Letting things go

Why is it so hard to get rid of things? I am trying to clean out my shop. I find all kinds of things relating back to my Dad, who died in 93. I find it real hart to toss them in the iron pile. Example: Dad had a extra set of bean cutting knives, all hard faced ready to go. Some of the things go back to his horse farming days. The walls are filled with hanging things Dad put there. I also have all his tractors, they aren't a problem they just set outside covered. I am sure others have faced the same thing. Stan

Been there, done that, still LIVE it.

My farm was homesteaded in 1988, a year before ND became a state, by my Grandfather, and it's been in our family's hands ever since. I am the sole owner.

I have lots of Grandpa's stuff (died in 1944) plus Grandma's, plus 2 Uncles', plus stuff from my Mom and Dad.

Just as you said, often I came across something that was last moved or put in place by one of them. Makes a guy think! These last few years, I am making a real effort to try to weed through it and dispose of stuff. I'm not making much progress!

I need to get it done before MY time is up, and someone has to dispose of all that stuff PLUS mine!

I'd die with them and leave them to my kids. I inheirited a 1950 Chevrolet Deluxe that was my Dads. Gave it to my brother during a divorce I was going through... who let it waste away and later junked it. Today I have a drill and the only toy my Dad had as a kid. It's a 6 inch tall pot metal horse that he got for Christmas at around 5 years old. I lost my Dad in 1983 and would give anything to have him back. I would never get rid of anything no matter how small that was my fathers.

I hear ya! I'm getting known in my family as the deposit place for "unwanted" items. They are heirlooms to me. If a thief were to break into my shed, he'd be scratching his head. "just a bunca' junk".

It's treasure to me. I lost my grandfather's and my dad is wasting away with Alzheimers. The thinks they used and touched are priceless to me. Not worth a plug nickel to anyone else though.

I know just exactly what you mean. Finally after 55 years I finally said things MUST go. I took my son thru the buildings , marking only thing he may want at some point. After our walk there were only a couple items he wanted. The rest went on my junk trailer, and is gone, but another walk thru my buildings I am sure there will be another couple loads. WHY??????? jl.

Had to face a similar issue about five years ago. The farm had been in our family since 1845 and it looked like they didn't ever throw much away. One brother needed money, the other didn't have any cash to help buy him out, and with me being established out here just didn't render it too feasible to ante up to buy at least one out. Couldn't justify moving a hundred and sixty year's collection for 400 miles, so made the necessary choices and most went to the Amish including all of the old buildings with hand hewn timbers. Tough decisons sometimes need to be made. They did it before me when they moved in the 1840's from the original home place out east that the family Patriarch had settled after arriving in 1748. My children have little connection with the moved family farm items so there is a good chance it all will be discarded when I'm gone.

Why try?? Good way to get even with the kids--let them get rid of it; it guarantees you'll be remembered--LOL

I tried to "Find good homes" for my Dad's things, that I was not going to keep.. No kidding, I gave a lot of things to his friends, and other people that I felt would be good stewards to his possessions, rather than sell them to strangers..

I did keep a lot of things. It is odd, how just the smallest things , such as a tool, can bring back old memories..

1988 isn't that long ago. I think you mean 1888. Dave

i have part of my dad's ww II unifrom and a pocket watch which i think was my great grandfathers.
i also have my grandfathers oak office chair that he used in his school bus and chicken business. talk about an odd combination.
no, he didn't haul chickens in the buses but he and dad did take the body off of one and used the body for a hog coup.

If you can do something reasonable to keep the stuff and still make the space you're trying to, trust me, it'll be worth it.

Grandpa had a sale after he had to quit farming. I saw some things on the sale flyer that I felt shouldn't ever leave the family, so I lugged the thousand miles out to the sale. Left my number in the air and kept nodding my head while the important stuff was up for bid and got all of what I went for. There were a few other lots that I hadn't focused on, though, that I bid on. So I have the hay hooks that I used to stack hay with, and have made a point to find someone I can hel with their hayin' just so I get to use them. But to your point, I also have his old copper "apple butter" kettle with the walnut stirrer he made for it. Until I can get somebody to tell me how to make that big a batch of apple butter, the kettle sits up over the stringers in my garage, just like it set up over the stringers in Grandpa's summer kitchen, all wrapped up in the two flour bags stitched together (that was another auction lot!), just like he kept it.

