Mom plans to age in place and dump house clean-out on ‘someone else’

https://wapo.st/46uMqtX

LW resents being that somebody else.

Nick's Cartoon shows an old couple in opposing wooden rockers. Man is reading newspaper while the woman leans over and says "I'm having my things cremated."

LW begins a justified but jumping-the-gun whine thusly:

" My widowed, healthy, vibrant mom lives alone. Selling her huge house and the furniture, and going through my parents’ belongings, will be a massive undertaking one day. She says that “someone else” can take care of it, that it’s too painful for her.

The “someone else” is me and a semi-estranged sibling. My sibling lives far away and has been absent for decades. I live in the same town as my mother.

I don’t want her things or her house, only special letters and photographs. I can’t understand why or how she could saddle me with this. I feel like I have for much of my life: that she doesn’t consider how her actions directly affect me.

Still, it is her house, her life and her choice "

Hey, if LW wants nothing, it's easy, just take the letter, photographs and then burn the house down... joke... actually just pay for it to be cleaned out and estate auction to be done. Hax echoes this:

" I’m not sure the house is as physically burdensome as you think, though. As long as you’re okay with handing over control of where the stuff ends up, you can hire a company to clean out the house: all the paper, all the clothes, all the toxic cleaning solutions, every stick of furniture. It’s not cheap but can be cheaper than you’d expect, especially if the projected sale of some contents can offset the final price. "

My situation was more complicated in that I did need some of the household goods, but I didn't know what until I knew where I was moving to. Once I knew, I dumped around half of it on charity. Even so, I moved with a ton.

So, many years later I am still winnowing out stuff I don't need or isn't quite to my taste. I'm now down to decluttering my kitchen goods (dishes and all largely replaced long ago, I'm hard on china) and rehoming some of these photographs.

Big hint: LW will only want some of these photographs, not the endless duplicates and photos of people she doesn't know from work and trips-- It's just too sad to look at a life lived. She's actually called dibs on the most emotional part of cleaning house. She should just ask for the photographs now. Letters can be burned, they're never mind her business.

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