it can be a real burden. Especially if it requires any kind of cleaning or maintenance.
Conversely the time cost of acquiring stuff has collapsed. You don't have to buy or hang onto stuff in advance of possibly requiring it if you can have it same-day shipped from Amazon.
Now half the stuff you buy is toxic waste when you go to get rid of it. You have to make special trips to the place that collects paint, for instance, which isn't the same place as electronics. There are all sorts of projects my parents would have done without a second thought that I'll pass on because I don't want to spend all that time getting rid of stuff.
Years ago I committed to reducing the clutter in my life. It was such a pivotal moment. It was no longer necessary to move things from here to there in order to put up Christmas decorations, etc. I do think that overall we see value in things that truly have no monetary value all while keeping this item of "value" in the attic or in a box without seeing the light of day for decades. Things take a great deal of time and energy and for me personally, there seemed to be a connection between a disorganized living space with a disorganized mind/life. I cleaned all of that up and found I had better health, had time for the things I enjoy most in life, and was far happier than I would have imagined by having "less."
I agree and think this concept is ancient, evidenced by the concept of spring cleaning and the idea of-not necessarily the quote - "cleanliness is next to godliness".
Of course, my real point is that both connections are tenuous and reductive. It's a fun bit of pop psychology, but I doubt either is actually true in general.
Even if you keep around some stuff that are not vital but ‘nice to have’, maintaining a restricted set of things that are enough to live your life if the whole family had to move without notice helps for peace of mind.
Of course, YMMV, but in my experience life is generally less simple once you share it with other people.
If you can tell your potential employer that you can fly to country X any time as you just put all your things into a single suitcase, it makes it much easier to relocate for jobs around the world.
Once you settle down and have family / children, obviously you will probably stop moving around and probably stay in a single place for a long time and only move once in a decade or so.
My tool cabinet has about $4000 in tools at this point, many motorcycle-specific ordered from abroad and not easily borrowed or bought at short notice.
Board games my wife and I enjoy sharing; my archery equipment; snorkel and dry bag; guitar, etc. As it is, it's a good thing my dad was a tool junky (and master craftsman), so he didn't mind my storing all my woodworking and hobby electronics gear in his garage.
Yeah, if my only occupations were programming and media consumption, it would be a lot easier to live out of a suitcase, but physical activities are kind of amazing.
Perhaps we are dinosaurs who cannot understand this new world where everything is virtual.
a tv for gaming/television is also out of the question, they'd never let you take that along in your suitcase.
doesn't sound like a life i'd like to be honest.
in all seriousness, its perfectly fine to have stuff. just ask yourself before you buy it, wherever you'll still be using it in ~12 month or so. otherwise, its probably just a fad you shouldn't spent money on.
And why won't they let you take you kitchen knives on a plane? I fly with kitchen knives all the time.
I have always rented serviced apartments so the bed sheets, cutlery and other equipment is always in the flat I rent so I use that.
My sports clothes and other hobby equipment also fits into the single suitcase. I keep my clothes collection quite small, if I am not wearing something for a year I will throw it away or give to charity.
You'd be surprised how useful it is to have all your stuff fit into single big suitcase if you love traveling around the world. It's very easy for me to travel or to move around the world for work.
I had to help my sister move apartment recently and I was shocked by the massive amount of stuff she owns. So many suitcases and bags, we had to rent a big van to move it all. I don't get it.
I suppose one could rent those sort of items as needed but for most of the nuclear family population it is financially more logical to own them.
Depends on how often you move. Are you moving once every other year or once every other decade?
Most serviced apartments have all of those (well except lawn mower obviously). So just rent serviced apartment wherever you are living/working at the moment and you can easily have all your stuff fit into one suitcase.
This will help you move after better jobs easily and whatever premium you pay you will make back by having better jobs and higher salary imho.
Job mobility is very undervalued these days. I think it's a very strong job negotiation tactic to be so mobile as you have many options to choose from for work as it's so easy for you to move.