Somehow my sister wound up with the bell that was the bell for Grandpa's school. It came into the family when they consolidated the one-room school houses and my great-gandfather bought the schoolhouse and the ten acres it sat on, which adjoin the farm, at which point it became the farm bell. Nothing was left but the bell and the clapper. They sat around here taking up space for years. Most folks would have seen it as a rusty old bell or thirty-five pounds of scrap. Finally (fifteen years later) I got off my duff and found a support, yoke and crank for it. I had to have a post planed down to fit the casting on the support, but the old girl is right outside the back door and working again.

My point? Memories ain't junk.

Scottyhome, we make applebutter in a kettle and will be glad to tell you how we do it. Drop me an E-mail if you are interested.

if it were me id put up a shed to keep dads stuff in, then you'll have your space too, you'll be kicking yourself if you get rid of it.when my dad died, i was living 1300 miles away, when it came time to get rid of things, mom [ not really in her right mind at this time] had a big sale, priced it all herself too, sold most while i was on the way to get it, example was a 200 dollar 1/2 inch drive socket set almost new condition, she got 10 bucks for it, she got 12,000 for a 1 year old toyota pickup dad just gave 25000 plus for, but the kicker was when she gave away a union civil war sabre, mint condition originally issued to a family member during the war and had been passed down generation to generation, the prize i managed to get was 2 WWll navy suitcases dad was issued when he enlisted and had hauled around with him ever since, i needed to pack some things and decided to use those, when opened i found his original uniform insignia, as well as a pilots flight log belonging to him from those days, the point is if you must make room, ask the next generation in your family if they want this stuff before you pitch it

1888 it is. (Was.)

When my grand-parents died years ago, my mom and her brother and sisters went through and divided up what they had left to them. Lots of old paper etc. I picked up a shoe box one of them threw out. Found my grandma's divorce paper from her first husband inside along with aletter I had sent her from Vietnam. I definitely kept the box. Found out later one of my aunts wanted a picture frame, threw the picture away because no-one knew who it was. Since found out that it was Grandma's uncle in his civil war uniform. Sure wish I had that picture today,

If it is hard to let it go, then don't. You have worked around it this many years so whats a few more gonna hurt? When the time is right you will know it.

ever thought of an area museum ? I love old time museums. the pictures and artifacts

Yup,I've always wished I could have a nice building,organized as a museum for things like that instead of just having all of it laying around as junk.

The problem is you just can't keep everything you come in contact with. I tend to think it is more important to live your life building your own legacy, just as your dad and grandad did before there was all these material possesions like there is today. Its kind of sad to let old clutter control your life. Keep something to remember your past relatives by, but you shouldn't keep everything just because it was theirs. My father has a problem with keeping too much stuff too. All this clutter just consumes him, his father's big ol' canoe for example is an item he would never ever let go, even though he hasn't and won't ever take it out. There it sits in the rafters of the old barn with a layer of dust so thick on it that you can't tell what color it is. I've tried unsuccessfully to get him to take it fishing. That damn canoe has been there the last 2 decades unused and counting. There are also many other things that my dad would never part with. My dad also has troubles letting go of many more objects, even his junkmail he will hang onto until mom gets after him. I hate to say it, but his life is totally consumed by his stuff, he spends all his time to home afraid thieves will come steal his stuff. This is NO WAY TO LIVE. His life is passing him by while he is storing and protecting all this stuff he isn't using and can't bring himself to let go of.

