Setting boundaries with your parents, especially their grand parenting is brutal.
As a long distance grandpa I try very hard not to place expectations like what my parents did at times. You’ll have to ask my son (and now my daughter next year) how I’m doing.
Now that you have a bigger place expect your parents to start emptying their attic/basement/garage by bringing it over to you. Your old stuff, family heirloom stuff, and surely some pure crap. Always special when they cram it in your car when you go to visit them.
My wife owned a small house when we lived in upstate NY. She already got a literal moving truck packed full of this shit from her folks, much of which IS STILL IN BOXES AND WE ARE STILL MOVING AFTER FOUR MOVES. We have, like, four huge tubs and multiple boxes full of literal fabric scraps that my wife is unwilling to part with and that must have nearly 10000 miles on their odometers.
My parents aren’t that bad about this, but it’s happening. Last year I got a box full of “sentimental” Christmas ornaments from, like, when I was a baby. Yo, they aren’t sentimental to me. They’re meaningless to me. They were sentimental to you. Why do you think I even want this box?
Seems like a no-brainer to treat that thing like a Confederate monument: take the picture out of the frame and into a photo album, and then either trash the frame or put something good in it, depending on whether you like the frame.
The only possible good thing about parents dumping your old stuff on you is if you inadvertently saved a bunch of 80’s nostalgia crap that people buy on ebay. I’ve netted $1,300 already for maybe 8 hours’ worth of effort listing and shipping things that had exactly zero value to me.
My wife’s mother passed away around 20 years ago. We have a bunch of stuff that came from her that I guess my kids are going to have to deal with. First thing that comes to mind is “Papa’s Piano”. I think it was my wife’s great-grandfather’s. It’s in our living room. Nobody plays it, ever. Nobody here knows how to play it. But that thing ain’t going anywhere.
Yeah, for all the boxes I ended up with it’s depressing to think of what wasn’t there - multiple Atari consoles & games, an original NES, a ColecoVision, Commodore Vic-20 (with tape drive!).
I would be surprised if there is anyone worse than my Mom.
My parents recently moved into a new house and were going through all their “stuff”.
She asked me if they should keep this. It’s some stupid thing I colored in pre-school. That’s just a small taste of the completely worthless crap she’s hung on to.
Reminds me of a morning radio bit I listened to, oh, like 15 years back. The DJs one morning were talking about things you should never buy new, and one that came up and was met with unanimous approval was aquariums. They figured there were so many people out there with unused aquariums out there, you should be able to get one free without issue should you ever want one. So, they opened up their phone lines and were inundated with people wanting to give away aquariums, and I think they matched them up with some listeners who wanted one.
The next morning or maybe a couple days later, they wanted to one-up themselves, so the challenge this time was pianos. I think they legitimately found a non-profit musical organization that could use one or more, and sure enough, they had like 6 callers all of whom were more than willing to give away their pianos for free provided the person wanting it was the one responsible for hauling it away.
My folks have a piano. I suppose that day is coming.
I don’t think I ever had too many of the now-valuable toys, but one I know I have and that my parents should still have is the Lego pirate ship with the functioning, spring-loaded cannon. Those were only around briefly before they decided they were a safety hazard, and now they’re worth hundreds. Made for some awesome sea battles when I was a kid.
Last time I visited my folks, Mom asked me to take or toss what was left in a few boxes I had in their basement. Worthless shit like a college textbook on marketing from the mid 90s, pre internet, very relevant now, glad I kept it for decades.
Gave all my old baseball cards to my nephew. So he’s selling them to make some money for himself. Apparently there was a Roger Clemens rookie card along with a few Barry Bonds rookies too. I still remember trading for the Bonds cards, sitting at my kitchen table with the neighbor kid negotiating back in around 1990.
I still remember the day adolescent me and my friend decided to light his Millennium Falcon on fire with nail polish remover and throw it out his attic window.
My mom sent my wife and daughter some socks she bought and didn’t want. They weren’t fashionable but they told her that they “used them all the time”. (As cleaning rags).
Another package for me had my dads stretched old boxers.
Always an adventure opening this things up. Miss her tho.
When my mom’s husband’s parents were selling their house they were giving all boxes of random crap like has been described in this thread to their kids to hold onto. Turns out one of the random boxes given to him had an original print from Ansel Adams buried in a box of old sweatshirts. They took it to an auction house in the city and got a solid 5 figures for it that they all shared.
So check your shit before ditching it. Otherwise I’m all about donating or trashing stuff like that.
Spending so much time at home this year, the wife and I have really decluttered the basement and closets.
My parents moved a few years back and man that was a relief for them to downsize and get rid of all the junk that had accumulated over the years. My dad collected sports cards, which turned out to be mostly worthless, and coins which might be worth something, although I think he sold a bunch of them. My mom brought a few boxes of my old stuff, from which I ended up holding onto a few things. I sold my old Sega Genesis and all my games for it and got more money than I expected for it, ended up being a few hundred bucks. Still have my NES that I don’t play (it’s not even hooked up at the moment) but that is one of the few things that’s hard for me to part with.
My in-laws have also been getting rid of stuff but my father-in-law has been working on a Beatles museum in one of his rooms over the last few years which has overflowed into other rooms…
It’s not even close to the worst I’ve seen, but your coloring and penmanship here are just absolute shit. If your mom is saving this, it’s only so that it can go into the book that would inevitably be written about the utter failure of a human who created this.
Your aesthetic choices, such as they are, are also horrendous and show a complete lack of taste.
It’s actually pretty good. The color choices are dreadful.