Most people don't move all that often after their 20s or early 30s (even without a family).
But I am single and right now exactly in the 20s/early 30s part of my life so I find the mobility I gain from owning very minimal inventory of things great.
I have lived and worked in 4 different countries since 2010 and it was great to get to work in different places/cultures and experience life abroad. Obviously eventually I will settle down somewhere.
Having nothing to move could actually indicate to an employer that you are not planning to stay very long.
I recommend giving everything to a charitable organisation. They'll know what to do with all the stuff. Where I live, they'd come with their truck and take everything.
I don't quite see how an item lying in an attic would make you unhappy.
An item lying in an attic saps energy from you, often when you least expect it. So yeah, it can make you unhappy.
I make more money than my parents ever did, and I didn't move into a ridiculously overpriced city, but there's no way I'll ever own a house as large as they did.
I remember growing up in a variety of houses that had, get this, a dining room that wasn't just a table in the kitchen, a living room, and another room that was just kept neat and tidy for visitors. A whole room in the house on the ground floor, used only a couple of times a month. It was a big room too. Enough space for a half-dozen people to sit down. The amount of space my parents had in their houses is just amazing in retrospect. Of course, in a number of countries that's still pretty standard. Like having a place to put a washing machine and associated; us suckers in the UK think it's normal to put that lot in the kitchen, jammed in with the tiny cupboards. I mean, my parents had a dryer AND a chest freezer just kept out in another room. Well, my future sure looks a lot more depressing now that I've thought about this :)
I share it only with my wife and now it's in a big city with facilities (Back then they were rural) and it's the smallest house of all my friends.
Did your parents live in a city the size you currently live in, the same distance out from the entertainment district? Same hospital access, same standard of schooling etc?
I have no idea of your case but people often forget how little their parents/grandparents really had compared to what we've come to expect.
Space was cheap when my parents were buying; I don't think there's any doubt abut that.
I came to a realisation that much of what our society is about is focused on getting people to buy more stuff.
I don't want it. Minimise the stuff.
edit: I'm still surrounded by piles of it. Getting rid of stuff is hard. There's a sense of "value" attached to stuff even if you'd never miss it if you never saw it again.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80114460
Got rid of 20% of my stuff this year and hope to get rid of 20% more.
Then I realized that the two who are interviewed for it were in fact the ones making the documentary, so it has a whole infomercial feel to it.
Totally. I felt the same way and couldn't watch it past the 15 minute mark. Those 2 guys were mostly talking about their own lives and marketing their minimalist site (not I won't link to it here :)
EDIT: turns out Mel Brooks has already spoken on the matter: https://youtu.be/Ah-WdAwVg9c?t=59
I'm hoping that this feeling will enable me to either retire a little earlier - as I've saved well, or set up my own business one day - but then again, the risk of my own business! Argh ;)
This is definitely untrue. That may be the case for _some_ people, but to reduce that feeling to only growing up with plenty is overly reductive. I didn't grow up in a family with much money, and I make a very comfortable living now. My early 20s definitely had a bit of a hoarder tendency from my childhood, but much more importantly, I never got in the habit of _acquiring_ things the way my friends seem to have. I've managed to get over the instinct to keep things unnecessarily and I'm a more comfortable selling/donating (or rarely, disposing of) things I don't need anymore.
It's far easier to believe that there's a generational cultural difference regarding attitudes towards decluttering than it is to make the facile assumption that wanting less stuff is a consequence of living in abundance.
Both times were escapes to something better and the first time I had stressed greatly about "what am I going to do with all this stuff?". Actually getting rid of the stuff was a real relief, and now I wonder why I kept most of it and moved it so many times.
That's also because most of us live in cities nowadays and you can access to "stuff" you need outside of your place pretty much anytime, anywhere, therefore there is no need for you to build inventory anymore at home. But if you were living far from everything, you'd definitely want to possess things.
