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I’ve already told my wife that when her parents die we are just going to burn the house down. I’m just half joking.

I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff. You can’t take it with you. And I have no intention of sorting through it. It’s all going straight to the landfill.

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> I truly don’t understand people that fill up their homes with stuff.

I almost replied this way, too, but then I remember the junk drawer I have full of DB9 serial cables, Firewire cables, PCI SCSI cards, 256MB RAM chips, 2GB spinning hard disk drives, three prong computer power cables, mice, webcams, power strips, power bricks, and a fully functional Dell OptiPlex GX620 with a screaming Pentium D 3.2GHz CPU. I keep all these things out of some insane sense that "One Day I Might Need It And Will Be Glad I Kept It."

Same reason I keep scrap wood, extra floor tiles, and 1/4 full paint cans in my shed.

I had such a collection. It spent a decade in storage during a transient period of my life, and I emptied my storage when I got a house. I made a decision that I was going to empty every single box, whether or not I'd go on to repack them. I saved a miniscule fraction of the computer stuff, in the face of the evidence that I had not needed it for an entire decade and had no plans to open a computing museum.

I just did the same thing last weekend, from boxes that had been kicking around a few moves, which is where most of my "buildup of crap" came from personally. I'd lived in a series of apartments with more storage space than actively usable space, then I'd met a girl, she owned a house so moved in there, we bought a house together, COVID hit so we sold that house for another with a yard for us and for the dogs, then we split up and I kept this house because she had her eye on one not far away.

Five years after some of these boxes were packed, I finally went through them. I found a few things to keep, like the thank-yous from charity events I've run, but I don't need a monitor stand for a monitor I don't have anymore or all those VGA cables.

My studio and my wood shop are pretty well-organized now. Aiming to keep them that way. The rest of the house--I dunno, I live pretty lightly outside of those two areas.

Are you me? :)

And whenever I think about throwing it out, I actually do end up using something from the pile :)

My only consolation is that it's all easy stuff to throw out for the next generation - there's no emotional stuff there.

I had a similar pile but went through it and tried to pick:

- Only one of each type of thing - Only the highest quality/safest power bricks - And items that punched above their weight in terms of utility (like an adapter that at least one end was not obsolete)

This reduced my pile by about 75% .

I find that I subconsciously keep a map of things that I encounter on my search for other items and this is actually a burden. Just getting rid of that PCI SCSI card lets me just forget that type of thing even exists and move on with my life.

I've been doing this sort of thing since the pandemic started and I haven't once regretted it. Actually now I have more space for new junk.

I have a similar method: I keep all cables in a set of small boxes. All USB cables go into one box, networking into another etc. I don't allow the boxes to overflow.

This does three things:

1. Makes it easy to find the right cable or to establish definitively that I don't have one.

2. Limits the volume of cables I keep. Say some gadget comes with a micro-USB cable, but the USB box is full. I either already know that I don't need any more micro-USB cables and recycle it right away, or check the box and find another USB cable to recycle to make space. (On extremely rare occasions I decide that the box is too small and either upgrade to a bigger one or split the category up into subcategories. I haven't needed to do this for a very long time.)

3. Makes explicit the process of thinking "Do I need to keep this thing?" instead of automatically storing it away.

I use the same method for chargers, mains extension leads and adapters etc.

This works for me and it's pretty effective!

Leftover paint exposed to temperature extremes is unlikely to last longer than a year or two.

I had vinyl siding installed and some wood trim painted on the exterior of my house in 1985. The leftover oil-based paint is stored in my crawl space, which has no direct heat or air conditioning. I used some of the paint in 2021 to touch-up the wood trim and then put the can back in the crawl space.

Don't throw things, get specialists that can sell and redistribute it. You can negotiate to not get money back and they can even take care of what's really trash.

Yes. Well, this process takes months. Do you want the empty house to sell or use? Or would you rather wait 6+ months while stuff slowly clears out?

Edit: for the replies: that works in populated areas. Rural MO, WS not so much.

Edit2: also, arguing with kinfolk about stuff or waiting for probate (in the absence of a Will)

There are definitely people who will move every single thing out of a house in a weekend for free. That's how storage unit auctions are done, and buyers even pay for it.

Exactly, if you want a house empty you can make it empty just about as soon as you would like. The only question is who pays and how much. As you say - if it is junk you will pay some, if there are some things of obvious value you can come out ahead.

Shouldn’t take nearly that long. Get another quote from a professional with a warehouse so they can work from there. Or schedule an estate sale as soon as legally able.

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