After my dad is gone, that old canoe will be going because I have no use for it, and didn't even know his father since he passed just before I was born. I am not going to keep all this junk, no way. I would rather have a more social life and be free to travel. There is so much to life beyond whereever it is that you live.

i know what you mean, i built some shelves to get my shop cleaned up in may,still at it..gee wizz..i keep finding good stuff ,been selling some of it on fleabay.some to the garbage. lucas

Chief, It's not hard, you're just making it hard.
Just went through the same thing. Had to move the FIL off the farm and just spent the month of Sept.cleaning out a three car garage and a 60' x 100' shed. Brought a 20yd dumpster in and just started pitching. Saved anything that was worth something and sold some of it to a few local guys and the rest went to the consignment auction. Also hired a guy to take all of the scrap and anything with wheels on it. Well a month later and I'm on the 3rd 20yd dumpster and just started on the house now. When any of the daughters showed up they would always say "your not going to thow that are you? or how can you get rid of that?". Real simple-if you are not going to put it in your car right now than it's gone.
dOUG

My grandfather isn't even dead, just in his 90's, recently moved to an apartment from house built right after WW2. My mom grew up in the house, couldn't convince her to through anything out. She kept her great grandmothers broken aluminum egg poacher that was broken even before she was born. It had sat in g'pa's scrap metal pile the whole time growing up and that was enough to keep it.

After 2000$ of gas moving similar junk the 1000 km's to her house, she now has no room to move and it looks like she'll need to build another house to store all the junk. She had some old barbie dolls there, I said why don't you get rid of some of them? She says NO! They're worth money. I said only if you're willing to sell them. They went into a trunk and they won't be seen again until I toss them in a roll off dumpster in another 30 years when she passes away.

Old Barbies and other dolls are highly collectable and some are worth thousands! Dave

When my grandparents died, parents, aunts, uncles, hurriedly went thru stuff, then tossing it into the dump/burn pit on the farm. I ask to have the stuff after they were done going thru it. We found plenty that they missed, Important papers, cash in old greeting cards etc.
The treasure was a solid gold coin, that was given to my grandmother by her children. (at a time when it was not legal for citizens to have gold.) I'd heard about that since I was about knee-high to a duck!

I can relate a lot to that. When my Dad died back in 2000, he had a house, cottages, business, and two barns (and a chicken coop!) filled with antiques and "stuff" from his business, etc. We did find some old 50 year original business documents that were kind of cool to see, records from how they did things 40+ years ago. He had a 1930 antique car that had basically not moved out of that garage except once or twice in 40 years (long as I was alive then). My Mom had decided to sell so we also rented roll-offs and filled several.

We sold much stuff on ebay, and gave her a pretty darn good return of quite a few thousands, not counting what she unloaded herself at garage and estate sales. The car alone sold for over 6000, and some old horse-drawn wagons sold for a couple thousand. It was amazing to me how much people paid for old junk. I sold a cracked block tractor engine in pieces for a 100 or so. (probably worth more today in scrap)

My favorite was the rusty old Rupp go-kart that we found in the barn from when we were kids. My brother chucked it into the dumpster, but I pulled it out and washed it off, because I thought it might be worth $50 or so on ebay. I was pretty surprised when it went for over $1500; there are a lot of old "junk" collectors out there with too much money and not enough sense I guess.

It was certainly a lot of work taking digital pictures of everything and making ebay ads, and the process wasn't as streamlined as it is today. And some items sold for not much more than what it cost to ship them, like $5-$10 or so, so in retrospect, some of it was not too productive, time-wise. Not that we paid for the shipping ourselves, but just the time tracking ads, emails, keeping track of checks and money orders and the packing/shipping took a lot of time. But at least it kept my Mom busy!! (which is good after a loss)

I'm glad I did end up with a lot of pictures of stuff on some CDs. What I need to do now is spend some time writing down what I can remember about some of the stuff, and how it relates to interesting (to us, anyway) family memories.

So now I have mostly just the "digital clutter", which is maybe just as bad! We had about a 40 acre little gentlemen's farm, which I ended up walking completely around and taking pictures of from every angle, with a tape recording of stuff I remembered as I went. I do look at that from time to time and enjoy the memories of where we built a treehouse, where my brother broke his arm, etc. At least that doesn't take up as much space.

I wish I would have had space to take the car. It was pretty original and restorable. My Dad was smart enough to resist my pleas to make it into a street rod when I was 17 or so. Just didn't have the space for another car "project" at that time.

Good Luck!
J.