I am getting a bit sick and tired, however, of this refrain that everyone needs to be a minimalist. I like my stuff. I try not to be a hoarder, but I like buying things and having things, and I don't feel guilty about it.
My personal tastes are for practical things, I don't have anything decorative that I care about, but I do love the 'toys' that I have. I like my metal working tools, my woodworking tools, my 3D printer, and all of the stuff in my workshop because I like making things. I enjoy buying things to make my hobbies more enjoyable.
I like my RC helicopters, even though I rarely get to fly them at the moment. I like my old video game consoles, so I can satisfy my nostalgia when I want to. I might not play them more than once every few years, but I am glad I have them. I look forward to sharing them with my daughter some day when she is old enough to play.
I like having all my old legos and erector sets, and look forward to sharing them with my daughter as well.
I don't feel 'cluttered' by my stuff. I have a good organization system, and they don't interfere with my day to day life. What is the harm in having a box of legos in the closet?
Everyone is entitled to live how they want, but don't act like I am a bad person because I like having stuff.
I spoke only for myself :-)
All the other makers here will understand that sentiment. Tools take up space, but having the ability to actually make and repair things without having to rely on some shared makerspace or workshop is mentally so fulfilling, not to mention economical if you consider not having to rely on contractors and handymen so much for the basic upkeep of your house.
This year I used my amateur woodworking skills to build a wall-to-wall (390cm/12'9"), floor-to-ceiling (270cm/8'10") bookcase in our home. It is filled with books my girlfriend and I have read, still have to read, want to reread at some point, or want to share with others. Collecting and reading books is our material vice. Some people love it, most people wonder why we don't just buy two e-readers (philistines…).
With a few exceptions, that's why most people have jobs!
A lot of the place in the world for family heirlooms went the way of the family homestead.
So I probably don't want my parents' curtains, but I will see about their table, dresser, old household tools like scissors, etc. A recent visit to a restaurant decorated in a style called rustic chic has me rethinking even my narrow style requirements. I used to be zen minimalist. Like my silverware has no engraving, it's flat and plain. But the restaurant had these old plates, forks, and knives. None of them matched but there was an overall similar style, and they were probably expensive when they were new. So I might consider my parents' old china or crystal, but instead of locking it away I would try to use it every day.
And books and photographs can be shelved or wall-mounted, taking up negligible volume --- up to a point, but still I would have hard time parting with even a single old photo.
Couldn't anyone be a minimalist by that logic? I suppose a vague term like that can quickly become meaningless.
I absolutely hate how older folks seem to covet things they're sentimental about. Lock it in a box or display case and never make it a part of your life. Fuck that - when I inherit the things that remind me of my mom or dad I'm going to use them until they become useless. I will love them for their use, and not treat them like something to be kept on a shelf or in a locked safe.
I'm going to keep my dining room table laid out nice like it's Christmas Dinner everyday and I will not cry over the stains that accumulate.
The sad irony is when I inherit my parents' nice things I will then be putting my parents in a box.
I would love to use a Kindle for all my reading, but physical books are still more pleasurable to read. It makes it hard for me to part with some books for now. Though some books are only worth reading once and I am happy to give them away after finishing them.
Just for fun, George Carlin (RIP) on 'stuff': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLoge6QzcGY
(You probably won't want most of them then, but some at least.)
I hounded an old roommate of mine that moved out with my scissors. Inherited from my father they were rough looking and probably better described as shears but they kept an edge like nothing else and cut without effort.
I like to believe I hounded my old roomie until he gave them back because I couldnt readily replace them even at the hardware store. But mostly I think it is because he took my fathers scissors and that peeved me good. :)
When I was younger I had a moment where I was sick of my computer cable hoarding. Every device gives you cables and you never know which one of your ball of 200 you're going to need. I eventually concluded that re-buying things is cheaper than the cost to my happiness by having to store these things forever, not knowing which you'll actually need.
I don't blame them, housing a car seems rather wasteful, doubly so if there's a perfectly usable driveway. It'll be interesting to see how Bay Area municipalities update their building codes if cars-as-a-service ever takes hold.
Not if you live anywhere with a significant amount of snow in the winter... Especially if the local municipal authorities combat that snow on the roads with absurd amounts of salt.
I should say, I have a car, but we use it for leaving town, not <1 mile trips within it.
I said nothing about whether a car is a choice or a necessity. That would depend on where you live also, but for different reasons.
I only said that it is not wasteful to house a car under the following circumstances: in the winter, where there is a lot of snow, and where the local municipality dumps salt on the roads throughout the winter (which gathers on surface of the car, including exposed components beneath).
believe me, especially once you have kids, you'll have stuff coming out your ears.
... By having kids. At least, that's what I've observed. You may be storing stuff for them, even after they leave the house. Also, you have everything that they've outgrown, but that you haven't had time to get rid of. A lot of the stuff that I see in garages appears to "belong" to someone else, including possibly the deceased.
But I think there are a couple of other factors that turn us into pack rats. One is that stuff is sold at discount in quantity, so we accumulate extra stuff. Shopping in quantity also limits the hassle of driving to the store and dealing with the crowds.
The other thing is that we're influenced by the fear of being spontaneously dumped into poverty, something that the hip young "minimalists" probably don't have to worry about. So we hoard material stuff as a hedge.
Granted, these things don't necessarily make sense. The money we could save by owning a smaller house (if zoning laws allowed such a thing to exist) would probably be worth more than the stuff that we hoard in our bigger house.
Items such as:
Lawnmower
tent
hedge trimmer
toolbox
bicycles for every family member
sleeping bags for every family member
The above is enough to half fill a garage if you want easy access to these items (i.e not stacked on one another)
I occasionally get annoyed by my Big Box Of Cables: I used to work in digital filmmaking, so I've really got a LOT of cables in there. And it's a pain to have to wrap 'em, store 'em, and periodically cull 'em (I think I can safely chuck out the SVideo cables now...).
But whenever I need a cable whilst working, I can check that box, and after a bit of digging, it's usually in there. 5 minutes lost max.
If I don't have a cable in that box, I either have to go out to buy one - total time loss between 25 min and 2 hours depending on whether I need to journey to Maplin or can just get it locally - or buy from Amazon, which could be a day lost if the task I need the cable for is on the critical path for whatever I'm doing.
Local storage is sometimes more efficient.
(Having said that, I did make one change a while back. Unless I'm really, really sure I will need more, I only ever keep 2 of a specific cable type. At one point the spare cat-5 was threatening to take over the house.)
If you have them in freezer bags or whatever, on the other hand, you can just chuck them all in a box or bag, put it somewhere you can't see it, and you're done. When you need a cable or adapter or widget that you're certain you've got, rummage through your collection until you find it.
You're also less likely to lose any little caps or adapters that these things sometimes come with.
(I just wrap 'em neatly currently. The film industry is good at techniques for cable control. But I've not heard the "freezer bag" idea before! )
By having a house, car(s) and kids. And seasons.
My garage is full of: five bikes, eight studded winter tyres (or 8 summer tyres, depending on which part of the year it is), ten large moving boxes full of clothing for other seasons, christmas decorations, tools of every description, cans of paint and other chemicals, large bags with ice hockey equipment, skis, ...
Just the car wheels and the bikes alone occupy most of the space a car would.
Same with old 250 gb external USB drives - they're just too small these days to hold anything useful for me, so got rid of them.
Of both of them, the things anybody really kept fell into two camps: practical, furniture, bedding, that sort of thing and small tokens of general family interest like my great-grandfather's WW2 dog tags, or photos of distant relatives for the genealogy enthusiasts. There was some grumbling over having to take some of the furniture.
In a few years, I'll be dealing with this same situation again with my grandmother, my father and then my mother (if they go in that expected order). I'm trying to convince them to have a plan for what to do with all their collected stuff, because I don't really want any of it outside of again, a few general family items -- I definitely do not want their furniture.
Tons of stuff for cheap since everyone is trying to get rid of things, but nobody is buying.
My best deal was when I got them to help me carry over a coffee table, mini-dining table and 5 chairs. Of course I paid full price.
P.S. if you mail a lot of things, you can usually buy old stamps on Ebay for ~65 cents on the dollar from collectors whose stamps aren't valuable.
Rich people have money; poor people have stuff.
Elsewhere in my life, I don't have a lot - I think I only have two drawers full of clothing and perhaps a few books and stuff. I have considered downsizing, but pretty much cannot bring myself to give away so much stuff that brings me joy.
My wife is the same - she is an artist, and has two separate areas of the house set up as her studio. Each is filled with canvases, paint tubes, easels, wooden boards, and a myriad of other stuff she uses for her mixed media work. Without any of that, I don't think she would feel as fulfilled and engaged with life, nor have a conduit to de-stress from every day responsibilities.
Then, as programming became more and more of a 'day job' and not a fun side project, I found myself getting rid of the clutter of obsolete equipment around the place. 35 years later, I am happy with just a basic iMac as my main development machine, and a Lenovo laptop as my Windows/backup development machine. That is it. No more multi screen setups or fancy keyboards & mice even - just stock standard stuff to get the job done so I can spend energy on my passion projects.
Tools (lots of them), art, and furniture (we buy mid-century designer).
Everything else is trash. Why do we keep trash? Why do we buy trash?
Because the sad simple truth is that buying trash, using it until it breaks and then buying a new one often makes more financial sense than trying to buy quality.
12 years ago I bought the best quality TV I could afford. And while it still works perfectly, it's objectively worse in just about every way then a current TV costing 20% of what I paid for it. However since it was so expensive and still works I cannot really bring myself to replace it.
For many of those, I would build up and hold on to things because I thought they'd be valuable some day, or maybe future kids/grandkids would benefit from having something handed down. I also like history and really enjoy seeing antique craftsmanship.
Even though stuff like the Beanie Baby craze crested and fell pretty quickly, you still have shows like Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars that show all of those hidden gems. Or, in the coin world, you'd read about some trove of uncirculated buffalo nickels being discovered in an attic somewhere. Or, if you ever go to the Andy Warhol museum, there's a whole section dedicated to his "time capsules" of collected mundane stuff, much of which ends up providing some kind of historical value.
When I was a kid, no one told me about putting money into mutual funds and compound interest (or if they did I didn't listen), let alone the principle of survivorship bias. Besides, that stuff is boring compared to the Star Wars Episode I Pez collection and commemorative Pepsi cans[1]. If I had held on to my 20 our of 24 opened cans, maybe I could have sold them for 30 bucks or so!
I've been having a lot of reality checks as I get older. I kept my Star Wars prequel novelizations in good condition, but I can also get a book in similar condition on Amazon for 5 or 6 bucks. And I never read my parents' favorite fiction books, so there's a solid chance that my kids won't care either. Maybe in the midst of getting rid of these things I'll get rid of the one thing that could be worth thousands in a generation or two, but that's like playing the lottery, isn't it?
[1]: www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Episode-1-Exclusive-Pepsi-Display-Collectors-Item-Set-of-24-Cans-/253064909025
If I have items which only do one job and another which covers several, the single-use items go. Eg: I only have gas for heat, so a kettle would be heated on the flame. But it can only heat water, whereas I have a saucepan which can heat water and also heat other things. So I don't need a kettle which I'd have to find space for when other things are on the hob (I really am in a small space). The same thinking has been applied to tools.
I paint a lot so throwing away paint and brushes would be wasteful - I'd end up buying more. But I also had lots of gathered/found materials which I use for recycled art - they got chucked (sad but they were rubbish when I collected them). When I want to do some recycled art I'll use what I can find at the time. The paint/brushes etc. that I kept live in a simple wooden chest. Its flat top is extra worktop space when I need it (eg. putting down a hot pan). Put a cushion on it and it's a seat. The table I paint at folds down to become my bed at night. I can't paint quite as large as I used to - fine, this will be a different phase in my life as an artist. I can't store loads of canvases but it's ok I just have to act more responsively. A good artist can make art with pen and paper, I learned to embrace restrictions as part of the creative process years ago.
I'm a long way from 'all fits in a suitcase' but I've got down to maybe 10-20% of what I owned a year ago. I feel lighter, more efficient (stuff's easier to find!), more free to relocate to different kinds of living spaces. I've shed a lot of nostalgic attachment to objects which I thought were important but do not miss.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. I refactored :)
2. Technology stuff I had is far smaller (think transition from CRT to LCD screens).
3. I cant afford anywhere NEAR the size property that my parents would have so the number of actual furniture items I can own is already significantly reduced, and this in turn includes available storage space.
So, they don't want to own big homes, or at all. Smaller homes (probably condos) means less stuff.
Well, and my dad's old circular slide rule from his college days.
Are you going to do that when your house is on fire?
My two observations:
1. The economic price for someone to take a month off to move and rearrange a sizeable household is nontrivial.
2. That someone would desire to spent the rest of their days in a big house full of stuff is foreign to me. This is the generational divide.
The formation of a estate filled with physical possessions is a prime driver for a lot of older folks. The younger set isn't so interested in that.
My ideal retirement: a bed, a desk, and a laptop in a small flat on the left bank in Paris.
This is going to have a big impact on several industries. In the future, fine furniture and china manufacturers are going to look like furriers today.
My family is another story. My dad is a collector of all sorts of things: vintage toys, LGB trains, 1930s radios, fine guitars... He has a 40' long storage unit just full of stuff. I dread the day we have to deal with it all.
My kids jokingly lament the need to go through it after I die. Meh... At least it is organized. I kinda like the idea of leaving them a giant task. Much of it is nominally valuable. They will be busy for quite a while. This makes me smile. Knowing them, they will enjoy it as well.
Take that last one to heart, and think of how it's not just a big task for your kids, but it's a really emotionally difficult and painful one for them as well.
I'm leaving them significant wealth. They might as well do something to earn it.
They might not be joking, I'm dreading dealing with my parents estate when they go and that's just one house.
I will say that for those of us who have to help our families go through this, be prepared for your family trying to "gift" things that are important to them on to you and when you decline because you do not want more stuff you may be accused of having no sentimentality. I went through this with my parents and I simply had to hold my ground. I accepted two things that did hold special meaning to me, but all other items I declined. I refused to allow their things to become my obligation to house for the next several decades.
So much so that he even dumped old baby photos of me and photos of my Grandfather -- served in the British Indian Army during World War II in Burma -- and many other rare family photos.
I was pretty mad at him for that, but I guess this means I don't have to deal with "stuff" when he passes, esp. given I live in the US and he lives in India.
The digital versions take up almost no space at all, and then you will be free to get rid of the old boxes of albums!
So far, I've been thankful. I've been going through my own backlog of crap and it's been great. I have to imagine it's been similar for my father and my sister.
My father's goal is no have as little bullshit for me and my sibling to sort through as possible when he dies. To me, this is great. Not that I hate my father or whatever, but that he wants as small a Death Footprint as possible. So do I for other reasons.
Such conversations are good to have.
In one way, it was great that we didn't have to sort it all out and deal with it, but in another, there were some things (like my dad's golf clubs and the family piano) that I would dearly have liked to hold on to because of the intense good memories those items represented to me (mum taught me to play piano on that particular instrument, and I have very cherished memories of playing golf with my dad when he used that set).
Now I am in the same bind, as I look around at all my stuff, including a collection of 30+ guitars that I have built up over the years. I've told my sons (who are both musical by the way) that they will inherit them when I am gone, but NOT to hold on to them as obsessively as I have. I explained to them that if it will help them to pay for studies, or buy a car/house etc. that they need, they should feel no hesitation in selling any and all of it as they see fit - there is no emotional obligation to them to hang on to 'stuff' unless they actually feel an emotional connection to do so.
At one stage, I even considered being buried with one of my favourite guitars, but then I thought 'No', it would do much better service above ground if they can use or sell it instead.
I suppose if the time came when I could not play any more due to age/illness etc. then I might do that, and give them the chance to choose a couple that they might want to keep after I am gone (they are both good guitar players in their own right).
So maybe the answer is to put everything in long-term storage, then skip a generation and wait till it becomes cool again :)
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/want-happiness-buy-experienc...
Some quick tips:
- Pictures with people are much more fun to look at later in life than landscapes, unless you're an amazing landscape photographer of course!
- Get off the tourist bus when visiting foreign countries. Walk the city. Pop your head into a local shop. Try that weird doughy thing, it might be tasty. Be almost late for your train - very exciting.
- Climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower (ugh, it's tough, but I remember it) then have wine and cheese in the park on the lawn to cap it off.
Relating to too many things, I have 5 large moving boxes of photo albums from my parents along and a few trinkets here and there. Fortunately me and my siblings had no arguments in the distribution or tossing of just about everything. The photo albums are being scanned slowly but surely.
Think I need to drop some subtle hints...
Plus they're cool parents...they wouldn't want to burden me. I'm just conscious of the fact that they plan to move from a very big house to a not big house. Meanwhile there are boxes that haven't been unpacked from the 2001 move. They're not hoarders...they just have too much crap.
Where I grew up we had space to grow out. This means our two stall garage became a place for storage, pack ratting. Some of it good but a lot of it.. Eh?
I have to admit this meant that there was never a shortage of tools but this also meant that during my father's passing I had to decompress and sort all of it. Some of it is packratted in my own three stall garage now.
Having a trait to collect myself it is hard to tell when you are going overboard.
Some things like early Nintendo games paid handsomely to keep about. Others like well worn copies of B rate VHS movies? Not so much. The advancement in movie quality made from very high grade studio masters was easy to see if you had technical knowledge in that area but the growth in perceived value for other things is hard to gauge. Growing up with the room to store what you like meant a lot of oddball stuff got packed away.
I'm trying to be more selective with what I pack than my father before me.. But hell, some things I'm going to keep just cause I like them.
The only reference points and influences people had were socializing with others and 3 TV channels. No internet, facebook, instagram or twitter.
In todays culture you can find nearly any group you want to associate with online. You won't feel like an outcast and if you live in a populated enough area you can probably find like-minded people. I think with this available, if you see your neighbors have new fine china (new fancy car, or whatever) and that isn't your thing, you pretty much don't care.
My grandfather was a uranium physicist for the Atomic Energy Commission and I grabbed as much related memorabilia as I could. They are currently stored in a secure barn attic but I want to get them out. But, actually do want to test them for radioactivity lol. Anybody know about this?
Perhaps buy a radiation tester? https://smile.amazon.com/GQ-GMC-300E-Plus-Radiation-dosimete...
He was telling me that self-storage will be great investment, with all the old people moving to smaller retirement homes and villages, they need a place to store all their stuff.
I also believe that we're instinctively attracted to the act of fiddling; while yesterday we needed a lot of physical things to appease this instinct, we can content ourselves with an App store, with grooming our computers, phones, emails, social profiles, etc.
I hope to find a charity who would take everything and use what they want/can and get rid of the rest. There are valuable things and non-valuable ones, I do not want anything (I love my parents but am not attached to material things and do not like souvenirs)